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by Stoker   Hadrian's Wall above Sycamore Gap Last time Stoker dwelt on the increasing danger of a British revolution. This time, we must admit that such an unthinkable event is, well, pretty much unthinkable.  And the roots of this unrevolutionary thinking lie in the Romans, or at least the ruin of a wall that they left behind them, commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian to keep the Picts and the Scots out of peace-loving and rich England (as it then wasn’t). In Stoker’s long ago past, not quite stretching back to Roman times, he worked in a Roman Museum, run by an amiable eccentric who told visiting school parties that the wall was built by the Scots to keep the Romans away from the haggis plantations; so convincingly that even their teachers half believed this by the end of their visit.  But back to 2025, or in fact 2023, and to the roots that are the cause of this change of heart.  The roots of a sycamore tree, growing right up against Hadrian’s Wall, in a most scenic location in a gully, that forms, or at least formed, a most unforgettable image. This tree, you will learn from the media, has been growing there since Roman times, or maybe Norman times, or maybe since Robin Hood, or at least from Georgian times*; a splendid gnarled ancient specimen of a tree that symbolises the Wall, the fair county of Northumberland, and the great enduring spirit of England.    But one dark and stormy night - 28th September 2023 - two wicked, not to say evil, no-gooders with a chainsaw crept up to the Sacred Sycamore and felled it with one clean cut; down it fell, onto the Wall itself. Next morning, the nation wept. And the police, faced with such callous cruelty and indifference to an historic tree and the wrath of the nation, rushed hither and thither and arrested a 16 year old local youth; and then his grandfather. Gotcha!  Or not, as it turned out; both were released without charge.  So, the constabulary rushed about with even greater vigour as the nation held its breath, and arrested two more local lads, from near Carlisle (about 20 miles from Sycamore Gap). And in the last few days Newcastle Crown Court has witnessed the trial of the chainsaw massacrers, though they both denied it, or alternately, each blamed the other.  Now, if you are the sort that thinks a sycamore tree is a rare and special thing, Stoker understands your agony; he really does.  He also thinks you are completely misplacing your splendid and no doubt deeply-held emotions.  Sycamores are probably the most common wild tree in the British Isles; the problem with sycamores is not to get them to grow, but to stop them growing.  They grow indeed like weeds, very large weeds, and they are not the most useful of trees, being tricky to make anything useful out of – being fast growing they tend to be weak and inclined to split and twist.  They do make rather spitty firewood and will keep toes toasty on a winter’s evening by the open fire or wood-burner (until the government bans such dreadful things, of course). But the sycamore of Sycamore Gap was a very splendid item in the glorious landscape that surrounds Hadrian’s Wall, and the drama of that particular part is diminished by its passing.  Not for long, probably. The stump is already sprouting and within twenty years or so the gully should once again be Sycamore Gap. The National Trust has planted 49 sports from the fallen tree which are said to be flourishing, as insurance and a marketing opportunity. Assuredly, within fifty years it will be as though nothing had ever happened.  Because sycamores do grow very fast.  Indeed your correspondent knew this area in the 1970’s and can’t even remember that dramatic tree, and English Heritage coyly admits that the gully was not known as Sycamore Gap until the late 1980’s.  A retired Inspector of Ancient Monuments announced, as the trial of the Gap Two began, that he had a few years ago advised the tree be taken down as its roots would soon damage Hadrian’s Wall and its locus; and it might well eventually fall on the Wall itself.  None of which, of course, means that anybody should go around felling other people’s trees, especially ones under which, no doubt, marital proposals have been made (and, romantically, let us hope accepted), picnics eaten, storms sheltered from, and a million photos taken and pasted in albums.  The value of the tree was assessed for the trial at over £600,000 – the damage to the Wall at less than £2,000.  £600,000 for a tree that is not even great as firewood?  Well, no. That value is the assessed economic damage done by its disappearance, the net capitalised benefit to the area of the tourist spend from lodgings and teashops and whatnot.  Except of course what has actually happened is that the lost tree has hugely increased the number of visitors to their area and their spend, as they all make for the site of the awful crime and admire the brave little shoots springing from the stump. Which means that economically the dastardly duo and their chainsaw have done the area an economic benefit.  Ho-hum. The damage calculation was withdrawn during the trial so that presumably defence counsel could not use it as justification. The trial ended on the 9th May with a jury finding the perpetrators guilty as charged and the judge delivering some harsh words as to this appalling act; the now convicts have to wait until early July before sentencing will be delivered. Maximum sentence is ten years in HM prison. This was indeed a sad and mindless act by two lads who were up to unthinking mischief.  It is however worth saying that the sycamore and its coterie of protectors, the National Trust which owns the land, English Heritage which protects the Wall, and the National Park Authority which is the planning authority, are not so popular locally.  The local farming and working population do not benefit from the tree tourism which brings a great deal of nuisance, trespass, and interference into quiet rural lives. After the tree was first felled there was some expressed support for the then unknown axmen who did the job. But the most remarkable feature is the massive hullabaloo over a felled sycamore.  Popes have died and been elected, western politics are in chaos, the British party political system is collapsing (it seems), horrible murders take place, war is prevalent or breaking out in some locations.  But what really engages the emotions of the British public is an illegal tree-felling: the Daily Mail , a newspaper not normally mentioned in this column, has had hysterics of anger and grief throughout the trial; Saturday’s Times devoted all of pages 4 and 5 to the sorry tale.  No country which devotes such waterfalls of tears, such paroxysms of grief, such outpourings of anger (and a crown court trial over more than a week with judge and jury) over the illegal felling of a second-rate tree can possibly be at risk of revolution.  Trees, kittens, puppies, talent shows will always take precedence over marching and resistance. So, perhaps we should be lenient with the Carlisle criminals; take away their chain saws and give them two weeks inside just to act as a warning to others.  We’re at heart a kindly nation as they have allowed us to demonstrate. Let’s show forgiveness and allow them to get on with their lives.   *The latest claim is that it was planted by John Clayton, town clerk of Newcastle upon Tyne in the second half of the C19th who became very rich through backing Richard Grainger, developer of modern Newcastle: Clayton spent much of his money buying up and conserving the ruins of the Wall.  It seems unlikely he would have planted a sycamore anywhere but you never know.

by Mark Nicholson Alfred Williams 1820-1841 I was leaving my local country club one afternoon a few months ago, when I noticed a large pile of discarded library books on sale to members. Amongst the Danielle Steele novels, I spotted one entitled The Great Mutiny,  which piqued my interest because I was certain some ancestor of mine was involved. When I got home, I went downstairs to look at a painting of some chap who, family history had it, was killed in the mutiny. Next to his picture was another one of the wrecked billiard room in the Lucknow residency after a cannon ball fired by mutinous sepoys had hit the building in 1857. The Residency, Lucknow 1857 Unlike some of my friends, I have as much interest in ‘relatives/ ancestors’ born two or three centuries ago as they would have had in my transient existence. This is mainly on numerical grounds: a child born this year, based on a 25-year generation time, would have had 256 grandparents wandering round in 1825 (and while we are at it, 1,048,576 grandparents in 1533 when Henry married Anne Boleyn). Anyway, the young fellow of interest in the painting, who looks barely 15, was born in 1821 and killed 19 years later in the Siege of Kahun (Kahan). Google tells me that the siege occurred during the Ist Anglo-Afghan war of 1840, 27 years before the Mutiny. As in Europe, one can forget how easily borders change, as I fear we are about to see in Ukraine. Kahan has been variously part of Balochistan ( sic. ), Afghanistan, India and Pakistan. So no, the young man died in a seemingly fruitless war against the Afghans. Do we ever learn?   What do most of us really know about the East India Company (E.I.C.) at the time of the Mutiny? We’ve probably heard of the Black Hole of Calcutta and maybe Clive of India, but little else. The E.I.C. was founded in 1603 and the aim was trade, not conquest. Over the next 150 years, France, the Netherlands and Portugal all tried to get their oar in but British power prevailed based on Divide and Rule. India was still in a state of anarchy after the collapse of the Mughal empire and Indian adventurers, Princelings, Nabobs and Nizams sprang up to carve out new states for themselves. Indian borders never really existed. A bullying and arrogant English adventurer, Robert Clive, arrived in 1751 and within fifteen or twenty years became the richest man in the world. Clive reminds one very much of the current wealthiest man in the world, being an achiever but not a very pleasant one. But in 1774, he returned to England in disgrace, accused of corruption, and committed suicide.  For the next 80 years, India became a vast source of wealth for Britain.   By 1850, Victorian Christian values started to be forced on Hindus and Muslims alike. The last straw came when new Enfield rifles arrived for Anglo-Indian regiments which required bullets to be coated in tallow and for the ends to be bitten off before loading. Rumours spread that the tallow was either cow fat or pig fat, both abhorrent to Hindi and Muslim alike.      The Great Mutiny of 1857 started in Meerat and terrible massacres ensued, even of women and children in Cawnpore. Around 15,000 British people and probably well over half a million Indians were killed. The atrocities on both sides were horrifying. If you think Israeli revenge on Gaza is a war crime, consider that British officers vowed to kill at least a hundred or 1000 Indians for every colonial killed. There were numerous accounts of rebellious sepoys cruelly executed, such as being tied to the front of cannons before being blown into pieces. People who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Although Indians outnumbered employees of the East India Company (EIC) by around 10,000 to one, the failure of the mutiny was essentially the result of two factors. First, the inability of Hindu and Muslim to come together against a common foe and second, the difficulty of communication over huge areas. The mutiny was concentrated around Oudh and Bengal, far from Punjab or the southern states which were scarcely involved, so simultaneous action was impossible.  If social media had been around, the British would have been destroyed or driven out of India in days.  Instead, the EIC was closed down and the British Raj took over. Amazingly, it was another 90 years before the Indian subcontinent got its independence only to be riven once more by the appalling partition which ended up with at least another two million fatalities. Yet out from the chaos, eventually three independent countries emerged and, by and large, have prospered.   In 2024 India held an election peacefully and successfully. BJP’s win was a foregone conclusion but the win was based on Hindu numbers, not rigging. I get regular updates about India from my car mechanic who is a Muslim Gujarati. He flew back last year for the election to vote [1]  against Modi’s BJP but the outcome was obvious. What was remarkable though was the efficiency of the world’s largest election in which almost 650 million people voted peacefully and on the whole fairly over several weeks.    