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by Vincent Guy Caruso on my gramophone    Photo: Vincent Guy Among my childhood baubles, one item stood out: a shellac 78 rpm record of Enrico Caruso singing ‘La donna è mobile’ from Verdi’s ‘Rigoletto’. It was my mother’s, or perhaps my grandmother’s. Part of the first-ever classical best-seller collection hitting the market around 1903. I played it in awe on my black wind-up gramophone. That gramophone I still have, and it can still play Caruso. Looking through the remaining records now, I find Noel Coward’s wartime song ‘London Pride’ which still touches me, even if it skitters close to schmalz. A decade older is Jack Hylton’s half-forgotten masterpiece ‘I lift up my finger and I say tweet tweet’. Other music I grew up with was standard middle-class English stuff: my father had a penchant for Kathleen Ferrier’s ‘Blow the wind southerly’ and, following the tradition set by King George III, would stand up for the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ when Handel’s ‘Messiah’ came on the wireless. And there were Gilbert and Sullivan, hymns at church, the BBC’s ‘Two-way Family Favourites’, and all the output of 1950s Tin Pan Alley, eminently forgettable, but I still remember every one of those cheap songs. At Pate’s Grammar School some classes in music appreciation (e.g. ‘The Planets Suite’ by Holst who’d been a pupil there), but they made little impact. A few piano lessons which I found painfully dull and abandoned once I’d mastered ‘Chopsticks’. Singing? Always had a strong voice but could never hold a key. Still can’t, despite 6 months’ tuition more recently. The main thing I learned from that is that my voice, which I’d always thought rather light, is actually a bass. As a teenager, late at night I’d twiddle the dial to the BBC Third Programme: Bartok, Schoenberg, perhaps Shostakovich (whom I would now prefer to switch off). Thought they were cool. Went to the local jazz club, rubbing shoulders with the future Rolling Stone Brian Jones (another alumnus of Pate’s), but jazz never got to me. With my first girlfriend I attended my first classical concert: Stravinsky’s ‘Firebird’ at the London Festival Hall. Spending a year in Peru took me deep into Andean sounds and Latin dance, especially Cuban. Sat through a Mozart concert there which failed to touch me; in my journal I unknowingly echoed the Austrian emperor along the lines of “Too many notes, my dear Mozart.” At Oxford in the Sixties my fellow undergrad Mark had his bulky Ferrograph tape-recorder tuning my ear to somewhat austere preclassical sounds: lots of harpsichord by Scarlatti, Rameau, Bach. At the same time, I lived through the explosion of the Beatles, the Stones, the British pop scene in the wake of American Black music. 1971 saw me in the audience at the Isle of Wight Festival facing some of the greatest: The Who trialling their rock opera ‘Tommy’, Jimi Hendrix playing his last gig before he died a few days later. It was a life-changing experience, if more for my dipping into psychedelics than for the music. I never felt the urge to attend another rock concert, though I did go on to enjoy a few popular names like Leonard Cohen, Queen, David Bowie. The enduring Bob Dylan always left me admiring but unmoved. What really got me going was a recording of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’; a friend had it constantly on his turntable in a flat we shared. Then by chance, an uplifting moment: hearing Anne-Sophie Mutter playing Mozart’s Violin Concertos over the loudspeakers in a record shop. I bought the two vinyl LPs and played them again and again. As soon as I got a proper job, with the first shillings saved from my salary I bought a Tandberg HiFi system, complete with speakers the size of Dracula’s coffin. Between them our bay window gave onto the streets of London. Listening to Ralph McTell’s hit song of that name, I watched the reality: a derelict house, last refuge of a crew of homeless winos. A feature of the Tandberg was a classy cassette unit. With a hint of obsessiveness, I’d get up early before work and transcribe LPs, mainly classical, borrowed from my friend Takis. Despite the Tandberg’s best efforts most of the tapes would end up wowing and fluttering, but until that point, I enjoyed the music. Takis has since gone back to Greece where he still plays those records on his turntable. Then along came CDs, which meant I could listen to high quality versions of specific musical works that I had actively chosen. I discovered there was more to Schubert than ‘Ave Maria’, more to Mendelsohn than ‘Fingal’s Cave’ and that ‘The Messiah’ was but a detail in Handel’s vast repertoire. Moving to Scotland revived and deepened my appreciation of traditional music, especially through my involvement in producing a CD, ‘Love Burns’, with my singer daughter Zoë. Then came BBC 3 and BBC Sounds: passive but selective listening on an extended scale. My regular fix is ‘Through the Night’, several hours of classics, mostly calm, with the minimum of intrusive chitchat. Friends have sparked my interest in opera, not least Hugh Kerr, editor of the website Edinburgh Music Review. For him the great arias are like food at breakfast, lunch and dinner. A recent experience of getting inside opera was acting a role in Harwood’s ‘Quartet’ with the local drama circle. The climax has the foursome of aging singers presenting ‘Bella figlia del amore’ from ‘Rigoletto’. Fortunately for the audience, the role didn’t require me to sing but to lip-sync the words to the recording. There are different levels of engagement with music: in the background from radio or streaming while I get on with some other task; choosing something to play from my collection; going to a live performance. More actively, I’ve filmed ballet choreographed by a ballerina friend, which has taken me deep into renaissance pieces under Jordi Savall, Mozart’s 21st Piano Concerto, even dancing with her myself to Schubert’s ‘Notturno’. Edinburgh Castle...as Vincent waits for a concert Photo: Vincent Guy My latest musical adventure is writing reviews for the Edinburgh Music Review*. This generates a panicky intensity of listening and learning. The Impostor Syndrome lurks: “What on earth am I going to write about this? How can I, with no musical talent or training, presume to sit in this reviewer’s seat?”. The result is a level of concentration, of presence, of alertness, that no other musical experience provides. Despite my lack of native abilities, my head reverberates with music, including genres I haven’t mentioned here: film themes, nursery rhymes, advertising jingles, folk and popular melodies from five continents – even birdsong. In the words of Schubert’s ‘An die Musik’: “Du holde Kunst, ich danke dir! You lovely art, I thank you!” Like this one, though slightly altered from the original.

by Eric Boa Mark Twain is a fine observer of the vagaries and complexities of life and a great person to quote. When his obituary was prematurely published, he said that “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated”. But it is his insight on how to tackle complexities that I treasure most. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and starting on the first one.” There are few things more complicated than long-standing human conflicts. The energetic and exhausted Anthony Blinken, the US Secretary for State, is currently performing his Henry Kissinger tribute act in the Middle East, a region where complexities abound and the scope for compromise is tiny. He has few available tools of persuasion (coercion?) given the decline of the US’s global influence, yet he keeps talking to people because of the compelling need to stop conflict and reduce suffering. I have no idea what ‘small manageable tasks’ might mean to Blinken but good politicians are excellent pragmatists, and I sense that he is one of them. I wish him well, as I do anyone brave enough to stop conflicts and thus give our editor a little hope for 2024. Conflicts and their origins are by definition complex and have enormous and widespread consequences. The flow of refugees and migrants are two such examples, distorting politics and absorbing huge injections of funds. Good luck to those looking for solutions that address not only the root causes of conflict but mitigate the immediate impacts on people. These thoughts are prompted by a renewed interest in biodiversity loss and climate change (I’ll also refer to them as the dual crises). I have skirted around them in past work in international development, wary of being drawn into endless debates. No longer. I’m ready for my next complex, overwhelming task: what are the best ways for individuals and communities to tackle the dual crises? Set aside the inevitable gaps in basic knowledge about the crises, and let’s focus on what works best in halting environmental degradation and coping with the consequences of climate change. The complexities of the climate and biodiversity crises are in my opinion greater than those of human conflicts. Both are high in the Existential Hit Parade, yet there’s ample evidence to suggest that the dual crises are top of the charts. I’ll discuss later why this matters, but first consider why conflicts are often put first in existential threats. Conflicts are visible and real, awash with wanton destruction and human suffering and fuelled by recognizable human traits (fear, resentment, greed). We know the causes of conflict and even if they seem intractable there have been major successes (feel free to disagree). South Africa did not descend into chaos when apartheid collapsed; Northern Ireland is calmer after the Good Friday Agreement; there are no snipers in Sarajevo. Flooding, fires and other natural disasters associated with weather also inflict horrific damage and suffering, yet it is less clear how these are linked to climate change and, even more crucially, its often disputed causes. The first hints that the planet was warming came in the late 1930s. The discovery of an ozone hole in Antarctica in 1985 led to the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) in 1988. Concerns about losses of biodiversity are more recent – the term only emerged in the mid-1980s –  yet have gathered great momentum in recent years. Early considerations of climate change focused on what was happening and why. Conveying the importance and impacts of biodiversity loss and climate change relies heavily on modelling, an imperfect method – but the best one we have available. Farmers will have to change what crops they grow because of climate change (Esteli, Nicaragua) Despite the abstractness of climate change, the difficulty of visualising what it means and grasping its complex origins, it has remained high in the Existential Hit Parade. This matters because it focuses attention, widens public awareness, stokes advocacy, gathers political momentum and releases funds. All this is good news, but I’m still feeling overwhelmed and need to think again about the next ‘manageable task’ in my quest for enlightenment. I’m a big fan of meta-analyses, or systematic reviews, which look at past research and interventions and summarise the major findings. Systematic reviews are widely used in human health and increasingly for development interventions, such as cash transfers (I’ll explain this shortly). My initial impression is that systematic reviews of climate change tend to focus on its effects in particular sectors, such as livestock welfare. Tackling the responses to climate change and biodiversity