This month India and Pakistan have been rattling sabres as they are inclined to do every decade or so. This time it followed the murder of 26 tourists in Pahalgam in Indian administered Kashmir, an attractive mountain resort I visited on various occasions in the safe years of the 1970s, 1990s and early 2000s in between flare-ups. Kashmir (Gilgit) in green [Pakistan] ; Jammu & Kashmir in orange [India] The north-west part of Kashmir (Gilgit-Baltistan) is in Pakistan. The whole area is part of the western Himalayas and one sometimes feels that India just wanted to claim one big mountain, Kanchenjunga, for themselves, which at over 8500m is the third highest mountain in the world.   As most of the tourists in the recent attack were Hindu men, the Indian government immediately blamed Pakistan, which I think is unfair and inaccurate. India has always been a dog in the manger over Jammu and Kashmir ever since Partition. India is a predominantly Hindu state and the Muslim Kashmiris have always felt like second class citizens.  Kashmir does not feel like India. Everybody I spoke to in Srinagar said they did not want to join Pakistan; they’re adamant in their wish to be independent from both countries. The terrorists were undoubtedly Kashmiri-born supporters of independence for the region but some support Pakistan’s claim just to annoy Delhi.   I have a particular affection for Kashmir not just because of the beauty of its mountainous terrain. I am also a great fan of the novels of Rumer Godden [2]  who was brought up in Calcutta and what is now Bangladesh. She was brought up as a daughter of the Raj but later became very interested in and attached to Indian culture. In a semi-autobiographical novel, Kingfishers Catch Fire she evokes the wonderful landscapes around the Dal lake where she went to live with her young daughter after her divorce. She writes about the complexity of trying to immerse herself in Muslim Kashmiri culture having turned away forever from the Raj society. In her eighties she returned to the Calcutta and Kashmir of her youth, a trip which she found to have been a great mistake.   Do I believe that the two nuclear-armed countries will go to war over Kashmir? The answer is a definite "No" . Both countries would have too much to lose and the ‘International Community’ would also do everything to prevent it. A few drone attacks and lobbed shells should finish the job but one always has to be careful about fake news. But the posturing will continue. If you want some entertainment watch the daily lowering of the flag at Wagah on the Pakistan/ Indian border [3] .   India now has the fourth largest economy in the world ($4.187 trillion) against the UK’s at $3.8 trillion. It is an ever-growing economy and alongside it is one of the best health services in the world. It is the number one destination of choice for medical procedures among those in east Africa who can afford it, being modern, world-leading, efficient and under half the price of anywhere else.   The rivalry between the two countries will be as eternal as Flemish-Walloon or Anglo-Scots rivalry but in the meantime, I hope both India and Pakistan will one day cede independence for its predominantly Islamic state.  [1]  Indians overseas were not entitled to vote. [2] Black Narcissus, The River & Kingfishers Catch Fire are among the most famous of her 80 works. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvvwhBl1xWM

by Richard Pooley High-speed Trains in China - then and now. Thanks to Dr Ian Wright and his fascinating Brilliant Maps - https://brilliantmaps.com   … they do things differently there. ‘There’ is China, where I and the Conan Doyle Estate's agent, Tim Hubbard, were on business for a week last month. Hong Kong (1 day), Guanzhou (1), Shanghai (2), Chengdu (1), Beijing (3). One train, three flights, eleven meetings, one quality inspection, one banquet, too much excellent food, too little sleep. Oh, and a foot massage which extended to just about every part of my body. I had last been in China in early 2008: a two-day sales trip to Shanghai from Japan. My chief memories are of the people bumping into me, seemingly deliberately, as I walked down to the Bund from my hotel, and of the nine hours I spent on a Japan Airlines plane at the airport waiting for its wings to be de-iced. I was in Hong Kong for a long weekend in 1997, on the way back to the UK from Japan. I had wanted to see it before the British handed it over to the Chinese. So, when I decided in February to visit China again, I didn’t feel it was ‘again’. I thought I would be going to a new country. I was not wrong.   Have a look at the maps above. In the time it took the UK to propose, to pass laws, to plan and to build some 200km of high-speed rail line from London towards Birmingham (to be finished in 2033?), China created a network of high-speed lines over 45,000 km long, carrying annually 1.3 billion passengers at speeds of up to 380 km/h.   It is the rapidity and enormity of change which is so extraordinary. One of our two agents in China, Nick Ward, a Brit in the aviation field who has been doing business in the country since 1985, flew in to Beijing from Tajikistan to join us for a couple of days. Ten minutes from the airport his taxi driver told him that he needed to get the car’s battery changed. “How long will it take?”  Nick asked, anxious not to be late for our next meeting and angry that he had not been warned before. “Thirty” was the succinct response. Assuming this meant thirty minutes, I got an apologetic text. In fact, he arrived in good time. The battery had been robotically removed and replaced at a garage in nearly thirty seconds. Nick would have arrived even earlier if he hadn’t tried to pay the driver in large cash notes. The driver had expected to be paid using WeChat and was not able to give him change. Nick had to go into his hotel to get help. Very different from Hong Kong where every taxi driver expected us to pay cash.   Hong Kong was, superficially, no different from what I remembered – plenty of Sunday shoppers, ferry trippers, and bar-crawling expats.  Different was the welcoming smiles which we got from the airport immigration officials (in contrast to their colleagues at the visa office in London)*. Surprising was the ease with which we could access Western news sites and social media. This was about to change.   We took a high-speed train from Kowloon to Guangzhou. A communication mix-up with our other agent in China, who was meeting us in Guangzhou, meant our tickets were not waiting for us at Kowloon station as expected. We were told at the entry barrier that even if we had had the tickets, we had not left enough time to catch our train. Fifteen minutes was too little to get to the platform? Surely not. We queued to buy tickets for a later train and were frustrated to find that the earliest was two hours later. How could we fill the time? Answer: spend it getting to our train.   We had spotted that there was a separate gate on the station concourse for First and Business Class and had bought First Class tickets (hardly any more expensive than Standard Class). We went through to be met by everyone who had gone through Standard, all trying to put their luggage on the one screening machine. One long snaking line later and another screening machine, we were separated into the true classes – Chinese and non-Chinese. Us foreigners had to go through immigration all over again. More forms, which, as in London, asked for everything but my inside leg measurement. No smiles. Fingerprints. Photo of my face (don’t you already have that in your system?). And through and on to more screening machines. And scowling officials everywhere (from then on, through China, right up to outside our hotel in Beijing, next to Tiananmen Square). As soon as we got on the train, we tried communicating with the world outside – “It’s taken us almost 2 hours to get from the concourse to our train!” – and inside -   “Hi Wang Jin, we’re on the train which gets in at 21.30.” Neither WhatsApp nor my three email accounts worked. We had to resort to ordinary texting. For the next six days we were in a narrow communication tunnel, unable to get any but the most banal news and occasionally finding that one could WhatsApp or send an email…for an hour or two. And the BBC, The Economist... Visit a country as a tourist and you see the sites and meet plenty of locals. But the people – hotel staff, guides, waiters, taxi drivers - are there to serve you. When a tourist myself I often wonder how true a picture I am getting of a country and its citizens. When doing business however, it’s easier to get below the surface and past the politeness. I have found this to be especially true in autocracies like Russia. If money is to be made by both sides there has to be some level of trust. Talking, however guardedly, about what is really going on is necessary to establish such trust. But, as I wrote in a WhatsApp message to fellow OC writer, Lynda Goetz, while still in Hong Kong “will anybody [in mainland China] tell me what they really think?” She wrote back: ”Highly unlikely!” I agreed with her, especially in a country which, it is estimated, has one CCTV camera for every two people and probably the most advanced facial recognition technology in the world.   Yet several people I listened to were willing to criticize their government and, in particular, its handling of the Chinese economy. One entrepreneur in his 30s, with whom we were travelling in a taxi, called “the president” “insane” . I assumed he was talking about the Orange Man in the White House. But No, he was referring to President Xi Jinping. The same man recounted the story of his grandfather who had committed suicide during the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-61 in which between 15 and 55 million people had died. The grandfather wished his family to have one less mouth to feed. It was clear who was to blame: Mao Zedong and his Great Leap Forward policy. Over dinner later I asked him and his wife if they were not fearful of being overheard in the tiny and crowded restaurant we were in. “Not here” he replied.   A young lawyer told us how he had been selected by a very senior man in a government organisation to become a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Five months after he had left the organisation, a fatal fire was blamed, unfairly in his view, on several of his ex-colleagues. All were sacked and one imprisoned. But he could not leave the CCP because that would insult his mentor. And end his legal career.   A film director, keen to make a Sherlock Holmes film in China, liked but rejected our idea of having the great private detective help the Shanghai police to solve a crime. Why? Because it would not get past the censors. It would imply that there was serious crime in China and, worse, that the Chinese authorities needed the help of a foreigner to solve these non-existent crimes. My counter-proposal of Holmes seeking the help of the Chinese police in solving a crime among the overseas Chinese in London was thought much more likely to be approved.   Our biggest business problem? Getting across to potential Chinese partners that we could not move as fast as they wanted us to. Everyone we met had a Can-Do attitude, which always meant doing the Do as fast as possible.   We went on to Japan for four days before returning to the UK via Hong Kong (most airlines these days won’t fly over Russia). A week later, on 3 April, the Vice President of the USA, J.D.Vance, said this: “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”  Perhaps, as a self-described hillbilly himself, he thought he was not being offensive in using the word peasant. If so, he was wrong. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman responded calmly but with evident contempt: “To hear words that lack knowledge and respect like those uttered by this Vice President is both surprising and kind of lamentable.”   If Vance really does believe China is a nation of peasants, he, his boss and their millions of MAGA supporters are in for a terrible shock. Their attitude and policies are making China, not America, great again.  Mongolian cuisine in Beijing   *My British Member of Parliament, Wera Hobhouse, got very different treatment when she arrived two weeks later to see her son and new grandson. She (but not her husband) was refused entry and put on a plane back to London within five hours. Her crime? Being a member of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance of China, an international group of politicians that has been critical of China’s human rights record and treatment of Hong Kong's democracy activists.