sector by sector is undoubtedly useful but is a mammoth undertaking. What applies to livestock will differ from crops for example. I’m still looking for a ‘small manageable task’ that might lead to insights on what practical actions and responses will alleviate biodiversity loss and climate change. The Global North has many large societies and organisations for people interested in wildlife, plants, trees and the wider environment. (The Global South much less so – but that’s another matter.) I’ve started a small survey of UK-based societies and how they approach the dual crises. It’s impressive to see the thought that’s gone in to practical efforts, as well as significant public advocacy, by leading non-governmental bodies. The National Trust (5.3m members) manages swathes of lands and historic building; the Royal Horticultural Society (600,000) supports gardeners; the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (1.2 million) maintains over 200 nature reserves; and the Woodland Trust (500,000) owns over 1000 woods. The total membership and area of lands managed and cared for by this small sample of organisations represents a significant chunk of society and natural and managed environments in the UK. These organisations have detailed and well-written policies and strategies and are in regular dialogue with their members. The organisations represent a vast source of information on what works well, how members respond to advice and many other aspects of promoting practical efforts to tackle the dual crises. There are of course caveats. What works in the UK may not pan out in poorer countries. But it is a start in surmounting the overwhelming task of assessing what communities can do. If the proposed survey yields useful results, a similar approach could be applied to the US. The Sierra Club, The National Audubon Society (2 million) and The Nature Conservancy have a combined membership of 5 million and also work internationally. There are common threads in responses to the major threats that top the Existential Hit Parade and the opportunity to learn from different sectors. Some years ago, when researching plant health systems, I came across 'Millions Saved: Proven Successes in Global Health’*. I read it from cover to cover and made extensive notes. I was intrigued by a scheme to improve the health of the poor in Mexico and cash transfers that were conditional on vaccinating children, for example. A similar scheme known as 'Bolsa Familia' in Brazil had a dramatic impact on elevating people out of poverty. I didn’t see immediately how lessons learned could be transferred from global health to plant health, yet shortly afterwards a companion volume, Millions Fed** was published, looking at the successes of agricultural development. I’m still bamboozled by the amount that’s been published on the biodiversity and climate change crises but I’m a little less overwhelmed when considering how individuals and communities can respond practically. The UK organisations suggest novel delivery channels for advice on remedial actions on a broad scale and left me wondering what role The Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock could play in tackling the dual crises. They represent two million farmers in a country where the impact of biodiversity loss and climate change continues to increase and with global consequences. What success have they had in getting messages across to their members? One of many short-lived efforts to tackle climate change (Freetown, Sierra Leone) Finally, a little puff for the recently launched the Global Centre on Biodiversity for Climate (GCBC)***, supported by the UK Government. We may be rowing back on green commitments but there are still politicians who are committed to tackling the major existential threats of our time. * Read more about Millions Saved here: http://millionssaved.cgdev.org/ ** For Millions Fed go here: https://www.ifpri.org/project/millions-fed *** https://www.kew.org/science/our-science/projects/GCBC

by Richard Pooley Tyra Laura Seethal What’s racist about discussing the likely colour of your grandchild’s or niece’s skin, if the unborn child be the product of the union of two people of different races? Are you telling me you would not wonder what shade of skin the child will have…or how tall s/he might grow, or what other physical features s/he will inherit from each parent’s family? Have you never been present when family members meet a baby for the first time and compete with each other to find some resemblance to a long-dead grandparent, a cousin or, best of all, someone in the room? It’s a joyous, celebratory occasion. It’s also the genes talking: "Okay, what have we made this time round?" King Charles III and the Princess of Wales, as they then weren’t, were merely exhibiting a natural curiosity when they wondered what colour skin Harry and Meghan’s first child, Archie, would have. In the couple’s interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, Meghan talked of “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born.” Stop a moment. Would it make a difference for you if she had said: “…about how light his skin might be when he was born.”? I suspect if you are white (like me), you would find that an odd formulation. But if you were mixed-race (like Meghan), or black? Perhaps not. We tend to focus on what is different from us. That doesn’t make us racist. Often what is deemed racist is actually genuine curiosity. Asking the question “Where do you come from?” appears to be upsetting many oversensitive souls nowadays even without the additional “really”, which so offended those same souls that a royal flunkey lost her job over it a year ago. Most of my life I have asked strangers where they are from and would welcome it if more asked it of me. If in the UK I asked a person with brown skin where he was from and he replied “Oxford”, I would assume he was British like me unless he told me otherwise. If he chose to tell me that he was a student from Bangladesh, I would quiz him about his country and its culture. Why are so many, with whatever skin colour, so ready to accuse others of racism? Why are people so ready to become offended whenever someone uses what they perceive as the wrong word to describe someone’s skin colour? I posed the latter question, one I have asked myself and others many times, when on Sunday I read on the BBC's website the story of Tyra Laura Seethal, a 21-year old South African singer who has suddenly become famous outside her home country, especially the USA. Her hit song, Water, released in July, debuted at number 67 on the US’ Billboard Hot 100 in October. That may not sound much but the last South African to get on to that chart with a solo song was the great Hugh Masekela 55 years ago. Here’s how Tyla describes herself in a dance and music video produced before she became well-known but seen now by millions on TikTok: “I am a coloured South African... This means I come from a lot of different cultures.” Cue outrage in social media in the USA. Here is one relatively calm response on X: “We are not gonna call her colored here and if she personally demands it, her career will end before it begins. She’s trying to cross over into an American market, she won’t be able to use that word here, she can use it somewhere else though.” This is good, if condescending, advice. In the USA the label “colored” is little better than “negro” (even though Martin Luther King used it with pride), let alone the “N” word which only black (or should that be African-American?) comedians and rappers seem allowed to use. Of course black US Americans (or should that be US Americans of colour?) are right to hate being called “colored”. It was the term used to describe them in the segregational laws and practices of the southern states up to the 1960s. But have those furious keyboard warriors asked themselves why someone like Tyra is proud to call herself “coloured”? Especially as this was one of the four race-based terms used to segregate South Africans in the apartheid era right up to 1994. The population census still uses them. In 2022, 8.2% of South Africans defined themselves as Coloured (81.4 % as Black African, 7.3% as White, and 2.7% as Indian/Asian). Note “defined themselves”. A coloured person who takes a DNA test will often find that they have Chinese, Indian, Indonesian or Malay ancestors as well as black African and white. As a coloured South African businesswoman said when introducing herself on one of my training courses: “We are a culture, not a race.” What the coloured people of South Africa have done is to take an utterly unscientific label imposed on them by a racist white regime and made it their own. Such appropriation of slurs and turning them into positive badges has a long and honourable history. When I was young, to call a homosexual “queer” was totally unacceptable. Now queer is a label worn with pride on Pride marches and is one of the letters in the ever-lengthening acronym LGBTQ+.* I was in Namibia in October and November and learned about the Basters, a people descended from children of white men and black or Khoi (formerly 'Hottentot' – now another offensive label) women in the 18th century Cape Colony. Subject to often violent discrimination from the pure white Dutch settlers, many of whom they were related to, these  Afrikaans-speaking, Calvinist farmers moved north with their cattle (and all-black servants) from the 1750s. In 1869 they trekked out of the colony altogether to Rehoboth in what is now Namibia.  Yes, their name comes from the Dutch bastaard, bastard or crossbreed. But, from early on, they were proud to call themselves Basters, regarding Baster as the name for their distinctive culture, not their race. On Saturday night, 28 October I was with some forty others gathered in front of a small TV screen in Etosha National Park, northern Namibia. We were of all ages, sizes and colours, though all bar me and two others were speaking and shouting in Afrikaans. It was the Rugby World Cup final between South Africa and New Zealand. Outperforming the spectators, in speech and dance, was a large coloured woman. I have no idea where she was from (I didn’t dare ask her) - Cape Coloured? Baster? She was our star, willing the South African team of white, black and coloured players to win. Which they did; by one point. I thought of matches between these two countries fifty and more years ago. Then, only whites could play for South Africa. The all-white South African rugby team - the Springboks - played against the New Zealand team of whites, Maoris, and Pacific islanders – the All Blacks. At the same time I recalled the US American sitting next to me at a rugby match in Pau a few years ago. He was in France on business and had come in to the stadium to see what all the noise was about. He knew nothing of rugby. I tried to explain the rules and at half-time gave him some history of the game. I mentioned the then world champions, New Zealand. He looked perplexed: “Does New Zealand have a lot of blacks?” In that BBC report on the uproar in the USA caused by Tyla’s self-identification as coloured, the South African co-author of Coloured: How Classification Became Culture, Tessa Dooms, had this to say to US Americans: “To have the audacity to question somebody’s self-identification and replace it with your own – that’s ridiculous. You are not progressive.” I agree. I’d call it racist. *Please don’t comment that I and A have been added. I’m an old man with a lousy memory. I thank whoever came up with the +.

by Stoker The River Lugg...Before Stoker seems to have developed a minor obsession with water works; the Editor thinks it’s a sign of the passing years. More though, we think, to do with passing waters. In the last issue it was The Wash and all those eastern rivers – the Welland, the Nene, the Great Ouse, and the Witham which flow into it; and all the cuts and canals and navigations and streams and ditches and dykes which flow into them from the low-lying flat lands of the Fens. But now we are moving west to the wonderfully named River Lugg, and a sorry tale of those who live on her banks. But worry not; it all turns out well in the end. Or at least it has done so far. But this is a tale of modern Britain; the people versus the state; the urge to tidiness and order struggling with laisse faire and rewilding; locals versus London. The waterways of the Fens are a highly man-made creation, dredged and dug and ditched to create prime farmland from peat bogs. And to make sure they do not revert to bog, they are man-managed, with pumps and locks and back-up holding basins and all sorts of basic but very efficient systems which can deal with high tides and low, to say nothing of downpours and droughts and even burst lock gates. The vital local agencies are the drainage boards, mostly made up of local worthies with financial interests at stake and great knowledge of the mysterious ways of fens water and its perils. Those who wish to know more can do worse than read Dorothy L Sayers great 1930’s thriller, The Nine Tailors, where the action is set against a background of poor lock maintenance and continuous rainfall. But we are not in the Fens; we are in the beautiful rolling countryside of Herefordshire, grass and cow country, but also famed for growing potatoes, barley, and hops. The valleys are deep and the hills steep, high, and often wooded, served by great rivers flowing ultimately into the Severn and the Bristol Channel. The best known is the Wye, but equally deserving of fame is the Lugg, rising in north-east Herefordshire and flowing south until it meets the Wye just below Hereford. The Wye is more dramatic; the Lugg serves the more prosperous farming part of the county. Which is why management of the Lugg is as important as those complex Fenland waterways. Or at least, has been until recently. And now we must introduce our hero. Or, depending on your view of life, villain. His name is John Price and he is a farmer whose land adjoins the Lugg. But in recent years Mr Price has found that his land does not so much adjoin the Lugg as intermingle with it. The Lugg has taken to flooding in a fairly dramatic way , not just Mr Price’s three farms (he is a farmer in a pretty substantial way of business) but also the lands of his neighbours, local villages, churches, and workplaces. Mr Price owns the riverbanks and even the river bed, and has watched the river become silted up and increasingly obstructed with stone, mud, and gravel debris, bushes and trees, the results of storms over recent years. There is, of course, a regulator for river management, not local drainage boards as in the Fens, but the Environment Agency, a massive ministry of many things (as its title implies). The EA, as we shall know it, has many cares, and it says, few resources, at least not for managing rivers. It traditionally has been happy to leave this job to those who own the riverbanks and indeed, even more traditionally, would chivvy up owners who allowed the rivers to become obstructed and thus cause flooding. But this has changed in the last twenty years. The EA now firmly says it is in charge of river management and woe betide he who digs out a shingle bank or fiddles with an obstructing tree. Partially this is no doubt due to the good old attitude that if you have the power you might as well use it, partially (pardon our cynicism) that if it finds more things to do it can request more money from government to do them, together with the delights of more employees, more senior jobs, and maybe even more bonuses. But mainly it is to do with the latest countryside fashion, or at least the fashion among rich people who are buying up the countryside, of rewilding, that is, low input or no input or complete abandonment of Nature. Let it do as it likes. Fallen trees should rot, feral boar can freely roam, hedges grow into spinneys into woods, and rivers get blocked and flood. Farmers and graziers and market gardeners, foresters, inhabitants, and indeed most of those who make a living from or live in the countryside tend to prefer a bit of order and discipline applied to nature, especially when they find the River Lugg in their kitchen and coming up the stairs, as the dog kennel floats past the bedroom windows. Now, Farmer Price has always thought it his job to manage what is effectively his bit of river, save his neighbours from this close communion with the Lugg, enable him to sow and harvest, and keep the wildlife and especially the fish thriving. So as before, in 2020 he got some big machinery, dredged the river, took away the dredged soil to put on his land, cleared the banks to prevent vegetation getting too big and falling in, and let the river flow free. Result: the Lugg stayed in its banks and went chortling on its way to meet the Wye. The banks were barren for a year or two but the vegetation has grown back, the temporarily evicted wildlife has quickly returned, and the river has filled up with fish. All-round happiness, yes? Er, no. The EA did not like this exercise of farmerly independence at all. It indeed was very cross and pompous about the whole thing and called in its lawyers. They charged Mr P with seven offences, including unauthorised tree felling and, remarkably, dumping silt in the river – as some fell in during the dredging works. Mr Price was advised (surprisingly) to plead guilty and was sent to prison for a year, and fined costs of £600,000. This seems a grossly heavy-handed way of dealing with this well-meant neighbourly gesture (next time Mr Price wishes to turn to crime we would suggest bank robbery or car theft would be much less likely to result in prosecution and any penalty considerably lighter). He actually served four months and has just been released for good conduct – perhaps he helped clean out the prison drains. His neighbours all applauded what he did at the time and have been further praising Mr Price on his return, not least because his actions saved the nearby village from certain flooding by the recent Storm Dennis. Mr Price had time to reflect in prison and is now even more certain that what he did is sensible and morally right; he is not surprisingly pretty angry about his treatment. The EA continue to say that he was wrong and his actions were unauthorised and may cause flooding lower down the valley of the Lugg (the answer to that, should it occur, would be to get the lower stretches dredged). The local MP has pointed out that the failure of the EA to dredge the watercourses of the Somerset Levels, caused extensive flooding and damage there in 2014; since dredging resumed in 2015 there has been no serious flooding in that area. As we said, an unhappy tale, with we hope, a happy ending, at least for the folk who live near the Lugg. But it is very much a cautionary tale of Britain today: big government out of touch with local needs, disregarding local knowledge and willingness to be neighbourly, and hurt, damage, and shame to those who just wish to be helpful. Centralisation has overcome community, at least temporarily. Whitehall is discredited and the poor old taxpayer is shelling out for bad actions and alien philosophies. That actually does not make for much of a happy ending.

by Michael Carberry In 1973 I was one of group of aspiring British diplomats undergoing the Foreign Office selection process.  For one exercise we were thrown a topic: “Partition never solved any political problem.  Discuss.” Although I had never previously thought about it, the truth of that statement rapidly became apparent to me. As a student of history, I was aware of the tragic partition of India in 1947: the fifteen to twenty million people displaced, the unspeakable communal violence including between one and two million killed, the legacy of confrontation and conflict including three Indo-Pakistani Wars and tensions over Kashmir which persist to this day. In the 1960s as a student in Liverpool I had witnessed the re-emergence of the 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland and the thirty years of horrific sectarian violence and mayhem which followed - a legacy of the partition of Ireland in 1923. During the course of the twentieth century many other previously united countries became partitioned: Vietnam, Korea, Germany, Cyprus.  In almost every case the result was at best an armed stand-off with mutual fear and distrust of those on the other side of the divide; at worst a long and bloody war as in Vietnam.  And the only lasting solution has proved to be reunification as in Vietnam or Germany. Perhaps nowhere has the curse of partition been so malign as in the former British Mandate territory of Palestine.  Whatever the rights and wrongs of the 'Balfour Declaration' by the British Government in 1917, it never intended the creation of a Jewish state.  The declaration stated “His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people …. It being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of the existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine.  Or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.” [My underlining] The partition proposed by the United Nations in 1947 was an attempt to limit the increasing inter-communal violence resulting from the mass immigration of Jews into the territory during the British mandate and accelerating after the Second World War.  The rate of immigration – far greater than that experienced by the UK or other European countries today – provoked an Arab revolt against the British authorities and attacks against Jews in an attempt to limit immigration with reciprocal acts of violence by Jewish paramilitary organisations such as Haganah or the more radical Irgun and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang). The partition was doomed to failure from the start.   Partition sets communities against each other.  It creates disaffected minorities on both sides and endless arguments over territory and areas or sites which are of iconic importance to communities, such as Jerusalem.  Palestinians Arabs who were 80% of the population and owned most of the land could see no just reason for handing over more than half their country to immigrants – rather as if the UN had proposed dealing with anti-immigrant feeling in Britain by proposing to carve out a separate Muslim state from parts of the UK.  Many Jews were also unhappy. They wanted the right to settle anywhere in Palestine but were persuaded by the Zionist leadership to accept partition as a first step to gaining control over the whole territory and with every intention of expanding the state in the future.  The stage was thus set for more than seventy years of conflict. In the numerous wars which followed Israel has steadily expanded its territory at the expense of the Palestinian people.  In 1966 while on a student work-camp in Lebanon, I was taken to visit a refugee camp of Palestinians who had been driven out of their homes in 1947 and were still waiting to return almost twenty years later. I was told then that many Israelis had a vision of a State of Israel including all the former territory of Palestine stretching from the Litani river in Lebanon to the Red Sea.  I did not believe it at the time but the following year I was proved wrong when Israel attacked and seized control of the West Bank, Gaza, the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt and the Golan Heights in Syria.  Although it subsequently withdrew from Sinai and Gaza both territories had already been invaded by Jewish settlers . Some nine thousand Jewish settlers living in twenty-five settlements had to be evicted from Gaza alone. Meanwhile the process of expropriation of Palestinian lands and ethnic cleansing of Palestinian Arabs has continued in the occupied West Bank, driven by militant Jewish settlers under the protection of the Israeli Defence Force. Protests by Palestinians are met by violent repression.  Violence breeds more violence and ultimately terrorism.  Hamas, as the UN Secretary General pointed out, did not occur in a vacuum. Hamas was able to take control in Gaza because it was seen as standing up to Israeli oppression in a way which the Palestinian Authority in the occupied West Bank was unable to do. But rather than address Palestinian grievances and help build support for the Palestinian authority, Nettanyahu’s Likud government has focussed instead on trying to defeat Hamas by purely military means, allowing for further expansion of the Israeli state.  In my experience, no terrorist insurgency has ever been defeated militarily.   Israel is the most militarized state in the world but despite that it has never known real security since the declaration of statehood in 1947.   Moreover, military action tends to destroy the possibilities for peaceful dialogue.  Soldiers are trained to seek the total defeat and destruction of the enemy – that is their job.   Compromises or negotiated solutions are seen as failure.  As a diplomat in the early 1980s at the height of the Northern Ireland ‘Troubles’, I was assured by my military attaché colleagues that the problems could easily be solved if only the military were given a free hand to go in and “sort out” the Irish Republican Army (IRA).  I was horrified by such naivety.  It was precisely such a hard-line military response to the failed ‘Easter Rising’ in Dublin in 1916, with the summary execution of the leaders, which turned many Irish soldiers, who had volunteered to fight for the British Crown in the First World War, into convinced republicans, leading quickly to the Anglo-Irish War of 1919-21, the subsequent partition and ultimately the creation of the Irish Republic. Israel’s attempt to achieve a military solution in Gaza is doomed to failure. Many of the Hamas leaders will have already left Gaza to carry on the fight from neighbouring countries. States like Iran will continue to provide financial and military support. Nothing can excuse the grotesque barbarity of the Hamas attack against innocent Israelis on 7 October, but, as the UN Secretary General has pointed out, one atrocity does not justify another. The mindless slaughter of thousands of innocent Palestinians, (who are themselves the victims of a terrorist regime) is nothing less than a crime against humanity. The young boys picking their way through the rubble of their destroyed homes looking for the remains of their families and nursing a burning hatred of Israel are the next generation of Jihadis. Whereas, previously, Hamas’s influence was largely confined to the Gaza strip, as the IDF campaign in Gaza has stepped up, so the West Bank is now awash with Hamas flags. Meanwhile the Israeli government is haemorrhaging support among Western nations and provoking increasing condemnation from the international community and protests around the world.  There has been a global surge in both antisemitism and islamophobia. The biblical retribution being exacted by Israel is not just militarily ineffectual, it is politically inept and morally bankrupt. So, can anything be done to try to bring to an end the cycle of violence? In Northern Ireland, after thirty years of trying to defeat the IRA militarily, it took the Blair government’s decision to talk to the IRA and broker a deal, intended as far as possible to meet the aspirations of both communities, to achieve the current fragile peace.  In Gaza, the temporary halt to the carnage and release of some of the hostages held by Hamas was achieved not by military force but through negotiations brokered by the Qataris involving a mutual release of prisoners.  All the hostages could and should have been released but, while both sides blamed the other for the break-down of the talks, Benyamin Netanyahu’s repeated assertions that the military assault would continue as soon as the hostages were released removed any incentive for Hamas to release further prisoners. The lives of the remaining hostages are now seriously at risk.  It is not only the Hamas leaders who show scant regard for the lives of their own people. Most ordinary Israelis and Palestinians simply want to be able to live in peace and security.  One of the most poignant scenes amid the horrors of the last few weeks in Gaza was the image of the elderly female Israeli hostage who, on being released, turned to shake hands with her captors, saying “Shalom” - Peace. Many decent people on both sides strive continually for mutual understanding and better intercommunal relations (for example Daniel Barenboim with his East West Divan Orchestra.)   But they are constantly frustrated by the men of violence: Islamists like Hamas or the ultra-nationalist Jewish Parties around Netanyahu who have no interest in compromise and see only enemies to be destroyed. Had it not been for the partition of 1947 we might today have seen a secular state of Palestine “from the river to the sea” with Jews and Arabs living side by side in peace and harmony (as indeed they did in many countries prior to that event).   That will now never happen but there is still just hope for a two-state solution if there is goodwill on both sides. But the only way to wean the Palestinians away from the men of violence is by responding to their legitimate aspirations and starving Hamas and other Islamist terrorists of the oxygen of support. That means an end to Jewish settlements in Palestinian territory, to the expropriation of Palestinian property and the accompanying ethnic cleansing, and not least, an end to the occupation the West Bank. The world cannot stand by and watch the extinction of a whole people.  The Palestinians have a right to live in peace and security and justice in their own land.   Unless and until that is accepted and implemented by an Israeli government there is no hope for peace in the Holy Land.