by Dr Mark Nicholson I was driving down to our rain-forest patch last week while still on a main road to Kisumu on the eastern shores of Lake Victoria, when I saw a large crowd on both sides of the road. I assumed it to be an accident but I saw no motor vehicle. I slowed, stopped the car, got out and spotted a small snake on the side of the road surrounded by an excitable crowd looking fearful and agitated. I walked straight to the snake which was still wriggling and I saw that its head had been bashed in. I immediately recognized a Rhinoceros Viper, one of the most beautiful snakes in the area. My fury, of course, was that someone had killed it unnecessarily. I tried to find the culprit but I soon realized that it was me against sixty people who were clearly thrilled to see one less snake in the world. I knelt down to stroke the beautifully patterned rough back. I picked it up gently and carried it to my car, accompanied by gasps from the crowd. “Itakuua ”, someone shouted. “ No, it won’t kill me, "   I responded in kiswahili.  “Anyway, cars and idiot drivers kill you and you don’t stop using the road.”  But I knew I was wasting my breath. Ophidiophobia is written into the human genome for evolutionary reasons: if we did not fear snakes, we would not avoid them, and the chances of a bite would increase. So the vast majority of humans are terrified of snakes, which is a shame as they are fascinating creatures.  Many snake species make great pets and are highly intelligent.  I am in the biodiversity ‘business’, which means I run projects which protect indigenous biodiversity. It is not my job to play God and determine what biodiversity is good and what is bad. Tourists pay top dollar to see lions these days but to a Maasai, the only good lion is a dead lion. When a lion kills a cow, the traditional response would be to get some mates together, grab their spears and go after the lion.  That has been banned. So the modern method is to poison the bovine carcass with carbofuran (a pesticide banned in Europe and the USA), which then kills lions, hyaenas, wild dog, jackals and vultures. Very few tourists and few urban residents around Nairobi will ever see a snake. There are at least 200 snake species in East Africa, roughly 50 of which are quite venomous. Fewer than ten percent of all East African species have killed people. The most feared is the Black Mamba but the most dangerous is the irascible Puffadder as it tends to bite first and ask questions later. More people die of Puffadder bites than any other snake. Two of its relatives are the huge Gaboon Viper, which is gentle and super idle, and the Rhinoceros Viper which is known for its extremely loud hiss. I have never heard of a person bitten by a wild Gaboon, which is a good thing as the venom is a complicated mixture of toxins. The largest snake in Africa is the Rock Python, which is not venomous but kills by constriction and has killed and eaten children.   Snakes in the wild are shy and will do anything to avoid human contact. They benefit us by controlling rodent populations. Angry ones can bite furiously but may be non-venomous. In contrast, some of the most venomous ones are both gentle and lethargic. The purpose of snake venom is twofold: firstly, to incapacitate prey and secondly, to pre-digest. Venom is a mixture of cocktails. Adder bites tend to be haemotoxic and myotoxic, meaning that muscle and blood are broken down. Mamba and cobra bites are mainly neurotoxic, meaning that confusion and paralysis occur, sometimes very quickly. A tourniquet is vital for a neurotoxin, but contraindicated after an adder bite as there is need to dilute the poison to prevent necrosis. When a child is bitten, many more vials of antivenene are needed as the venom will be much more concentrated. The danger of a bite depends on many factors such as when the snake last had a meal, the site of the bite, the aggression of the snake (an angry mamba can bite several times a second) etc. But venom can also be medicinal: the venom of several species is refined and used for a multitude of illnesses from angina and coronary failure to arthralgia, sciatica and other neuropathies. As research develops, we will find that snake venom has numerous other benefits. The problem of snakebite largely results from ignorance and lack of caution. Globally, snakebite causes around 80,000-140,000 fatalities annually but this number could be drastically reduced with education, poverty reduction and access to antivenene. People tend to be bitten at night. Torches, electricity in the home and the wearing of good footwear would greatly reduce the likelihood of a bite. Clean houses mean fewer rodents and a lower chance of snakes entering homes and becoming trapped. Temporary evacuation of a house is a more sensible strategy than trying to chase or kill a snake. Antivenene is expensive and difficult to get, requiring a cold chain and refrigeration. Small rural hospitals do not have the cash to keep antivenene, which does not remain effective in perpetuity. Over the last six months we have had visitations on our forest site from Black Mambas, Forest Cobras, and Gaboon and Rhinoceros Vipers. So my staff are now asking for antivenene but even that has challenges. Polyvalent antivenene covers those species that account for most bites (Black & Green Mambas, Cobras, Puffadders and other adders) but not Gaboon Vipers or Boomslang because of the complexity of the venom and the rarity of envenomation. Administration of antivenene is both complicated and potentially dangerous because quite a lot of people are allergic to horse serum. Access to adrenalin to prevent anaphylactic shock (administered slowly and intravenously) is required concomitantly, along with antihistamine. Medical experience is essential. A few months ago, the mother of a friend was bitten at night and rushed to hospital. She was in shock and was given antivenene. After five days she was released and given a bill of $600. Having reviewed the medical report, I am absolutely certain she was bitten by a non-venomous snake but the hospital could not take a chance. A bite from a neurotoxic snake such as a mamba will show few symptoms before the patient stops breathing. That could take 12 minutes or 12 hours. In contrast, a bad adder bite causes intense pain, huge swelling and, without treatment, necrosis. Below right: boy with a necrotic leg prior to amputation Puff Adder bite on the hand   A Great Lakes Bush Viper from the Ruwenzori forest in strike pose. Being both arboreal and nocturnal, it had every right to be grumpy when we flicked it on to the ground. We had spoiled its day and it was quite prepared to spoil ours.      Below are four Kenyan snakes. Two are completely harmless and two are deadly. Can you guess which are which? Answers at the bottom.                                                                                                      A.   [1]                                                                                                    B. C.                                                                                 D. The sum of all biodiversity makes up the web of life. Whether it is sharks, snakes, scorpions or scolopendrid centipedes, the world would be a poorer place without them even if all can harm or kill us. But then I haven’t experienced their effects first hand or lost a child or friend. My support of these creatures could well come back to bite me.   Editor's NoteA day after sending me his article, Mark sent me this photo of a Large Rhino Viper "on our plot today with two babies in tow. Staff did not harm them!! Progress!" [1]  A. Jackson’s tree snake (harmless) B. Savannah Vine Snake (gentle, very small but deadly with no antivenene) C. Burrowing Asp (small, deadly and supposedly the snake that killed Cleopatra)   D. Common Egg Eater. (harmless)

by Stoker   ….until after the holidays.  Well, let’s face it.  The weather has been just glorious – in the UK anyway, but also on the ski slopes and in the Med, apparently. Too silly to go manning the barricades and chucking petrol cocktails just now; sit in the sun and drink beer for another week or two.    But there seems to be a general growing consensus that trouble is coming. TROUBLE we should perhaps say.  In Britain you may scoff?  Oh yes indeedy.  But you don’t have revolutions in the jolly old UK, you say; you have cups of tea and cream scones.  Now, France, you say; that’s different; revolutions are etched into the political calendar.  From 1789 onwards there was one every twenty years or so, monarchs were chucked out, invited back, replaced with Emperors, then, when all the royals went off the job as entailing too much palace moving and badly paid, the French moved onto Republics. They are now on the Fifth. Need we say more?   Whilst in Britain nothing much has changed; the Windsors are still there, there are still hereditaries in the House of Lords, silly medals and decorations abound.  It is true the seat of government burnt down and a new one had to be built, but that was a result of a bonfire, not a riot. Any MP transmitted from 1832 to 2025 would recognise all the systems and titles and functions.  Wouldn’t he?  Well yes and no; the labels may be the same but the functions are generally different. Though Lord     Sumption recently pointed out that in the case of the Supreme Court the title may have changed but it does exactly what the Law Lords used to do in the House of Lords.  Up to a point mi’ lord, the blighters have given up their wigs.   Actually, Britain is very good at quiet revolutions; probably as a result of shyness and good manners. There was a bit of serious argy-bargy in 1642 to 1647, and there was a minor attempt by the Norfolk squire Robert Kett to set something off in 1549. This is known as the Commotion, which probably tells you how serious it turned out to be – i.e. not at all.  In 1660 there was a counter-revolution when the Cromwellian Parliamentarians were shoved out in favour of the Stuarts again, but the incoming monarch had more sense than to change anything that was working.  He brought back Christmas – a popular move - and generally was grumpy with the House of Commons, but not nearly as grumpy as Oliver Cromwell had been.  In 1689 out went the Stuarts to be replaced quietly and politely by the House of Orange, and it was clear that the people were taking charge.   In 1819 the urge for more democracy and more equitable spreading of wealth almost got out of hand in Manchester (the Peterloo Massacre) but everybody was so upset by the violence that they agreed, even the Duke of Wellington, that something must be done and a series of reform acts, and taxation and social reforms accomplished what in much of Europe took the 1848 uprisings to bring forth, and then not terribly successfully. After World War One, again Europeans took to fighting in the streets and assassination, but in Britain change went on vigorously under the surface but without frightening the horses. It is true the King felt he had to go in 1936 but that was more for loving and talking too wildly than violent change.   The Brits do tend to a natural reserve and politeness. Or did. Social media, perhaps, has eroded that. The inhabitants of this United Kingdom now say very rude things indeed to each other digitally; and alas increasingly face to face.  Including our Parliamentarians, traditionally pretty much always restrained and polite, but now getting rather direct and vulgar.  And there is a lot of shouting in the streets, and obstructing of citizens going about their lawful occasions, something in which the government, police, and courts also, regrettably, have begun to involve themselves.    What is going on?  Tim Stanley is a member of an ancient English political family, whose main fame has been a tendency to change sides, beginning at the Battle of Bosworth Field in 1485.  Tim was a Labour candidate and is now a Tory; was a Baptist, then an Anglican, now a Catholic; and was a teenager radical scribbler but now a journalist on the Daily Telegraph, or Daily Torygraph, if you prefer.  He is rapidly becoming a well-regarded commentator well connected with many politicians which give him useful insights into what used to be called “the condition of the people.”   He has observed this failure of manners, the decline of polite discourse, and it worries him. He sees increasing anger, a mulishness among what used to be tolerant citizens, a cynicism about and a resentment of those both elected to govern and those employed to execute (instructions, not monarchs).  He cites a feeling, very widely spread, that many civil servants, particularly dealing with town and country planning issues, are routinely bribed.  This is because of the way in which planning decisions are, or seem to be, reached in both strategic and minor matters. “Brown envelopes”  (i.e. cash bribes) is the routine shoulder-shrugging remark about many planning decisions.  In fact all the evidence is that Britain is remarkably free of bribery in public life (a series of scandals in the 1970’s saw a real clean-up), but it is true to say that much governance is poorly decided and executed, and rarely explained to those it affects; often because civil servants are over-worked, under- trained, and attempting to do things which are not possible (build 1.5 million houses in 5 years; achieve net zero by 2030, for instance).   The issue, says young Stanley and an increasing number of commentators, is not what is actually happening, but what the people think is happening.  They feel disregarded and overlooked; the Brexit Leave campaign picked up that feeling brilliantly with Take Back Control .  The voters feel that they have no control and that those who are nominally their representatives and the supposed implementers of their wishes ignore them.  Some of this is true; a well-run society often best works by ignoring what the members think they want and giving them what they truly want, if only they had thought of it.   But at the moment our political masters seem to overlook that they should at least look and behave as though they were listening to us.  Even Mr Trump in another place seems to be forgetting this, and he is a master of selling the deal.  Sir Keir seems to be a little bit aware, but will he pay true heed to improving public services and cutting taxation, all at the same time?  It may be impossible, but it will have to be done.  Too much change; too little change. Too fast, too slow. And our leaders need to understand public concern over violence, immigration, lack of punishment , over punishment, threats to free speech, lack of proper jobs, potholes, overcrowded roads, late running trains, lack of airport facilities, building huge new schemes at terrible expense, mad power prices [that’s enough – Editor].      Gil Scott-Heron advised in 1971 that the revolution will not be televised.  But in 2025 it assuredly will be, if it starts.  If Sir Keir doesn’t get a grip on the disaffection growing around the country, we could be in for a moderate, polite British revolution.  But will it stay that way?