by Eric Boa "What does this all mean for me?" My training to become a research scientist was lengthy, frustrating and absorbing. The future after getting my PhD in 1981 was uncertain and job prospects were few. Friends and family were puzzled when I described what I hoped to do for a career. They were also encouraging, though “that sounds interesting” wasn’t the resounding assurance I was hoping for. Yet the thrill of asking questions and sleuthing was and still is a powerful motivator. I knew it was going to be difficult to work with tree diseases for the rest of my career and wasn’t even sure I wanted to continue in this area. No time for equivocation. I had to find a job. Suitable openings were few and far between but eventually I landed my first job, in Bangladesh, studying a bamboo disease, funded by the UK Government. Friends and families were even more puzzled. Bangladesh was newly independent, struggling to establish itself after a bloody war and widely known as a “basket case”, Henry Kissinger’s dismissive and contemptuous description. I ignored this. It was research and it sounded intriguing. I had money for equipment, field work and laboratory investigations for the next six years. Next stop Indonesia and a clove disease project, also with supporting research budget. I assumed this is how it would continue to work: get job and be provided with the necessary funds to ask questions and sleuth. Short-term contracts meant that job security was always a worry, but I was optimistic that prospects would improve as I delivered results and gained experience. I returned to a UK-based post in 1991, still doing research linked to international development. The short-term contracts continued. I was nearly forty years old and job security was still shaky. Worse was to follow when I discovered that I had few funds provided by the research institute to do my work. I had to bid for every project in open competition with fellow scientists as well as those from other organisations. The hustle was on. My time was charged to projects and contract extensions were related to how much ‘cover’ I obtained. I enjoyed developing ideas and expanding my portfolio of interests, as well as working in new places. I was less enthusiastic about the effort this required and nervous about the consequences of failing. The hustling slowly produced results. My first major project was on agroforestry trees in Central America, a region that I’d longed to visit after reading Paul Theroux’s The Old Patagonia Express. The excitement at winning the bid was tempered by the fact that it was only for a year and only paid for three-months’ staff time. I continued to hustle and hit the big time a year later when I got a three-year project on rural bamboo in India. Again, it only covered three months of my time in any one year, but it was further proof of showing I was a valuable member of staff. Radical changes pushed by the Conservative Government continued to disrupt and threaten research careers. International development was particularly vulnerable because it was a low priority for the Tories, but eventually other scientists in the UK began to feel the pressures of having to fund their own jobs. I moved to a new organisation in 1995, also in the UK, because my first employer crumbled under the relenting demands for efficiencies and budget cuts. I found a hidden advantage with my bamboo project; I could transfer funds to a new employer, smoothing a move which I had initiated because of diminishing prospects. Have project, can travel. In the late 1990s I began to work on wild edible mushrooms in Malawi. Money was available for topics not covered by other research programmes. The managers liked my three-year proposal, and so began a long association with wild edible mushrooms on a global canvas. I’d moved a long way from tree diseases as a result of hustling. All was not smooth bidding; there were many failed bids, but I was gaining wider experience and developing new collaborations, particularly with social scientists. International development was emphasising the involvement of people and communities in projects, articulated in the Millennium Development Goals agreed in 2000. This set the scene for a new type of project with a sharper focus on applying knowledge for the benefit of people in the global South (‘developing nations’). And so to my ultimate hustle and biggest challenge of all: an attempt to get money from the Big Daddy of international development funds, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF). No disrespect to the ex Mrs Gates, who now has her own funds and programmes, but I always saw Bill Gates as the ultimate gatekeeper and decider of who got funds. The ultimate hustle began with an invitation to submit a proposal on plant health. Many years of developing a model for basic plant health clinics integrated with agricultural advisory services and supported by research institutes and other government organisations had finally brought the attention it deserved. My employer, the Centre for Agriculture and Biosciences International (CABI), was thrilled. BMGF funded multi-million dollar projects. Having one showed that you had arrived and were a major player in international development. Success for me meant professional recognition and, more importantly, the biggest challenge and thrill of all: putting your ideas to work on a grand scale and making a real and lasting difference to peoples’ live. Nothing had prepared me for the effort required to prepare the proposal. We formed a small group and consulted widely across my organisation. We worked closely with a dedicated BMGF programme officer. Budgets were constructed, theories of change were created as the details and shape of our proposal slowly came together. First we had to produce a concept proposal. I was in Kathmandu when I received news that this had been accepted. I jumped up and down on my hotel bed and had an adrenaline rush that lasted for a day. I also realised this was only the beginning. It took six months, long days and nights, countless meetings and lots of back and forward comments and revisions. We passed all the vetting and the proposal was officially submitted to the board. Hopes were high when I received the phone call from our dedicated programme officer, who had nursed, probed and encouraged us at every stage. He was deeply sorry. The ultimate hustle had failed. I was fifty-seven and this seemed like the end of the road. The putting together of the proposal was an enthralling and deeply rewarding intellectual exercise. We were challenged to create an ambitious project that I’m immensely proud of. BMGF turned us down at the very last moment and, to their credit, recognized that they’d let us down. Fortunately other donors were more impressed and over the next twelve years CABI obtained huge funding from other donors. My own career had come to halt, at least with my employer, and I left CABI a year later. Plant Clinic in Nicaragua I continue to hustle as an independent consultant, but on a smaller scale and in a more gentle manner. Twenty years of bidding for projects was exhausting, often disappointing but ultimately thrilling. Projects have taken me around the world, allowed me to work with wonderful people in enthralling places and delivered huge professional and personal rewards. None of this would have happened without a fight to have my ideas accepted. Research careers in international development are still uncertain and constantly under threat but it is possible to succeed with a little hustle here and there.