by Jozef Pawlukiewicz Famous de-Nazifier Vladimir Putin’s "Special Military Operation" in Ukraine has become the hot-bed for claims of ecological terrorism. Once a sprawling array of Europe’s most fertile farmland, Ukraine now sits in the crossroads of the future: devastating war and environmental disaster. Putin’s demolition derby of an entire sovereign nation knows no bounds, aside from the bounds of winning, that is. The missiles and drones don’t discriminate; this war of aggression has devastated both innocent human lives and the natural infrastructure. Warfare isn’t always just soldiers shooting at one another; it has background consequences. Like a rather brutal game of football, training, new complexes, and testing can all lead to a number of issues. Thank goodness Manchester United don’t employ an armed militia or else Stretford would quickly look like Serbia after attempting a genocide. Construction of new military bases poses a danger to the local wildlife of the area being built on, and with the war not giving up anytime soon, the presence of these bases in Ukraine will continue to eat into the soil. Soil, of course, is not the only place where harmful materials can dramatically change a nation’s landscape. The Black Sea, a strategic location for whichever peace-seeking nation controls it, has fallen prey to the Russian coastal peace-brigade. The use of sonar by Russian submarines had killed around 50,000 dolphins in just the first 3 months of the war, according to estimates by Dr. Rusev, an ecologist clearly blind to the fact that these dolphins probably just fell out of their Moscow apartment windows. These dolphins sometimes lose their echolocation, and like an elderly genocidal maniac’s army, they wash up on Ukrainian soil, half of them dead. Some dolphins also die due to intentional dumping of waste barrels by the Russians which contain pathological diseases (the barrels, not the Russians). Fire and forest-loss have gone hand in hand with the decline of Ukraine’s biodiversity. 65.8% of forest-loss has been due to warfare in the 2022-2023 period. When patches in forests appear, communication between animals begins to fade away and with isolation brings a slow decline, like a certain world superpower whose name sounds like Prussia. With less diversity in the supply chains in Ukraine, food insecurity becomes a dire threat. Almost 20% of farmland has been lost from Europe’s largest agricultural producer. Ukrainians make 11 billion dollars a year less than usual due to the number of mines in the once lush countryside. Food insecurity drives discontent within a population: as the Snickers' tag line says, You’re Not You When You're Hungry . The lack of budget to an already cash-strapped country makes investments in public health not an easy or popular thing. With everyone having to move out (tanks don’t make for kind neighbours), finding new and accessible care once moved proves to be a difficult task. Socially, Nature is important to Ukraine and Ukrainians. Without it they face less and less hope as the war continues, and as this is a war on all fronts, the Russians are guilty of crimes against the environment as much as those against humanity. Having one of the largest militaries of all time breathing down your neck means the Green movement in Ukraine has had to be put on hold. Despite an environmental toll of over $60 billion, the war has been the only thing to dominate headlines. Just 1.4% of the news has been about climate concerns, perhaps something else was going on? 37% of the country’s money goes on defence, more than any other. Science goes on the back foot, and even with the largest threat ever facing mankind - climate change, not Putin - it would surely seem crucial, even in such trying times, to try and protect the climate. While soldiers on the frontline fight against Russians, others remain on the frontline of this fight for Nature. Oleksiy Vasyliuk, a Ukrainian biologist, says it is a “priority” for the country to continue the fight for biodiversity. Fellow conservationist Mikhail Rusin claims that his operations rely on the donations of random people, that government money is non-existent. Ukrainian Nature is in the hands of a dedicated few, those willing to defy everything around them - even if they are just clipboards and computers against a barbarian war-machine.   Ecocide is defined as a deliberate act of human activity to destroy the environment. A term Mr Putin should know all too well. Ecocide can be connected to genocide, as it compromises the potential for an ethnic or national group to exist, especially when a country is reliant on agriculture. Purposeful shelling by Russian artillery and the extensive mine-laying operations have decimated the ability for everyday Ukrainians to rely on their own land for their own food and livelihoods. Russian crimes against Nature in Ukraine may be pushed aside until the catalogue of those against humanity are cleared, however their significance will not go unnoticed. It does seem odd, however, that someone who is trying to rid Ukraine of its seemingly evil leaders to liberate the country, is plunging them into ecological disaster and getting away with it. Being the country that feeds most of Europe, what happens to Ukraine has consequences for everyone. Hopefully the moral West (see Iraq, Syria, India, most of Africa et al) can seek criminal charges at the International Court of Justice, but until then the Ukrainians must reap what the Russians have sown, and nothing tastes better than total environmental failure. Jozef Pawlukiewicz is a 19-year old student from Scotland with a Scottish mother and a Polish father. His parents met while working in Russia, when their only common language was Russian.

by Lynda Goetz   On the Milford Track, South Island The planning started almost a year ago. We were to visit my daughter who has been working in New Zealand for the last three and a half years. However, this was not to be a simple visit to their base in Auckland with day excursions to beaches or museums. By the time of our visit, she and her partner would not have a base. Their landlord was selling their house and from December 2024 they would be living in a van until their return to the UK in May this year. We were to spend a month doing a road trip with them from the top of North Island to the bottom of South Island.   Road trips in my childhood and youth tended to be rather relaxed affairs. You set off, drove, paused to admire scenery, visit a historical site or have a picnic and then stopped at the end of the day when you found a village, town or hotel you liked the look of. Sometimes, if you stopped too late or chose somewhere that was particularly popular, you might find that the hotel (or possibly campsite) of your choice was booked up, but generally the system worked well. No-one had mobile phones and pre-booking, by phone or even letter, was really only done for places where you wanted to stay for a week or more, or at least several days. Now, with our minicomputers in our pockets, you need generally to choose in advance and book online.  This can require military-style planning. I like to think I have many strengths, but I do know that ‘admin’ is not really one of them. Fortunately my daughter proved that she has not inherited this weakness. She knew the things she wanted to see and do and also those she had already done and enjoyed, which she thought we would also like doing. On that basis she became our brilliant travel agent.   New Zealand, which consists of some 700 islands and covers 268,680 km2 has a population of just under five and a half million people. The UK, by contrast covers 244,376 km2 and has a population of nearly 70 million. Average population density in New Zealand is just 20 inhabitants per square kilometre, amongst the lowest in the world. True, the majority of them actually live in urban areas, with one third of the total population living in the Auckland region. Auckland traffic can apparently be horrendous. Elsewhere, driving is sheer joy, (although rather sadly for petrolheads or indeed simply those who enjoy driving,  it is almost impossible to buy or hire a manual vehicle). In South Island, inhabited by only a quarter of the total population, you can almost see more dead possums on the road (of which more later), than cars.   One of our first decisions was whether we too would succumb to the lure of the ‘self-contained’ camper van. New Zealand does rather try to sell the idea that this is an ideal way to view the country.  ‘Freedom campsites’,  if you have a self-contained vehicle, do sound like a tempting option.  Unfortunately, there are, relatively, so many people with vans trying to get into these, that it is almost worse than trying to find a berth for your  hired yacht in a Greek island marina after 3pm  (when all the catamarans taking up two spaces apiece all arrived at lunchtime – before the afternoon breezes allowing for some actual sailing had even started). The reality is that you will end up in a paying site with misleading pricing (paying additional costs for extra passengers or hook ups you don’t need). Vans are also very expensive to buy or hire. We concluded that a better option was to use either the many traditional motels or the Airbnbs; a decision we ended up being very happy with. As our hire car we chose the roomy Nissan X-trail.   My daughter’s itinerary had us heading north from Auckland airport up to the Bay of Islands to spend three days on a sailing boat, one used for both tourist trips and scientific research  and captained by a charming naturalised German, Johann, known as John, and his Norwegian mate, Gustav. With the other guests we were thirteen on board. Pahia, from where we set out and to which we returned, was, when we turned up, an unexpected hive of activity. We had arrived in the run up to the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi  on 6th February 1840. This rather controversial treaty set out the terms of agreement between the Maori tribes, who had arrived in New Zealand from Polynesia from the late 13th century onwards, and the British Crown. Several Maori war canoes, known as waka taua , or simply waka , which I had previously only seen in the Auckland museum, were anchored close to the beach. The area of Pahia in which we were staying was full of visiting Maori, in party mood. Many were participating in the activities across the river in the Waitangi Treaty grounds, parts of which were closed due to ceremonies for attending politicians and other notables. After a visit to the museum, we set sail for a few days of peaceful anchorages, swimming, kayaking snorkelling, blue skies, sandy beaches and stunning sunsets. Bay of Islands Sunset From Pahia, we headed down the east coast southwards, by-passing Auckland and Rotorua, famous for its geothermal activity and Maori cultural tourism. We had all been to this ‘must see’ of New Zealand in previous visits. As die-hard Lord of the Rings fans, we did have to include a trip to ‘Hobbiton’ as part of our journey. My daughter and her partner had already been twice, so did not join us, instead going to climb one of the volcanoes in the area. For fans of the Tolkien books and the films made of them by director Peter Jackson, this is a film set well-worth the visit. Pre-booking is advised. Nearby, the Waitomo glow-worm caves are another tourist stop which most people will make. Here you can choose between a number of offerings, from a sedate walk through some impressive, beautifully-lit caves with stalagmites and stalactites followed by a boat trip on an underground river in silence and darkness lit only by the twinkling of the glow worms on the cavern roof and reflected in the blackness below; to  an “exhilarating underground adventure that involves climbing, black water tubing, floating, and leaping over cascading underground waterfalls” . Take your choice!   After a delightful two-night stop, with more impressive sunsets, and enchanting daytime garden visits, with some friends in Whanganui (pronounced as you would expect, whereas every other place in New Zealand starting with ‘Wh’ is apparently pronounced as ‘F’), we then made tracks for Wellington, where we did not stop, but headed straight for the ferry across to South Island. The geology and geography of New Zealand is fascinating, and the South Island has some very dramatic scenery. In general, I think it is the scenery of the country as a whole which creates the biggest impression.  In the UK we have urban landscapes, which contain some historical and architectural gems, and we have rural landscapes and countryside. Countryside is small scale. New Zealand is not a huge country, but its landscapes tend not to be small scale. There are vistas, landscapes and scenery. The architecture, such as it is, is modern and in the urban areas boast a lot of glass and steel. The rural areas are low rise, with bungalows, generally on quite small ‘sections’ (or plots as we would call them), the predominant form of housing. Kayaking in Abel Tasman N.P.  