by Dr Jehad Al-Omari Two months ago, my 8-year-old niece, who is living with us, looked up from her iPad and told me that she had received 2,000 views on a video she had made herself and published on a gaming platform on the internet. She was casually slouched in her chair and pronounced this achievement as a matter of fact but was secretly very pleased with herself. I was thrilled to hear about this and envious that I had personally never managed such a feat during my years on Facebook, which exceeded her age. I told myself that this is the world that my niece belongs to. I thought, being bilingual in Arabic and English at her young age, there is a great future awaiting her, particularly as a middle-class kid with Westernized parents. There is a high likelihood that she may gravitate towards the West as a young woman, either to further her studies or to live there permanently. This has been the case for generations of young, middle-class Arabs, including myself. A few days after the eruption of the war on Gaza she came back from school at lunch-time and lectured us on the importance of boycotting a whole range of products, including her favourite soft drinks and fast-food brands, in solidarity with Gaza and against their makers’ unconditional support of Israel. She extracted a pledge from us and resumed her lunch, content with her moment of heroism and sacrifice. About a week later she was telling me about the re-appearance of a young Gazan kid on social media whose name is Abood and who she, along with other kids, thought had been killed in the bombing. Abood is possibly 14 years old, calls himself a young journalist and is actually very witty, articulate and an unbelievably brave kid, standing amidst the wrecked buildings of Gaza and reporting on various aspects of life in the war zone. My niece told me that it appears that Abood had survived because for every kid that dies in Gaza, he gets two lives!!! I could not believe what she said and when I tried to reason with her, she told me that he is a superhero. You cannot stop wondering how this fairytale will evolve in her mind as she grows up. Last week as the war on Gaza intensified, she constructed a tent on the balcony of our third-floor flat in Amman and spent most of her time in it. This was all happening in peaceful Jordan, hundreds of miles from war-torn Gaza and in the relative security of a privileged family. We can only imagine what the current events are doing to Gazan children of her age, witnessing the bombing day in day out, knowing that their school friends are lying under the rubble of a building not far from what used to be their playgrounds. It is estimated that by now almost one million of Gaza’s population has been made refugees in their own land, sheltering in schools, United Nations centres, hospitals and the houses of relatives. When the events began to escalate in Gaza, particularly by the end of the first week, I reached out to my ex-partner in London, teasing her as to why I had not heard from her. She told me that she had not been feeling well but she was better now, and we chatted about how events were unfolding. She told me in a parting joke that she knows just the right man to solve all of this: ex-prime minister of Britain, Tony Blair. As weeks went by and as I followed the unprecedented demonstrations in London, I imagined that she would be there among the crowd. I thought of the kind of conversations we would next have: she would tell me about these demonstrations and compare them with our experience when we attended the great rally in 2003 against the war in Iraq led by George Bush and Tony Blair. Sadly, this conversation never happened and will never occur. I received a call from her sister a week ago informing me that she had died in her sleep a few days earlier. I sit here writing this article, almost two weeks after her departure, unable to grieve properly, mourn her or talk about it with my friends who are all too occupied with the war on Gaza. But then I compare myself with the tens of thousands of Gazans who have lost beloved ones over the past five weeks and will continue to do so as long as Israel’s killing machine desires; and as long as it can withstand the rising international pressure against its war crimes of collective punishment, the targeting of civilians, ethnic cleansing and genocide. Undoubtedly the Israeli people have suffered from the beginning of this cycle of violence and may also continue to do so. However, two facts stand out here that are mostly absent in Western media. Firstly, the fact that this cycle of violence did not start on the 7th October but rather 75 years ago in 1948 when approximately 750,000 Palestinians were evicted from their homes and entire villages were obliterated or massacred to make way for the emerging state of Israel. Some of these refugees ended up in Gaza, which is the most densely populated place in the world and generally accepted as its biggest open prison. Secondly and most importantly, this recent eruption of violence would not have been so severe and ruthless had it not been for the unconditional support of Western governments to the point that the US Foreign Ministry continues to debate whether Israel has committed any war crimes when such crimes are perpetrated in front of cameras. The events that have been happening over the past weeks have posed many questions, not only about the immediate future of the Palestinians, particularly those in Gaza, but also about how we as Arabs will redefine our relationship with the West, both as individuals and countries. How my niece, as she grows older, will see the West is a major thing for her new generation, unlike my generation who became highly Westernized and feel deeply let down by it. More importantly, it is ironic how the USA blatantly and openly jeopardized stability in the Middle East region, particularly by undermining its Arab allies who the US Americans call “moderates”, and supported the most right-wing Israeli government unconditionally and unreservedly at the cost of not only rising anti-Western feelings in the Arab world but also rising pro-Palestinian support across the West. How the ‘Establishment’ in Western capitals will seek to address these major shifts in public opinion at home and abroad is yet to be seen. However, I am not optimistic, as the likes of Tony Blair and George Bush got away scot-free with their war on Iraq despite the fact that it is common knowledge now that the weapons of mass-destruction allegedly stockpiled by the Iraqi regime were never there in the first place. Living here in Jordan, like many places in the Middle East, we are daily bombarded by Western initiatives to promote human rights, democracy, women’s rights and God knows what other rights. We have sheepishly believed for a long time in the morality of the West. Yet this same West has failed miserably to save hospitals, places of worship and schools from Israeli bombing that will continue for the foreseeable future. Few Western leaders have spoken out for fear of upsetting the Israel government and its influential lobbies. As someone who has spent a lifetime trying to improve dialogue between East and West, I feel my efforts have been futile. For what could have been louder than the bodies of thousands of Palestinians being pulled out of the rubble in front of live TV cameras? The West needs no lessons in cross-cultural communication but in basic humanity. For this article, I chose not to give detailed accounts of the atrocities and historical facts. These are now available online. I also chose not to use horrific scenes from the war zone but only the simple photo at the head of the article of an ordinary young Palestinian refugee from Gaza heading south with her beloved cat. The Palestinians have no death wish to be martyrs. They love life like the rest of us and love all creatures, great and small.

by Richard Pooley White Rhino, Okonjima, Namibia* Photo: R Pooley “Not again! What’s the fascination with African wildlife? You can see it all in Attenborough’s documentaries.” Such was the reaction a few months ago from a member of my family when I told them I was off to Namibia for a couple of weeks in October/November (and an extra few days either side in South Africa). It was a familiar refrain. This time there was an extra point scorer: “Besides it’s bad for the planet. Long-haul flights. Your Greta Thunberg wouldn’t approve.” This last dig was one of the reasons why my wife didn’t join me, much though she has enjoyed three previous trips to eastern and southern Africa. Aviation is responsible for about 5% of global warming. The average annual carbon footprint per person in the UK is 12.7 tonnes CO2e (Carbon Dioxide equivalent, a term which groups all the greenhouse gases into one common unit). I flew economy London – Johannesburg – Windhoek and back, a total footprint of 3.471 tonnes CO2e: more than a quarter of a Brit's average yearly amount in just 26 hours. Tut, tut. In the UK my wife and I use our car as little as possible. We walk to the supermarket to buy food. This has to be done more frequently than in the past. More exercise. Good. We usually go by train to our house in France. So, why harm the planet by flying all the way to southern Africa? There are two reasons, one emotional, the other economic. David Attenborough does indeed produce superb documentaries on the Earth’s wildlife and wild places (though he and his team must produce vast amounts of greenhouse gases doing so). Likewise the people at the National Geographic and Discovery TV channels. But fascinating and moving as such films are they cannot give you the holistic, multi-sensory experience that comes from ‘being there’. They appeal to the visual and auditory senses. But they cannot, for example, give you that intoxicating smell of water on the wind which announces the arrival of the Rains after months of drought, which has had me more than once dancing in the rain and floodwater of Africa. Nor the delicious chickeny, slightly fishy, taste of crocodile meat cooked over mopane wood. Nor, to be negative for a moment, the aches and scratches after hours of juddery driving over corrugated dirt roads and rock-strewn tracks in 35-degree heat, at risk of being snagged or stabbed by thorns, all willingly borne in an attempt to see, maybe, a rare animal or bird. Take one experience of many I had in Namibia. Together with two trackers and a guide I was out shortly after dawn in the desert moonscape of scattered basalt and granite rocks of the vast Palmwag Concession (5,500 sq. km.) which borders the aptly-named Skeleton Coast. The only plants are those which can survive the lack of water and intense heat – a stunted shepherd’s tree (Boscia albitrunca – with the deepest known roots in the world; one in the Kalahari measured 68 metres or 223 feet), a tiny quiver tree (actually an aloe - Aloidendron dichotomum - its fat branches hollowed out by the Bushmen/San to make quivers for their arrows), and many Damara milkbushes (Euphorbia damarana – highly poisonous to humans – 11 tin miners in Uis died after eating meat cooked over a fire made from its wood – but browsed happily by black rhino and oryx). Damara milkbush, Palmwag Concession, Namibia Photo: R Pooley I was hoping to find and get close to a black rhino. Though not too close. Unlike their white cousins, they are notoriously aggressive and will charge at the slightest provocation. Despite the harsh terrain, lack of water and intense heat, the black rhino in this area are thriving, free from their greatest enemy – poachers paid by criminal gangs in China and south-east Asia who have conned their male clients into believing the cartilage that makes up a rhino’s horn will give them an erection. When, as a teenager in the later 1960s, I first visited a national park in Africa - Luangwa Valley in Zambia – I would see a black rhino on almost every game drive. By 1998 there was not one left in the whole country. In some parts of Africa, including Zambia, black rhinos have been reintroduced in this century. There are believed to be around 5,000 left in the world. The largest concentration are here in the Palmwag. Why? Because of tourists like me who pay to see the animals and learn their behaviour from trackers who themselves may well have once been poachers. I saw two rhinos that day. One, a 29-year old bull, allowed me to get close enough that I could have taken a photo with my phone without zooming. But I hadn’t come primarily to take photos, much to the surprise and obvious pleasure of the Save the Rhino Trust trackers, Lazarus and Cissé. I just wanted to be there and watch and learn. Lazarus had known the rhino for most of those 29 years. Cissé spoke for him: “He’s getting too old. He does not get too angry any more. But he still has the biggest territory. He will mate soon. When the rain comes.” “What if it doesn’t come?” I asked. There has been no rain since December last year. “He will still mate. Gestation is 15 months. So, next year’s rains are what is important for the calf’s survival.” I learned later that this rhino had had his horns cut when young, a common practice in Namibia in order to make killing rhinos pointless. But, like human fingernails, rhino horns grow back. This one had a very long front horn. 2000-year old Bushmen/San rock engravings at Twyfelfontein, Namibia. Present-day San say this was a blackboard to teach children animal shapes and tracks. Can you spot the snake? If you scoff at my emotional and selfish argument for going to Namibia, you need to consider the economic and conservationist argument. There were fifteen tourists staying at the Desert Rhino lodge in the Palmwag the two nights I was there. We provided direct employment to at least twice that number of people. Namibia at 820,000 sq. km. is four times the size of Great Britain yet has no more people – 2.5 million – than can be found in Greater Manchester. Mining accounts for 37% of the country’s exports. But tourism is coming up fast. It’s now the third largest generator of income and employs far more people than mining does. Crucially, much of the money raised from conserving Namibia’s wildlife is going back into local communities. Norman Carr, a pioneering conservationist in Zambia’s Luangwa Valley, said back in the 1960’s that “governments won’t conserve an impala just because it’s pretty” but they, and local people, will do so if they can see that it’s worth more to them alive than dead. 86 communal conservancies, covering about 163,000 sq. km. and involving some 190,000 people, have been established in Namibia. These allow local communities to take charge of the wildlife in their area and decide for themselves how to earn money from its conservation. I stayed in six lodges across northern Namibia. All were full of mostly European tourists (especially Germans and French). Each one was staffed and managed by Namibians. You'd be excited too if you found so much lush greenery in a dried-up riverbed. Photo: R Pooley We humans need to cut our carbon footprint as much as we can. But there is little point in “saving the planet” if we and our domesticated animals and cultivated plants are all that’s left in it. We must also save Earth’s wildlife and wild places. Without people willing to go far and pay good money to experience Nature, there will be no more Nature to experience. *The name is a result of a linguistic misunderstanding, probably by a monolingual Englishman: ‘white’ from the Afrikaans ‘wye’, meaning ‘wide’. This rhino uses its wide mouth to eat grass. The smaller, but no darker, black rhino has the pointed snout needed by a browser of bushes. As it happens such an Afrikaans-English misinterpretation caused a problem during the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup between South Africa and England on 22 October. I was with some South African rugby fans in a National Park four hours north-west of Johannesburg. During the match a white English player, Tom Curry, complained to the referee that the black South African hooker, Bongi Mbonambi, had used a racial slur during a scrum. The British media were uncharacteristically vague about what was actually said. My amused Afrikaans-speaking friends were crystal clear. Their team speak Afrikaans to each other so that their opponents don’t know their tactics. Someone on the South African side of the scrum asked which team was putting the ball into the scrum. Mbonambi, his head squeezed between two English heads, bellowed: “Wit kant” (“the white side”, i.e. the English, who wear white). Shout that with a typical South African accent and you may understand why Curry was offended. Even so... Many thanks to Sandy Wood, founder and managing director of Johannesburg-based Pulse Africa, the tour operator who arranged my Namibian trip. Born and raised in Kenya, where I first met her in 1974, Sandy has long been my go-to person for any trip I wish to make to eastern and southern Africa. She’s never let me down. Contact her via www.pulseafrica.com if you want to 'be there’.