Once on South Island, we headed for Abel Tasman National Park. Named after the early Dutch explorer, this is a stunningly beautiful area where hiking and sea kayaking can be undertaken either individually or as combined activities. There is a well-established industry of guides and water taxis, which enable you to walk parts of the renowned Abel Tasman Coastal Track (one of New Zealand’s ‘Great Walks’), be picked up by water taxi or kayak another section. The system devised for launching the water taxis from tractors is of itself an experience. The part of the track which we walked is well maintained and the views through trees and ferns of the turquoise waters tantalising and tempting for those unable to resist attempts at artistic photography.   One of the striking things about New Zealand is the complete lack of indigenous land mammals. Yes, there are huge herds of splendid-looking cattle - black, brown, Jersey-coloured, Friesian. There are vast numbers of sheep. People keep horses and dogs. Dogs however, must mostly be kept on a lead and are banned from all the national parks because of the large numbers of ground-dwelling birds, from the endangered and nocturnal kiwis (which even most New Zealanders never see outside a bird sanctuary) to the ubiquitous weka , or Maori chicken  which will boldly investigate your rucksack or picnic (see left). Even the New Zealand ‘robin’ spends a lot of time on the ground. All of the feral mammals which have intentionally or accidentally been introduced over the years are regarded as pests. Wherever you go in any of the national parks you will see the box traps intended to catch rats, rabbits and possums. Possums in Australia are protected.  In New Zealand they are pests. Like much of New Zealand’s wildlife, they do seem to have something of a death wish. Dead weka and possums are a frequent sight on the roads. One day, driving down the West Coast Highway, we counted 76 dead on the road. Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers are both evidence of the ice-sculpted landscape of the Southern Alps. The movements of ice over the last 250,000 years have also left depressions creating some of New Zealand’s most scenic lakes, such as Te Anau. After overnight stops and walks to admire the glaciers from a distance (we resisted the blandishments to take scenic helicopter rides as our skiing experiences meant that we felt this was not a necessary expense), we made our way to Lake Te Anau, where the last few days of our holiday was to be spent walking the Milford Track, another of the Great Walks. I must confess here that although I do a lot of dog-walking, I am not a seasoned hiker. Because of this and as a concession to my age, my daughter, who is a hiker, had arranged to do what a friend called the “wine and cheese” version of the walk.  By this, she meant that instead of staying in huts and carrying our own bedding and dried food for the three-day hike, we would be staying in lodges with hot showers and three-course meals. Way to go! The purists, of course, disapprove, but honestly what a civilised way to do such a stunning walk. Beautiful, verdant, fern and moss-filled forests, waterfalls, rushing rivers, yet more waterfalls and swimming holes. Even walking with water-filled boots across newly-appeared rivers was not the trial I had imagined it might be. A brilliant finale to a wonderful active holiday, which had included so much, from sailing to cycling, caving to climbing (well, not in my case), swimming, snorkelling and could probably have encompassed snowshoeing. Of course, a month is not long enough to see everything this wonderful country has to offer. Much had to be missed out. Next time, inter alia, I would like to see the mammals which do live in this part of the world - the whales, dolphins and porpoises.

by Dr. Mark Nicholson 40m planks?…out with the chainsaw I know we all live in an increasingly international world but the last ten days have been unusually so for the tree-planter. On my 75th birthday, I had calls from two of my daughters in Portugal and Amsterdam. After a dinner on a Rift valley farm owned by a Scottish Australian with six Dutch flower importers, my son hopped on a plane (or two) to Los Angeles while I joined a bridge match playing variously with an Ethiopian (my wife), a Greek, a Peruvian and a Norwegian.  The next day I had a long meeting with lichenologists from the University of Helsinki, followed by a meeting on Saturday with donors from Zurich. Then an Ismaili friend asked me over to help a friend of his in Nairobi the following day, four days ago. That is when it became interesting.   My friend’s friend lives in a palatial house in Muthaiga, the most expensive part of Nairobi.  He turned out to be an 89-year old Muslim Q.C.* who was called to the Bar in Lincoln’s Inn in the 1950s. He is in the process of suing Kenya’s National Land Commission and I was in the unusual position of being served a ‘brief’ by a Q.C. In this part of the world, he would historically have been described as an ‘Asian’, an absurd term when that could mean anyone from Istanbul to Kamchatka.  The term used to mean someone whose ethnic origins were from the Indian sub-continent. Kenya today has a very large and very prosperous community of people of ‘Indian sub-continent descent’, many of them fifth generation Kenyans who know little about India.  And nor would one ever say “ But where do you really come from?”  So one can’t say Indian because much of the Punjab is now Pakistan. Nor can one say Punjabi because religious affiliation is more important than place of origin: Kenyan Punjabi Muslims have little to do socially with Kenyan Punjabi Sikhs, and even less to do with Kenyan Punjabi Hindus. The Q.C., like my Ismaili friend, is a non-practising Muslim, which I could tell as we were drinking in the daytime during Ramadan. But he told me that his father was a devout Muslim who had done hajj  over thirty times and had bought land in Mecca.   Three fascinating meetings later and I have learned more about a part of East African history than I have gleaned in over half a century [1] . My new friend told me his story. His grandfather, a wealthy merchant, arrived from the Punjab in the first decade of the 20th century before the completion of the Lunatic Express [2] . The British Governor of the Punjab encouraged artisans, accountants and businessmen to try their luck in East Africa, promising them their fares and good salaries. This was the second wave of Indians, the first being largely Sikhs and Hindus brought in for the construction of the railway. It was a risky trip. After sailing on leaking dhows across the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean, many of the newcomers had to venture on foot up to Nairobi running the gauntlet of attack by lion, elephant and rhino. Once in Nairobi, they were sent to the areas designated for Indian settlement. The grandfather soon had 300 ox wagons travelling up and down from Mombasa 500km to the south-east. They would bring goods from India up to Nairobi and then they started trading in dried papain (from papayas) for the German market, hides and skins for India and dried chillies for the Japanese market. Hard work and acumen led to the family buying plots of land including 50 acres just outside what was then Nairobi (but is now more or less in the centre of the city) and then sending their two grandsons to Harvard and London to become lawyers and barristers. The 50 acres is undeveloped to this day but is inhabited by some squatters.   Across the river from the 50 acres was Muthaiga, which was then reserved for Europeans. But even the Indian areas were segregated. Goans, having Portuguese blood were regarded as “racially superior”  (the phrase used by my new friend), so they could live in ‘mixed areas’ along with Jews, and whites ‘from lower strata’. The irony of course is that most private houses in Muthaiga are largely now owned by these wealthy people (along with rich politicians) who have made far more money than any of the Europeans who built the houses originally.     So how much is this fig tree worth? We eventually got down to the problem. A long line of indigenous trees had been cut down on his land to make a new link road. The link road has been abandoned and he has not been compensated for the trees. At the other end of the property, a super-highway has been built going north to Thika. There he lost 1.5 acres of land by compulsory purchase but an unknown number of straight, exotic trees of unknown size from Australia called Grevillea were also cut down whose value is from the timber. My job is to give a figure for compensation based on old aerial photographs of 20 years ago. In addition, the Chinese road builders have dumped “thousands”  of truckloads of black cotton soil and rubble onto his land which has reduced the value of the land which was high quality, red, coffee-growing soil. I did inform him that the land is bound to end up covered in high-rise buildings and that no one is going to be interested in the potential agricultural value of the land.   So what figure does one give to a crooked indigenous tree with little value for timber. All the big and high-quality trees (African Olives, Pencil Cedars and Yellow-wood Podocarpus) on the plot were actually sold by his grandfather in 1929 and he showed me the sale receipt.   Oscar Wilde described a cynic as one who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing. When it comes to trees that might be apt. For most people a tree’s value normally comes from the sale of the timber. To put a value on a living tree is both subjective and more difficult: it may have amenity, aesthetic and/ or biodiversity value but how do you quantify it?  I am told that in the U.K. a fine mature tree can add thousands of pounds onto the value of a property (but presumably not if it is a Cupressus leylandii , otherwise known as Lawyer’s Delight  owing to the number of suits fought over that fast-growing and sun-blocking tree of suburban England). Omni calculator gives a crude value for a tree based on the diameter of the trunk and the height of the tree but that is the timber value alone. A tree of 20m with a diameter of 130 cm gives a figure of around $3500 but that says nothing about wood quality or other attributes as a living organism. I did point out that the total figure I would come up with would be about 0.001% of the value of the land so why not sell the land and enjoy a peaceful retirement? But no . “I am suing on principle”,  he tells me. “The government has ruined my land and I want compensation”.   My personal opinion is that he has not a snowball’s chance in hell of squeezing money out of the Kenya Government. But never mind. He has asked me back for more stories and I am only too delighted to spend more time listening to this erudite and charming man telling me about his family history. Mitragyna rubrostipulata , a rare tree I planted ten years ago. What is it worth?   *Editor’s note: Queen’s Counsel. If he was still practising as a barrister in the UK today, he would be called a King’s Counsel; problematic for Kenyans who consider K.C. to stand for the derogatory label, Kenya Cowboy.   [1]  He produced from his library a beautifully written coffee table book called ‘ Settling in a strange land. Stories of Punjabi Muslims Pioneers in Kenya.’  by Cynthia Salvadori. [2]  See my 2021 article - https://www.only-connect.co.uk/post/the-second-best-exotic-lunatic-line

by Richard Pooley   “Never assume, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME”.  So said Felix Unger, a character in the US TV series The Odd Couple  in 1973. The joke is old, probably much older than the earliest record of it in a New Mexico newspaper advertisement in 1957.  I used it in a section of a book on negotiation entitled “Build Rapport by Asking Questions and Testing Assumptions.” I wanted to introduce a bit of humour even though the advice - never assume - is wrong. In fact, we have to make assumptions all the time. A Brit confidently steps out onto a zebra crossing in the UK as a car is approaching because they assume the car will stop. It’s not only the law, it’s a custom as strong as never jumping a queue. A Brit however would be most unwise to assume that the same is true in France even though it is also the law there. A key to success when negotiating is to test your assumptions about those you are negotiating with. Not once but throughout the negotiation. Ask them probing questions; ask yourself if their answers invalidate or reinforce your assumptions; listen to their questions to assess what their assumptions are about you. As in business, so in life. I have heard and read several times in the last month the quote wrongly attributed by the maverick British politician George Galloway in 2001 to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin: “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” Decades have certainly been happening ever since Donald Trump issued his first executive order seven weeks ago. Assumptions which have been unquestioned and untested since the end of the Second World War (and sometimes earlier)  have been unmade, overturned, blown apart. What constitutes The West ? It was always a geographical absurdity, requiring the observer to be stationed somewhere in central Europe, looking west, taking in North America and, across the Pacific, Australia and New Zealand, but ignoring the many countries of Central and South America, yet somehow including Israel to the south-east. It was, we Westerners believed, a collection of peoples with widely different traditions, histories and geographies but similar values. Its institutional embodiment was the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation  (NATO), even though not all members of The West  are also members of NATO, and Turkey, with NATO’s second largest armed force, has never been in The West.   Trump and his millions of MAGA fans do not have similar values to most other Westerners.  Might is right. The weak must kowtow to the strong. Dictators are to be admired. Facts are alternative. The only speech which is free is that which agrees with me. For decades Europeans like me have assumed that only a small minority of US Americans are isolationist and that the nativism* which has been present in the USA since before the country’s creation did not stop its government from building and nurturing alliances with other countries. Already I am hearing commentators say that Trump is heading for disaster…for himself and his country. It can’t last, they say. The attention he craves and which he undoubtedly gets requires him to issue ever-more extreme and destabilising posts. He can’t keep doing this for the next two hundred and one weeks. Maybe. But even if he and his gang crash and burn, even if his MAGA fans turn on him or, more likely, pretend they never voted for him, even if the Democrats return to power, The West  as I have always known it, is no more. I can no longer assume that if my country is attacked, all NATO countries, the USA especially, will come to our defence, as required under NATO’s Article 5. The UK attacked? Many will think that an impossibility. But what if the attack took the form of cutting the undersea cables connecting us to the rest of the world? Of infecting the banks’ systems to make them unusable? Impossible? I think not. I remember during the UK’s Brexit debate in 2016 several friends on the Leave side arguing that it was NATO, not the European Union, which had ensured peace in Europe since 1945. So, it was safe to leave the EU. I agreed with the first point but not the second. Could they be sure that the USA would continue to fund NATO to the extent it had done for decades? Would US politicians, no longer men who had fought in World War Two, really be ready to go to war to stop a far-away country of which they knew little being invaded? President Obama had already signalled that the USA was focusing more on east Asia than Europe. But my friends continued to assume that the Europeans, including we Brits, could safely outsource our defence to the USA. Who are our enemies now? Who will the next James Bond be spying on and fighting in his next iteration? Can we assume he will be British? Can we assume, under new owner and new Trump fan, Jeff Bezos, that Russia will be Bond’s enemy. Surely not. Will it be China? Probably. Or could it be Canada? Or Denmark? Pity the poor scriptwriter. Should Europeans and Canadians despair? No. I must admit that what Trump and his lackey, Vance, have done to the Ukrainians makes my stomach churn. But even they should not give up hope. Whatever humiliating and unfair deal with Russia Trump forces them to accept, they surely will still keep most of their country out of Putin’s blood-soaked hands. Doom-mongers predict that Putin will use any ceasefire to build up his armed forces to a point where he will try to gobble up more of Ukraine. But that will take time. Time during which Ukraine, now with the second-largest army in Europe (after Russia), can build up its defences with help from its true allies in NATO. I am confident in my assumption that those allies include the likes of Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries. But can we assume that those not on the borders of Russia will be prepared to switch expenditure from building hospitals to manufacturing missile systems, to switch from Isaiah to Joel and beat their ploughshares into swords? There are encouraging signs from Germany, France, and the UK that we can make that assumption for now. But our political leaders will have to test that assumption continually by making the case for Europe-wide rearmament. Who will be the Churchill of our times? I assume it won't be a Brit again. Maybe it will be a Pole or, how delicious, a German?     *Nativism in the USA does not have the meaning it does elsewhere – favouring original inhabitants over immigrants. “ Native ” once referred to the early immigrants from England, Scotland and Wales versus the later immigrants from the Low Countries, France, Germany, Scandinavia, and, later still, Ireland, Italy and central and eastern Europe. As each wave of people assimilated, the number of “natives” grew. The true native inhabitants of the country, the indigenous “Indians” or “Native Americans” , were never the natives of nativism. What’s the betting that Trump’s MAGA troops will soon demand that they be called Red Indians once more? After all, a group called the Native American Guardian’s Association petitioned in 2023 for the NFL team the Washington Commanders to change their name back to the Washington Redskins. It seems the natives have gone native.

by Stoker   No, not that slightly sleazy firm of solicitors in Penge that your neighbour is using in his boundary dispute.  Not lawyers in Penge, of course; but maybe three slightly dubious American politicians?  Let us begin with Mr Newsom.  He, like Mr Carney, the rapidly rising star next door in Canada, is a Governor, but not (ex) of the Bank of England, but of California, a much richer and perhaps happier place. He is the perfect film star governor of the film star state; good looking, fit, rich, hip, leftie, wokeish.  He is from an old San Francisco family – fourth generation, that’s old money in SF, very well connected in the way that modern Democrats seem to be – father a lawyer and judge, relative by marriage of Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House of Representatives and leader of the House Democrats.  He is close to the Getty family, a key client of his father, who financially started him, highly successfully, in business (a winery, what else).   He seems to have always been politically ambitious and rose rapidly. He is a hard worker, even his opponents admit, and he became Mayor of San Francisco in 2004, then lieutenant governor of California in 2011, and finally swept by a landslide to the California Governorship in 2019. He is a survivor, some would say a slider, having moved from being a right-wing Democrat to centrist positions and then to at least making noises that sounded like left-wingism.  His first wife left him and worked for the Trump 2016 presidential campaign, even getting engaged to Donald Trump Jr at one stage, but he has slid past that embarrassment.  Governor Newsom survived a recall campaign in 2021, principally over his perhaps over-zealous covid19 measures, and was re-elected by a smaller landslide in 2023.  He declined to step into Joe Biden’s shoes when Joe left the Presidential race last year; instead, he strongly supported fellow Californian Kamala Harris. (Remember her?  Don’t worry, hardly anybody does.) Why is he intruding into an article about Dear Old Donald and Vile Young Vance?  Because he is clever, flexible, and ambitious, and is likely to be a top-runner for the Democrat presidential nomination in 2028.  The way things are going, he might even end up in the White House, though much water must flow down the Potomac before that is a possibility.  Gavin has been tacking rightwards recently, being tough on state spending (the Californian economy is indeed a shambles), tough on crime, and has just announced that he is against (former male) trans athletes competing against women. “Not fair” he said, taking the populist position.  It may not sound much, but when politicians start reflecting populist positions you know they are in campaigning mode.  We are watching you now, Governor Newsom. And so to the bad boys.  International politics only, maybe domestic next time.  There are lot of theories about what Mr Trump and his sidekick are up to in eastern Europe.  Diplomacy has sure never before sounded like this.  Let’s dismiss the mad theory, that Trump is being paid by Mr Putin.  There is also an unlikely theory, though perhaps it isn’t, that Donald is sickened at the terrible butchery of this old-fashioned war and wants to stop it.  Leaders of nations at war, or proximate thereto, do get appalled by the blood and the slaughter of young people on the battlefield.  It was a big factor in the British appeasement of Hitler in the 1930’s.  Baldwin and Chamberlain, successive prime ministers, hated the thought of a repeat of World War One, and it probably distorted Chamberlain’s judgment in his handling of the events of 1938 and 1939.  Do not rule out that The Donald may genuinely want to end this stalemate war (and get the credit of course). But there is another factor in Trump that is often overlooked.  He is not a politician.  He does not have a politician’s instincts.  He does not behave like a politician.  He makes jokes without thinking, he speaks, tweets, and insults without research or reflection.  If necessary, he will just deny, unsay, or roll back obvious mistruths or misstatements.  He is your archetypal bar-room yob – if a teetotaller can be so described.  What he is, is a businessman, through and through.  The Art of the Deal is his credo, as well as the title of his best-seller.  The Trump approach to business and in particular the property business, which is probably the most fraught and dangerous business there is, winning is what matters.  The alternative is losing, and that can mean losing everything, so the stakes are high and tactics deadly.  So to in politics. What is the deal? Ukraine is a deal, a property deal at that, two deals in fact.  One is the Putin/Zelensky deal, the Russia/Ukraine non-deal.  War is very destructive of property capital.  It may turn out to be worth it to the winner, though the damage in this particular conflict is so appalling, both in terms of life and infrastructure, that it is impossible now to see how there could be a victor of any type.  But if you are fighting for your country, then merely to drive the aggressor out is victory; hence Mr Zelensky will fight to the last missile.  It is hard to know what Putin thinks would be victory; yes, there is a concept of a greater Russia which Putin and perhaps some of his acolytes – especially those raised in the pre 1990 USSR - hold dear.  Perhaps to Putin to not win is to lose; to lose his job maybe, his wealth, his life. But there is another deal.  Mr Trump has drawn our attention to this.  If you want Mr Trump to be your ally you must show him the deal. He does not send his great battalions to fight alongside yours for nothing.  To start with you must be polite, you should dress respectfully, you should say thank you, praise your host.  This we all know now.  But also there must be a real deal.  In the Ukraine there is great wealth under the ground. To Trump and Vance cheap resources would be very useful indeed in helping rebuild the American economy – which has been wrecked, like almost every western democratic economy, by government and consumer over-spending, under-investing, and mad generosity and sheer idleness (of thinking as well as the physical variant).  Do these Ukrainian resources matter to Mr Putin? Not maybe so much, though more wealth is always handy.  Russia has much of the same resources of her own; the Russian problem is digging them up and making them into things.  Trump has a clever point; if American business has a very valuable investment in Ukraine, it will have a real interest in defending it in the future.  But for that interest to arise, there must first be peace, order, repair, investment.  That is indeed strategic thinking.  And here’s a bit more.  To the Trump administration the real threat to a free West is not Russia, but China.  China’s current politicians are long-term strategic thinkers par excellence.  A vast country with few natural resources is making itself the new workshop of the world.  It has made many poor countries in Africa and the Far East into utterly dependent states, feeding the forges of Sino-captalism.  In Europe those policies are advancing with increasing rapidity; especially in the UK.  China dominates our consumer economy already; it has done all this with brains and not with boots or bullets.  The West is being undermined, copied, plagiarised, made dependent, and Donald believes that is where the long-term threat comes from; and part of the answer is to rapidly rebuild economic independence.  Mr Vance may be exceptionally straight-spoken, downright rude on occasions, but he is bright, original, and knows that those clouds forming in the east are the great problem of his generation.  Will his approach convince the US’s western allies, or push them away?  In 2028 that may be what Vance and Newsom fight the election on; tomorrow’s battle, tomorrow’s men.