by Jean-Luc Barbanneau Photo: Optilingo This little story starts with me waiting nervously in the anteroom of a Magistrates Court in Brighton in 1975, not because of any crime, I hasten to make clear – though I was about to commit a minor offence of lèse-majesté... I was there for the final step in my acquiring British nationality, swearing allegiance to the Crown. I was nervous because I had just been given a small card with the words that I was to solemnly utter in front of the august panel I was about to face. And I could immediately see the problem. It was this bit that jumped at me “...her Majesty the Queen and all her heirs...” The difficulty might not seem obvious, unless you are French. One of the banes of a native French speaker trying to pronounce English correctly is that troublesome letter ‘h’. It is mostly aspirated as in ‘house’ but then to complicate matters there are words in which it is silent such as ‘hour’ or ‘honest’ (bear with me, I’m still learning after fifty years...). And the greatest difficulty for a French speaker is that there is no such thing as exhaling to pronounce any letter in French. It is a totally unknown concept. All right, you can point to the frequent French habit of exaggerated blowing of air that usually accompanies the clichéd ‘Oh, la, la’ but that is a free-wheeling demonstration of emotion (in the French genes), not precise pronunciation of a word. The aspirated ‘h’ remains forever bizarre, as does putting the tip of one’s tongue between one’s teeth to produce the other sound that repeatedly defeats French learners of English, the ‘th’ sound. You can produce it in French but only if you want to talk in a silly way, imitating a toddler. Anyway, I am glad to say I have mostly mastered the ‘th’, but the ‘h’, silent or not, still regularly trips me up, so that I often incongruously morph into a faux cockney. Which can be amusing, to others. But this solemn declaration in front of their honourable (there it goes again...) justices was a serious matter. So, I practised discreetly as I waited to be called in: “...I swear allegiance to her Majesty the Queen and all her (h)eirs...”, attracting strange looks from the police officer in the room. I went in anxiously and had to find inner assertiveness to turn down the Bible and to state that I wished to “affirm”, which caused a few raised highbrows. Inevitably, when the moment came, I proceeded, in as firm a voice as I could muster, to swear allegiance to “...’er Majesty the Queen and all ’er hairs...”. The justices were not amused. By that time, I was speaking a fluent and only subtly accented English but I remained dissatisfied with my command of the language. When friends and acquaintances insisted that I was as good as a native speaker, it reminded me of people pretending not to notice a physical disability, well-meaning but not to be wholly believed. In my relatively brief teaching years, no such sensitivity was shown by the pupils – in their cruel innocence, they knew how to be implacably truthful, never missing a chance to mock when I mispronounced a word. I was last in a classroom over forty years ago but those in my English family have never allowed me to forget that I once revealed I had caused students’ hilarity by pronouncing “awry” as “aw-ry”. After all these years I have become good enough to pass as a native speaker among strangers as long as conversations do not last very long – that is, until I am tripped up by the vagaries of stress. Being unsure where the stress is meant to fall is the curse of a foreign speaker of English, particularly anyone whose first language is French. I am not talking about the few words that are subject to a controversy/controversy, but about the vast majority where rules (never fully integrated by my brain) or established practice (not naturally acquired) should apply. I can’t always stop and think before I speak to decide if it’s dependability or dependability. Stress is a real minefield, especially because French is an unstressed language. The French might be easily given to emotional verbal displays but their language is flat – or at least there is no ordained stress on a certain syllable as in multi-syllable English words. On that particular score at least, French is more straightforward than English – French démocracie is easier to deal with than English democracy (if perhaps not in real life...). Even trickier is the handling of stress in compound constructions – the ones that can change meaning from a suit that is wet to a wetsuit you wear in cold water. It is all very stressful. With an artificially learnt tongue, you are always an immigrant in the language landscape. You can never become as fully able as a native speaker, just more adept at concealing your impairment. Far from being fully bilingual, you end up being disabled in both languages. Stranded between the two. Awkward in both to different degrees. And the more you immerse yourself in the new language, the more you become a less than perfect performer in your original language, gradually losing fluency through lack of practice. At first, it’s a case of still being able to call up the right words but finding that they come into your brain in the syntax and constructions of the new language, and you soon get stuck. Frustratingly, the first thing that is curtailed in your original tongue is the language of emotions and feelings. (This is linked to my failure to bring up bilingual children, but that is another story.) If you feel emotions in English, it becomes really difficult to express them in French. There are too many hurdles and you quickly reach dead ends and blockages, falling prey to hesitancy and false starts. Not so much lost in translation as fumbling in translation. Eventually after some years, you start having to make an effort to recall certain words (how do you say ‘predicament’ in French again?). Not to speak of the muddy waters of common words with different meanings in each language, the notorious faux amis. As an aside to this, I can’t help feeling irritated by the currency that the phrase “economical with the actualité” has acquired in Britain. It was originally created by, Alan Clark, a colourful English Conservative politician (and womaniser and diarist), and is now widely used by journalists, even though it is nonsensical, a classic case illustrating the perils of faux amis, enticing because of using a word instantly recognisable in one’s own language but in fact inappropriate. The word that should be used there is réalité. Actualité is mostly used in French to denote something happening contemporaneously or, in the plural, to mean ‘the news’. But there is no going back. For the sake of balance, I should say that the French are just as likely to get things wrong, and not just with faux amis. For example, not only have they adopted faire du footing for jogging, but they have now gone way beyond this to invent le fooding to describe everything that the people we call ‘foodies’ get up to – discovering new restaurants, going to farmers’ markets, being interested in cooking, in ingredients and recipes. Then, to go back to le footing, they have a chain of shoe shops specialising in trainers called Athlete Foot – a monstrous creation if ever there was one. And there is the whole realm of mispronunciations that, in a meme sort of way, can create new words – or at least new franglais words – to the chagrin of the language purists. (Full disclosure is perhaps required here, as I may well be one myself.) I once could not help doing a slight mental double take when one my brothers said to me, “Passe-moi mon sweet, s’il te plait”, asking me to hand over his sweatshirt. You can easily see the genesis, a shortened version and a mispronunciation and you end up wearing a bonbon. Sweet, really. Another puzzling one was being told that this particular restaurant was very hype, mispronounced ‘[h]ip’. I then realised in coming across it in magazine reviews that this was being used to mean what we would indeed term ‘hip’ in English – fashionable, trendy. Maybe it had occurred because the places it was applied to had been the subject of ‘hype’, and the two concepts got mixed up, with meaning and pronunciation ending up meshed in a nonsensical way. You can easily get lost in the labyrinth of language… Beyond issues of translation, you become aware of the conceptual distance between the two languages, some examples of which are mystifying and occasionally entertaining (the latter being an example of this itself as I don’t think amusant conveys the same meaning). French people, it appears, don’t ‘look forward to’ anything, or at least they have to use a lot more words to express something akin to it but even that to my mind is a long way from what is meant in English and how often it is used. Nor can you tell them to 'enjoy it' – there is no way that profitez-en bien (the closest I can think of) has the same connotations. It’s more to do with ‘making the most of it’, which has less implication of delight to be had. Going in the other direction, why is there no English word for frileux/frileuse? English, usually pithier than French, has to use more words and say ‘sensitive to the cold’. This is in danger of turning into a nerdy disquisition on the intricacies of coping with two languages but difficult to avoid, as I have spent a lot of my life wrestling with words (sometimes desperately...), first as a learner of a second language, briefly as a teacher, and for a long time working as an editor in publishing. Come to think of it, I did also, at least for a few years in my ‘alternative side activity’ as a psychotherapy counsellor, spend quite a bit of time listening to others wrestling with words too. Before leaving this theme, I will allow myself the indulgence of venting a little about two personal bugbears (maybe the mention of counselling has triggered this off). I will do this in an ‘equal-opportunity’ way by castigating both sides – and inevitably there will be some generalisation. First, I have never understood why so many French people when speaking English don’t even try to at least approximate the ‘sound’ and intonation of English. I recently heard a renowned French academic, based in the States, speaking fluently and at length about her subject (immigration and wages) in grammatically perfect English – but an English that for a few seconds sounded to my ears like French. It did not have the rhythm and sound of English; it was just a flat flow but made up of often mispronounced English words. Weird, especially as what she was saying was very interesting. It was not just the use of ‘ze’ or the missing non-silent aitches but many basic (which, by the way, she insisted on pronouncing ‘baahsic’) mistakes in words she must have heard correctly spoken hundreds of times by students and colleagues. How come she did not take any notice? I once had to brief a French woman who came in as a supply teacher. She spoke in a similar fashion to the academic. To make polite conversation, I asked her how long she had been in England, expecting a relatively recent arrival. Her response was, “Oh, I ’ave bin ’ere sirty yirss.” And I wondered, was it thirty years of deliberate resistance (but to what purpose?) or simply a kind of linguistic tone deafness? Whatever the reason for this deficiency, it has at least been a gift to comedy writers. My other bugbear is the native English speaker’s