by Richard Pooley Photo: Nathan Dumlao, Unsplash “Unnecessary and stupid”, said Poland’s Donald Tusk of the other Donald T’s initial imposition of tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China and soon anybody else who sells more to the USA than it buys. I agree. But amidst the plethora of Trump’s executive orders and lunatic proposals, and enforcer Musk’s rants and illegal firing of government officials, one necessary and smart decision has been taken: to remove D.E.I. from the US body politic and corporate. “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion initiatives   are essential to fostering a positive work culture. Through exposure to diverse perspectives, you can improve employee morale, promote business ethics, and drive creative problem-solving and innovation.” So wrote Harvard B.S. on 3 October 2023. I can’t be the first who has often wondered whether B.S. stands for something less polite than Business School. Harvard has been peddling this nonsense for decades and making good money from doing so. Five years ago I wrote two articles entitled “I am prejudiced. So are you.” In them I argued that Diversity training (or Unconscious Bias training as it is often called) is not just worthless; it is counter-productive. Central to such training, especially in the USA, is Harvard University’s Race Implicit-Association Test. Don’t worry; you don’t need to understand what ‘Implicit-Association’ means. Focus on the word ‘Race’. It’s a test designed to show you if you are racist or not. I took the test three times over nine days. The process was the same each time but the games I was asked to play changed. Harvard insist they are measuring the same thing however many times you repeat the test. My third test result stated: “Your data suggests a strong automatic preference for White People compared to Black People. Well, I’m White; so maybe this is true. Except the first time I did the test, I was told “Your data suggests a moderate preference for Black People compared to White People. Well, maybe my time in ex-colonial Africa made me a wee bit ashamed of my pinko-white skin. And the second test? I was deemed “neutral”. Millions of people, the majority of them US American, have taken this test on Diversity courses ever since it was invented by US social psychology researchers in 1998. Around 80% have been told that their test data suggests they are at least mildly racist, even if they think they are not. They are being conned. And when people realise they are being conned, as they increasingly are, they not only reject the test results, they reject all that they have been taught on these courses. And they are convinced they are not racist when in fact they may be. Stereotyping of others is as old as the human race. Nigel Nicholson, evolutionary psychologist and Emeritus Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School, had this to say in  How Hardwired is Human Behaviour?  in the July-August 1998 issue of the Harvard Business Review: “To prosper in the clan, human beings had to become expert in making judicious alliances. They had to know whom to share food with, for instance – someone who would return the favour when the time came. They had to know what untrustworthy individuals generally looked like too, because it would be foolish to deal with them. Thus human beings became hardwired to stereotype people based on very small pieces of evidence, mainly their looks and a few readily-apparent behaviours...People naturally sort others into in-groups and out-groups – just by their looks and actions.   Yes, you read correctly: that was in the Harvard Business Review. Nicholson is not saying that we are born racist or biased in a specific way. But we are born to fear and distrust. If raised to fear and distrust people of a different colour, then we will do so. Research in the last fifteen years by neuroscientists and psychologists repeatedly shows that we are all prejudiced in some way, though they seem to prefer the word biased. But we are not all racist, not even 80% of us. We all have subconscious (or, if you prefer, implicit) biases. And explicit ones too. Accept this and we can start trying to solve the problems that such biases cause.   Most of the Diversity training on offer doesn’t work. University College London neuroscientist Lasana Harris had this to say about such training in an article entitled “ Exposing Unconscious Bias”  in an August 2020 issue of the New Scientist , :   “...it doesn’t work for a variety of reasons. One is that it is usually mandatory, which means people are not motivated. The second reason is that it usually serves a legal checkbox function... they think ‘I’ve done unconscious bias training, so I’m not biased.’”   I have long known that Diversity training and the associated “initiatives” don’t make people less prejudiced. That’s because I was involved in a different kind of training for some thirty years from the late 1980s. This was cross-cultural training for business people. Unfortunately human resources managers assumed that this was really the same as Diversity training and by the time I stopped running courses in 2017 cross-cultural training had been gutted of all that made it so effective. What had made it so potent and useful was my and my colleagues’ acceptance that people are, as Nigel Nicholson said, “ hardwired to stereotype people” . Our job as trainers was to make our course participants understand why the stereotypical image that they might have of, say, the British, Germans or Chinese probably contained more than a grain of truth but was nevertheless of no value to them when working with people from a different culture. If they were to make a success of their relationships with these people, they had better know what, in general, made them tick, why they behaved and communicated in the way they did, and what they considered important. This was not about learning the do’s and don’ts of other cultures. Knowing that you shouldn’t show the sole of your shoe to your Arab colleague is not going to place you at an advantage when trying to persuade him to send you that report he promised weeks ago. Knowing how to use his own company’s hierarchy and his place in it is much more likely to have that report in your inbox by tomorrow.   Key to the success of this cross-cultural training was the use of role-play. On my Working with the Japanese  courses I would ask the participants to describe a current problem they were having with their Japanese colleagues or clients. I would then choose an especially difficult case and ask the relevant participant to deal with the Japanese person causing them so much heartache. After they had said a few words about what their strategy would be, I would, in heavily-accented English, with lots of throat-clearing, interrupt with “Smith-san, you said you want meeting this morning…”  and the gaijin would suddenly find herself in Tokyo having to deal with the problem she had so irritably outlined. Even in the early days any Training Manager watching would visibly cringe at my ham acting. But seldom the participants. It wasn’t unusual to get someone saying “That’s exactly what I have to deal with. How did you know?” Answer? “Because I had to cope with that kind of behaviour myself when running our Japanese office or negotiating with a Japanese client.” But increasingly I and my colleagues were told by training managers, especially US American ones, to stop all this acting. It was racist.   Not every participant appreciated my way of teaching either. A Dane criticised me heavily throughout a two-day course for exaggerating the difficulties he might face when working as Finance Manager for Novo Nordisk’s Japanese subsidiary and accused me of being racist. I had lunch with him in Tokyo three months later. He admitted that the course had been useful but I really had failed to get across just how difficult the Japanese were to work with. Fortunately, I have some knowledge of Danish culture and so had no hesitation in telling him very directly what I thought of his criticism. Novo Nordisk remained a client.   I was introduced to Diversity training before most Europeans. BP America were pioneers of it in the late 1990s and I was asked by BP in the UK to go over to Cleveland to sit in on a two-day Diversity course being run for their American staff. I was tasked to see if it could be run in the UK for BP’s staff there, suitably adapted for British sensibilities and issues. The twenty or so participants in Ohio were all White. Our trainer was a vast Black Texan. The course blurb told me I could expect all my prejudices to be examined. But, it was soon clear that there was only one prejudice that was on the menu for us White participants – racism. I didn’t object and nor did anyone else. Best to focus on the prejudice which has surely blighted more American lives than any other. Our trainer was charismatic, informative and very persuasive. We took no dodgy tests (IAT was in its infancy). We got a lot of statistics. We played games, most notably Prisoner’s Dilemma, though the relevance to racism of any of them was unclear. At no point were any of us made uncomfortable; forced, for example, to put ourselves in the shoes of an African American on the receiving end of discrimination at work. I asked our trainer at the end of the first day if we were going to do some role-play with him. “Too dangerous. People will get angry and upset” was the gist of his reply.   Was any of this training going to make a meaningful difference to the working lives of BP’s UK staff, especially those working out on the oil and gas platforms in the North Sea? Not unless the training did  make people angry and upset by getting them to feel what it’s like to be at the wrong end of discrimination. “ Too dangerous”,  said the HR people in BP. “ Not for us then” , I said. I never regretted walking away from what would have been a lucrative and prestigious training contract.   So, is there any kind of Diversity training which could make people less prejudiced, more willing to question their ingrained assumptions about The Other? Yes. But it would have to deal with people’s emotions, not just their intellect. Groups would need to be small and diverse, making it easier to confess being biased or being on the receiving end of discrimination. Realistic case studies should not simply be discussed and correct behaviour agreed upon. Participants should be made to deal with skilled actors playing the part of the prejudiced boss, the biased interviewer, the racist colleague. The key is to get people out of their own shoes and into those of someone who they may be biased against. Such a course would at least make the participants question their prejudices.     Companies can do a lot to deal with discrimination in the workplace. Anonymised curriculum vitae and diverse interview panels can make it easier for the best people to be hired regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, class etc.. Being prepared to work abroad in different cultures should be encouraged and rewarded. It’s already well-known how much more productive teams are if their members don’t all look and sound the same (though only if they are well managed). But to really lessen the strength of one’s prejudices, there is one clear answer: get to know people in those “out-groups” .  I was brought up to hate the Japanese. My father’s Royal Navy ship, seconded to the New Zealand navy in World War Two, was torpedoed by the Japanese in the Pacific. It didn’t sink but my father watched as many of his shipmates who had jumped into the water were strafed and killed by Japanese planes from a nearby aircraft carrier. My parents had close friends who had suffered terribly in Japanese PoW camps in south-east Asia. So , when asked in late 1989 to go and run my company’s Tokyo subsidiary, I initially refused. In the end I realised how stupid I was being. Here was a chance to live and work in an utterly different culture, something I usually relish doing. So, I went. Do I hate the Japanese now? Certainly not. Have I lost all my prejudice towards them? Not entirely; the values and world view of my Japanese friends are so different from mine. They admit openly to their prejudices towards foreigners. We should be as honest about our biases but keep questioning the assumptions that underlie those prejudices. In other words, stop prejudging people and their behaviour  and ask yourself why they behave in the way they do. Be curious.

by Michael Carberry Photo: Vlada, Unsplash On 27th January 2025 the world commemorated the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp at Auschwitz – Birkenau in German-occupied Poland.  As almost everyone knows, during the course of the Second World War the Nazi’s murdered some 6 million Jews (over 1 million in Auschwitz alone) as well as innumerable Roma, homosexuals, mentally handicapped, political opponents of the regime, and sundry other ‘undesirables’.   Those who watched the ceremonies at the former death camp could not but be moved by the testimonies of the handful of survivors who remain alive – most now in their 80s and 90s – and of the horrific and inhuman treatment they received at the hands of their Nazi captors.  Speaker after speaker rightly stressed the importance of remembering what had happened so that “never again”  could such an atrocity be permitted to occur.  But while some speakers stressed the importance of protecting all  vulnerable groups from hatred and discrimination whether based on race, religion or other grounds, I was saddened to hear others who could only see the problem in terms of antisemitism.  They pointed to increasing incidents of attacks on Jews or Jewish schools, synagogues or cultural centres around the world, as well as vociferous antagonism towards the State of Israel.  While all this is true, the speakers were drawing the wrong conclusions and failing to see the lessons of history.   The attempted extermination of the whole of European Jewry was uniquely horrific because of the scale of the atrocity and the industrial nature of the way the plan was put into effect.  It is therefore right that we reserve the term ‘Holocaust’ for that unspeakable crime.  And the singling out of the Jewish people for total extermination was indeed driven by historic antisemitism.  But that was not the only reason.  The fact is, that while the Jews were far and away the largest single group of victims of Nazi war crimes, they were by no means the only ones.  The figure of 5 million non-Jews murdered, originally floated by the Jewish Nazi hunter, Simon Wiesenthal, is widely circulated, but is disputed by Jewish sources.  They claim the 5 million figure was deliberately inflated by Wiesenthal to promote interest in the Holocaust by non-Jews but is now used by right-wing groups to detract from the exceptional nature of the crimes against the Jewish people.  The Jewish historian Yehuda Bauer estimates that no more than half a million non-Jews were murdered for racial or ideological reasons in the concentration camps. On the other hand, most modern estimates (as published on the Statista website) give the total number of people, including Jews, killed as a result of Nazi genocidal policies or crimes against humanity (i.e. excluding those killed a result of warfare) as 17 million or approximately 11 million non-Jews including 5.7 million Soviet civilians, 2.7 million Soviet prisoners of war and 1.8 million non-Jewish Poles. Most of these were not killed in the concentration camps – in that respect Bauer may well be correct - but rather by SS death squads in mass shootings or being starved or worked to death in prison camps or forced marches, individual killings or simply brutal ill-treatment.  Recognising this fact is not to diminish the exceptional nature of the crimes against the Jewish people in any way but rather to put them in in the context of a much broader atrocity impacting many other peoples across Europe.  The Roma too were singled out for total extermination and ultimately even more non-Jews than Jews were murdered. So, we must recognise that antisemitism was not the sole cause of the genocidal policies of the Nazis but rather one element, albeit a uniquely horrific one, of a wider racism derived from their fascist ideology.   Fascism is a much-misused word, often thrown about by those on the far-left of politics to denigrate anyone of even moderately Conservative views.    The historian and specialist on Nazi Germany, Sir Ian Kershaw, has said that “trying to define Fascism is like trying to nail jelly to a wall.” Nevertheless, the crimes perpetrated by fascist regimes are such that it is important to understand their ideology.  Although there is considerable variation,  nearly all fascist movements display a common characteristic:   a far-right populist ideology which exploits the idea (often untrue) of national decline, humiliation or victimhood,  harking back to a supposed age of greatness and often drawing  on myths of racial, cultural, ethnic or national origins to promote  militarism, anti-liberalism,  the resort to political violence without ethical or legal restraint , the “cleansing”  of the nation by targeting of ethnic, religious or immigrant minorities  and external expansion. Fascist regimes typically show contempt for democratic norms, press freedoms, the rule of law and basic human rights.  Why is this important?  The tragic irony is that, 80 years after the horrors of the Holocaust, the fascism which gave rise to it is alive and well and living in Israel itself.    It was noticeable that, among the many world leaders attending the Auschwitz ceremony, including King Charles III, President Macron and Chancellor Scholz, the most glaring absentee apart from Vladimir Putin, was Israeli Prime Minister, Benyamin Netanyahu.  The reason, of course, is that Netanyahu is the subject of an international arrest warrant by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for war crimes and crimes against humanity.   The ICC judges were unanimous in their decision that there were reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and his former defence Minister Yoav Gallant, bear responsibility for the war crime of starvation and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution and other inhumane acts. The judges said the lack of food, water, electricity, fuel and specific medical supplies created conditions “calculated to bring about the destruction of part of the civilian population in Gaza,”  including the deaths of children due to malnutrition and dehydration. They also found that by preventing hospital supplies and medicine from getting into Gaza, doctors were forced to operate, including performing amputations, without anaesthesia or with unsafe means of sedation that led to “great suffering.”   The far-right ultra-nationalist parties who maintain Netanyahu in power with their belief in their God-given right to occupy the lands of Palestinians are little different from those Nazis who believed their membershipof  a superior Aryan race gave them the right to usurp the lands of inferior Slavs.  The conduct of armed Israeli settler groups in the West Bank, harassing and bullying the Palestinian inhabitants, driving them off their lands at gunpoint and on occasion resorting to violence and even murder with impunity while the Israeli Defence Forces do nothing - all repeatedly documented by British and other international film crews – is eerily reminiscent of the conduct of the Nazi SA paramilitaries towards the Jews in 1930s Germany. And the repeated annexations of more and more Palestinian land with the clear object of ultimately annexing the entire West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip for re-settlement by Israeli Jews is little different from Hitler’s annexation of large parts of Poland and the Soviet Union to create “lebensraum” (living space) for Germans. The callous disregard of international law, the restrictions on press freedom by the exclusion of foreign journalists from the Gaza Strip, and the inhuman treatment of Palestinian civilians during the conduct of the war in Gaza are all reminiscent of the fascist regimes of World War II. The increasing incidents of antisemitism around the world are a regrettable but inevitable reaction to these policies.   This is not to say that Israel is a fascist state.  Despite the Netanyahu government’s attempts to meddle with the constitution, Israel remains a rather fragile democracy.  Many Israelis, including many of the hostage families, want to see a peaceful co-existence with the Palestinians and have courageously spoken out against the war in Gaza and the expropriations on the West Bank. It is possible that Netanyahu may well be voted out in the not-so-distant future, but the corrosive influence of such fascist ideology and policies on Israeli society is only too evident and is increasingly driving liberal Israelis to pack their bags and quit the country altogether.   Apologists for the Israeli government will of course cite the barbarous attacks by the Islamist terrorist group Hamas on 7 October, the brutal murders of 1,139 Israelis including women and children, the seizure of about 250 hostages and the fact that Israel has a right to defend itself.  While no reasonable person would seek to justify the horrific atrocities committed by Hamas, and Hamas leaders were also rightly indicted by the ICC, these attacks did not occur in a vacuum.  Hamas was established in 1987 during the first “intifada” against the (by then twenty-year-old) Israeli occupation and was initially discreetly supported by Israel as a counterbalance to the secular Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) in a cynical attempt at ‘divide and rule’ which grievously backfired.  Hamas was able to win the support of ordinary Palestinians and supplant the PLO to gain control of Gaza by its campaign of armed resistance to the Israeli occupation. So, while Israel certainly did not create Hamas, or Hezbollah, or Islamic [MC1]  State, there is little doubt that the policies of the State of Israel over many years, particularly since the Six-day war in 1967, have created the conditions for such groups to emerge and to flourish.  Moreover, the current cease-fire and exchange of hostages and Palestinian detainees was brokered by the Qataris and the Biden administration a year ago.  So,  not only did the Israeli government fail to protect its citizens from the 7th October attacks, their grotesquely disproportionate response with the killing of more than 47,500  mainly innocent civilians, including  Israeli hostages, another 111,600 injured and the almost total destruction of Gaza,  has not only failed  in its stated objective of destroying Hamas and prevented or delayed the safe return of the hostages, but has merely increased support for Hamas amongst young Palestinians, boosted its recruitment and gone far to make Israel a pariah state.  Netanyahu’s security policy has thus been a total failure.   The Israeli Prime Minister is now pinning his hopes on his dear friend and fellow fascist, Donald Trump, newly returned to the White House.  Trump’s “Make America Great Again”  rhetoric, his contempt for the rule of law by pardoning some 1,200 individuals convicted for their involvement in the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and dismissing all the outstanding cases, his spate of often illegal Executive Orders, his attempt to sanction the ICC judges, his brutal cessation of humanitarian aid programmes, his targeting of migrants, his threatening and bullying behaviour towards Canada and Mexico and fantasies about annexing Canada, Greenland or the Panama Canal, are all classic examples of fascist behaviour. Fortunately, more sensible heads are prevailing in the United States with no less than 19 States challenging his actions in the courts; and the international community have given his imperialist ambitions short-shrift.   In 1945, As the Auschwitz ceremony reminded us, all the fascist powers were defeated.  Germany, Italy and Japan lost not only the lands they had briefly conquered but a substantial part of their pre-war territories.  Horrified by the destruction and suffering they had inflicted on humankind; the other nations of the world came together in the San Franscico Conference to create a rules-based international order where conflicting interests would be settled by negotiation and international law rather than military force.  Despite the efforts of neo-fascists like Trump, Netanyahu or Vladimir Putin, most countries remain committed to the principles of the UN Charter.   In 1945 fascism was defeated, not just because of the military might of the Allies but also because of the resilience and courage of millions of victims in the occupied countries, Jews and non-Jews alike.  So, what does this imply for the Palestinians? One speaker at the Auschwitz commemoration pointed out that the Nazis had tried to exterminate the Jews, but that today Jews were now more numerous, stronger and more confident of their identity than before the Holocaust partly because of the existence of the State of Israel.  What the speaker failed to acknowledge, is that what was true for the Jews may also be true for the Palestinians.  The last few days since the cease-fire and exchange of hostages has seen thousands of Palestinians flooding back to their devasted homes, determined to rebuild and prevent Israel or Trump from taking their homeland. The nightmare of Gaza may well prove to be for the Palestinians what the holocaust was for the Jews - a defining experience which reinforces their identity as a people and their determination to stand strong in their own land.   So, what does the Holocaust teach us?  Firstly, as the world saw in the 1930s, failure to stand up to fascist bullies like Netanyahu and Trump spells disaster for tens of thousands of innocent human beings. Secondly, that in in Gaza and the occupied territories, the fascist policies pursued by Netanyahu and his cronies are doomed to failure. And finally, that the Palestinians will never give up and there can be no peace or security for Israel without freedom, security, justice and dignity for the Palestinians in their own state.