wanton use of idiomatic expressions that are bound to be opaque to their foreign interlocutors. This is particularly prevalent on the part of highly educated people and it has made me cringe on many occasions in my professional life in international publishing. I am making up these examples as I do not recall the details of actual long-past incidents, but they are not far-fetched. It is embarrassing to hear someone answering a stumbling, “How are you?” from, say, a Spanish collaborator with, “Fit as a fiddle!” And then to tell them that you can’t make a delivery “at the drop of a hat” and that they should “cut you some slack”. Or even that they should just “bite the bullet”, otherwise it could be the “last straw” and you’d have to “call it a day”. Taking a leaf (ha!) from the famous Manuel in Fawlty Towers, my poor hypothetical Spaniard would be fully justified in reacting with a bewildered and possibly irascible “Qué?” And one last petty point – please don’t talk to foreigners of ‘bank holidays’ (“Oh, you have special days when banks are closed?”), call them what they are in every other country: public holidays. Having got all this off my chest (yes, it’s difficult to avoid...), it is time to close on a more positive note. In spite of all the hurdles, some of them insurmountable, learning another language is of huge benefit. A second language is not just for communication, it opens mental doors, gives access to new vistas of existence, develops a new state of mind. You think differently, you feel differently, you add a new layer to your whole being. For me, learning English was also a form of emotional exile. It allowed me an escape from my post-Algerian traumas, from the profound ambivalence I was suffering from about living in France and being French. It had been symbolic of travelling in my teenage years, of escaping the narrow confines of a provincial town. And when permanently moving to Britain, it was a way of turning a page, of starting afresh – of immersing myself in another universe, shedding at least some of the burden of my childhood. As with many other aspects of my move to Britain, it was a kind of liberation. I did not fall in love just with the country, I loved the language too. This is a slightly edited version of a chapter from To This Northern Shore, Pieces of a life from South to North, a memoir, by Jean-Luc Barbanneau, published by Lexus Books. Jean-Luc Barbanneau was born in Algiers, of French, Italian and Spanish descent. Part of his childhood coincided with the Algerian war of independence. The dramatic outcome of this conflict led to a first exile to France. As a student in Paris, he was involved in the événements of May 1968 and then moved to the UK. After a few years teaching in Brighton, he began a long career in publishing in London and Oxford. He now lives on the east coast of Scotland, near Edinburgh.

by Denis Lyons MI6 HQ, Albert Embankment, London Photo: Denis Lyons Kate Simpson, a rising star at MI6 and thrilled to be back in London after her Moscow posting, studies James Oliphant, the improbably handsome young man sitting in front of her. The meeting had been suggested two weeks earlier by Rupert Colefax-Villiers, her dishevelled - and sporadically brilliant - rugby-mad boss. Kate was still riding the wave of popularity which had greeted her on her recent return from Moscow where she had “scored a couple of spectacular tries” as Colefax-Villiers put it. Modestly, Kate had tried to explain to Colefax-Villiers - or Loopy Rupy, as he was widely known - that the “tries” had not been all that difficult. After all, she had been extremely well trained. “Also,” Kate added, “our targets are usually male and, frankly, when a women cultivates them as a source, their guard just seems to be a couple of notches lower than it is for my male colleagues.” “Nonsense,” Colefax-Villiers had snorted, keen to avoid any hint that he considered Kate was playing with an unfair gender advantage. Such a slip would have blown his cover as a fully paid-up member of the oppressive male patriarchy. Anyway, advantage or not, she was still more effective than most of her male contemporaries. “Piece of advice, Kate? If there’s any credit going - take it!” “Fine,” Kate agreed in a ‘discretion is the better part of valour’ sort of way. “Thanks, but what is this Oliphant thing about?” “PM’s getting his Armani boxers knotted over this endless dirty Russian money saga. Putin’s old oligarch cronies fell out of favour, converted their ill-gotten gains into palatial Belgravia properties, you know the sort of thing. Jibes about Londongrad, Moscow-on-Thames, the London Laundromat, Eaton Square becoming Red Square, ritzy neighbourhoods becoming graveyards at night because the Russian owners don’t actually live there - that sort of stuff.” “But that’s been going on for a long time.” “Yes, but when Russia invaded Ukraine last year we brought in a slew of new laws to sanction Russian oligarchs and freeze their assets here, including their mansions.” “Let me make a wild guess - the PM’s shorts are knotted because the laws aren’t working?” “Correct. Not fast enough anyway.” “But everyone knows that. Why is he getting worked up now?” “Why? The rapidly approaching General Election is why. Dirty Russian money is back on his ‘To Do’ list. The PM already has so much sleaze to contend with that he can do without the opposition renewing headlines like ‘Boris’s alleged close encounter with glamour model's cleavage at Italian villa owned by Russian spy’s son.’ Particularly when it was Boris who nominated Lebedev, the Russian spy’s son, to a seat in the House of Lords.” “So, essentially you need to give our spreadsheet-loving PM some happy hard numbers about freezing Russian properties, in order to distract from sleazy Russian-related cleavage stories which Labour might resurrect during the next General Election campaign?” “Exactly.” Colefax-Villiers beamed. “I knew I’d picked the right person for the job.” “What is the job?” “Ah, yes. James Oliphant. I want you to do your thing, Kate,” Colefax-Villiers had instructed her. “Reel him in. He knows more about funny Russian money in London properties than anyone. Theoretically the new laws should help us identify every Russian owner and in many cases they do. But you can still drive a bus through the loopholes available in corporate and trust ownership structures. And it doesn’t help that we happen to have a world-leading treasure island archipelago of tax havens, starting with the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and a dozen others.” “So Oliphant can help us pierce the ownership veils?” “Possibly. Here’s his file. Just source him at this stage. Absolutely no need to recruit him. Not yet anyway.” “You’ve cleared this with Millbank?” “Of course. And with the Cabinet Office, and the Met, and the NCA, and Uncle Tom…” “Thanks, Rupert." Curzon Square, Mayfair, London Photo: Denis Lyons So here was Kate two weeks later, in her new office on the top floor of a discreetly opulent building on Curzon Square, a sleepy little enclave tucked away at the Park Lane end of Curzon Street. The premises were just large enough for Kate and her three colleagues who were there to help with research and generally lend credibility. The brass plate on the door of her office suite read simply, ‘Curzon Business Services’. “Apart from raising chickens,” Colefax-Villiers had said, “it should cover pretty much anything you need to get up to. Especially this Russian thing.” It also served as a cover for Colefax-Villiers’s regular visits to Mayfair - a much more congenial habitat for him than dingy old Vauxhall and the bomb-proof HQ fortress which, he often thought, could easily pass for an Art Deco shopping mall. And the Vauxhall citadel would obviously not have worked as a venue for this morning’s interview with James Oliphant, the young man sitting opposite Kate, draped stylishly in the Annibale Colombo armchair salvaged from Colefax-Villiers’s country house. Kate already knew that Oliphant was an Etonian but, mercifully, she thought, his personality and presentation were more Eddie Redmayne than Jacob Rees-Mogg. To enhance his good looks, Oliphant had assembled an artful package of self-deprecating humour, carefully disarranged hair and expensively curated casual togs which had proved irresistible to his wealthy real estate clients - especially the female ones. “Full marks for working the gender advantage,” Kate noted appreciatively to herself. What Kate also knew about Oliphant, this quintessential English gentleman in his late 30s, was that his name wasn't really Oliphant. And that he wasn’t really English. She wasn’t sure about the gentleman bit, but she had her suspicions. James Oliphant was born Konstantin Komarov in St Petersburg where his father, Oleg, made one of the early fortunes in the media sector during the 90s after the Soviet Union collapsed. As Oleg built his media empire in St Petersburg, he kept a wary eye on another local boy called Putin, who was ruthlessly building his own shadowy empire. Some sixth sense told Oleg that the good times under Yeltsin could not last forever. And so, in 1998, before Putin became Tsar, Oleg quietly moved most of his money to assorted tax havens, took his family to London and never appeared on the UK sanctions list. Assisted by private tutors, school placement consultants, discreet name changes, hard work and, perhaps, the tacit promise of future endowments, Oleg was eventually able to steer clever young James to a place at Eton and his equally clever sister Larisa to Wycombe Abbey. Like butterflies from their chrysalises, they both duly emerged from school with socially reliable English manners and accents. Kate was well aware that the ladies buying Oliphant’s act and his properties were often wives, sisters, daughters and mistresses fronting for their relatives, the anonymous buyers. There might still be willing buyers, Kate reflected, but the recent tide of sanctions and anti-money laundering laws must be cramping his style. “Oliphant is certainly decorative, but how useful is he likely to be?” she wondered. As if on cue, Oliphant flashed her a winning smile and asked, “How can I help you?” An impish voice at the back of Kate’s mind whispered that, in another life, and another place, she might just have been tempted to tell him. He went on, “Your assistant told me that you have a wealthy client looking to invest in luxury London properties in the £10 million and upwards range, but that’s about it.” “Actually, it’s the opposite.” “Meaning?” “Our client wants to sell a UK residential property portfolio of around £100 million. You have a successful track record helping wealthy overseas investors and we’d like to see how you might do the same for our client.” Despite his easy smile, Kate could tell that she had thrown his mental gears into reverse. “Selling...that’s different. You might be a bit late. Is your client connected with Russia in any way?” “The client is a company, not an individual but, for the sake of discussion, why would a Russian connection be relevant?” “A company, a trust, an individual – it makes no difference if there is seen to be any sort of Kremlin link. The UK has sanctioned over 1,600 individuals and 238 entities thought to be connected with the Russian regime. And 129 oligarchs with a combined net worth of over £145 billion have also been targeted. Their bank accounts, properties, and businesses are frozen - so they can’t sell or rent their properties.” “And it’s illegal for you to act on their behalf?” “Yes.” “But how do they live if their assets are frozen?” “Well….the talk is tough, but occasionally the laws have been applied more tentatively. Take Mikhail Fridman of Moscow and Highgate, for example. He features on the sanctions list for ‘carrying on business in a sector of strategic significance to the Government of Russia, namely the Russian financial services sector.’ For a while he was allowed to pay £1,974.43 monthly for CCTV and £24,083 monthly for seven security staff at his Highgate house which he bought for £65 million in 2016. But last month the High Court confirmed an earlier decision denying him access to the cash he needed to pay over £30,000 in monthly running costs. Last I heard he was back in Moscow.” Oliphant smiled wryly. “That’s one house sale I wouldn’t want to handle.” “What about properties owned by corporations or trusts? Don’t the ultimate owners remain anonymous?” “Some still are, but the net is tightening. The UK’s new Register of Overseas Entities means that anonymous foreign owners are supposed to disclose their identities. But there is still a glimmer of hope for the larcenous. I’ve seen a report that said ‘for 35 per cent of the 152,000 properties owned via overseas shell companies, even law enforcement agencies do not know the true identities of the beneficial owners.’ Not entirely surprising given that the laws relating to companies - and companies owned through trusts - are eye-watering enough here in the UK, before you even get to the offshore tax havens.” “But you might know some of those owners?” Kate smiled as innocently as she could. “Absolutely not.” Quick as a flash, indicating that he absolutely did. Late the next day, Kate surveyed the rumpled form of Colefax-Villiers which was draped uncomfortably in the Annibale Colombo armchair. “Never did like this thing,” he muttered. “Anyway - bottom line?” “Bottom line is that there is no quick headline fix for the PM. Oliphant knows what we all know, and probably a lot more, but the problem is enormous. Transparency International identified nearly £7 billion in questionable international funds invested in UK property between 2016 and 2022 - £1.5 billion of it by Russians accused of corruption, or Kremlin links. And this could be just the tip of the iceberg given that over half the properties identified were held here by opaque companies in offshore tax shelters. Even worse, at the start of the war in Ukraine, another analysis identified 1,895 Russian-owned properties in London alone - over three times higher than the official figures.” “What else?” Colefax-Villiers winced. He was definitely not looking forward to his next chat with the Cabinet Office intelligence team. “Well, Transparency International identified 2,189 companies registered in the UK and its Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies which were used in 48 Russian money laundering and corruption cases involving ‘over £82 billion worth of funds diverted by rigged procurement, bribery, embezzlement and the unlawful acquisition of state assets.’ But we’re already aware of most of that, so there’s undoubtedly a lot more.” Colefax-Villiers grunted. Or possibly sighed. Kate couldn’t tell which. “Kate, I’m still waiting for the good news.” “You could say that the new laws are beginning to work, but slowly. Our friends at the National Crime Agency’s new Combating Kleptocracy Cell are doing what they can despite resource pressures, but it’s an uphill struggle.” “What about the UWOs?” “Ah, yes. The High Court can issue an Unexplained Wealth Order in suspicious cases but only a handful have ever been requested. For example, it is not generally known if Vladimir Gruzdev’s 8-year old daughter was ever the subject of an UWO or, if so, what her reaction might have been. Vladimir is a Russian billionaire who bought a Kensington flat for £2.3 million in 2000 - probably worth about £8 million today - through a Cayman Islands company. Then little Miss Gruzdev became the owner of the flat in February 2022, coincidentally about three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine.” “It might also help that they are making it compulsory for companies to do identity verification checks before they notify Companies House that they are appointing a new director. Many people mistakenly thought this was happening already. But there have been subtle clues that the system is not watertight. Like the case of the company with a Soho address and a director with an Italian name meaning ‘The Chicken Thief’ whose occupation was listed as ‘Fraudster’. Imagine the surprise when it was discovered that the company was Mafia-related.” Colefax-Villiers was now thoroughly depressed. “So you’re telling me that, with a little gentle pressure, Oliphant could probably lead us to a few anonymous Russians, but it would only be a drop in the ocean and we simply don’t have the resources to track them all down?” “Yes, precisely.” Kate paused and, as if in answer to Colefax-Villiers’s gloomy silence, she continued, “And, looking at all this, doesn’t it make you wonder how seriously the government is actually thinking about the billions being laundered here by non-Russians as well? They don’t need us to tell them we have a problem – just look at all the leaks about money laundering in the Panama papers, the Paradise Papers, the FinCEN Files and the Rotenberg Files among others.” “And what are we doing about all the foreign money being infiltrated into British politics by donors with questionable links? If UK political parties are supposed to be transparent about their sources of funds, why have they accepted £14 million over the past five years, funnelled to them via the ‘unincorporated association’ loophole which is only lightly regulated, and one where the source of funds can be fiendishly difficult to identify?” “And why, for example, did the government recently kill an amendment to the national security bill requiring political parties to identify the true source of donations?” Colefax-Villiers smiled glumly. “Steady, Kate. Ours is not to reason why.” Unwinding himself painfully from the offending Annibale Colombo, Colefax-Villiers sloped off, consoled by the prospect of a companionable gin and tonic along the road at Boodle’s. Endnote: For security reasons, I understand that Rupert Colefax-Villiers’s name does not appear on the membership list of any London club. It is likely, therefore, that he was visiting Boodle’s (left) as a member’s guest. Photo: Denis Lyons

by Vincent Guy “I was out in the garden planting out some carrots for the night fighters.” This line from ‘Beyond the Fringe’, the satirical show of 1960, makes fun of the idea that carrots might be useful for improving your night vision. So I went on to think the whole carrot/eye connection was nonsense. But no, the vitamin A they generate really does promote eye health; just not specifically night vision. A total absence of Vitamin A still causes widescale blindness (even death) in some parts of the world. Whence the night vision angle? From WW2 indeed, as the line suggested. Put about by the British Ministry of Propaganda, it was meant to suggest to the Germans why the British were knocking so many Nazi planes from the night sky, and conceal the real reason, which was the invention of radar. Why do people go on diets? For health or to lose weight, or a bit of both. There are plenty to choose from: a quick glance at Audible Books website offers no fewer than 14 different ways of listening yourself to a resonant regime. I write all this not as an expert, but as a layman struggling to get correctly informed. The first health diet I came across was during the hippy era: macrobiotics, somehow linked to the wisdom of the East; eating rice, the chewy brown version, not the fluffy white stuff, was the road to nutritional Nirvana. Then along came the Atkins diet (cut the carbs, binge on fats and protein) meant to reduce weight, but the death of the eponymous Atkins from cardiac arrest at a mere 73, damped down the fashion. A variant of Atkins lives on in the Keto Diet (cut carbohydrates to near zero). Before him was Hay (don’t mix acidic with alkaline foods). Hay the man made it to 74, but in 1940 not such bad going. Scientific evidence for these various approaches is, to coin a phrase, rather thin. There’s some truth in the book title Dieting Makes You Fat (Geoffrey Cannon, 1983). If diets do work, it’s at least in part by making people more aware of their food intake, rather than just shovelling it down. You might rather go back to the Victorian Prime Minister Gladstone who believed in chewing every mouthful at least 32 times, once for each tooth. He made it to the age of 91. Fast-growing in the 2020s is veganism (zero meat and dairy), built on concern over our impact on animals, the wider ecosystem, and our own health. A strict vegan approach will undersupply Vitamin B12 (add yeast flakes, shiitake mushrooms or tofu). For the calcium that conventional eating gets from dairy products, include plenty of beans, seeds and nuts. Another topic getting attention recently is the danger of UPF, Ultra Processed Foods (Ultra-Processed People, van Tulleken, 2023). This is basically anything that hasn’t been prepared and cooked in your own kitchen. UPFs range from pizzas, biscuits and supermarket bread to fizzy drinks, ice cream and cornflakes. And by the way, whisky, gin, rum and vodka are also on the list. All these things involve factories breaking ingredients down into near-molecular levels, then reconstituting them with added flavourings, emulsifiers, colourants, texture enhancers, sweeteners, and synthetic vitamins. At least sixteen artificial sweeteners are in common use, with names like Advantame, Sucralose, Sorbitol. Are they safe? Do they have long term negative effects on health or obesity? The evidence is at best mixed. In UPFs all the actual nutritive content has been scourged away and a host of near-toxins added in. Levels of sugar, saturated fat and salt remain high. No longer really food at all. The microbiome is a 21st century field of study and discovery, the word itself only defined in 1988. This is the mass of micro-organisms we carry around with us. Your body is made up of many trillions of cells, all guided by your DNA. But a similar number – fungi, viruses, bacteria – live on you and inside you; on your skin, your hair, even your eyelashes, but their main residence is in your innards, concentrated in the gut. The broad profile is established as you are born, modified by what you have eaten in the years since. To cull those little passengers within is not good; they are the heart of your immune system. Antibiotics, which fit very well with the germ theory of disease (i.e., if there’s a germ around, kill it), unfortunately also devastate the microbiome. We now realise it’s important to rebuild it after taking antibiotics (e.g. with live yogurt, onions, fibres). Buccal bugs (in your mouth) remain on the blacklist; but will the time come when halitosis gets a reprieve? Advice in the media, and even direct from doctors, flips around all the time… Coffee? Don’t touch it if you want to keep your heart ticking. - No, that little stimulus is good after all. Eggs? OMG! The cholesterol! Avoid! – Latest: eggs are excellent, plenty of protein, little fat, plus lutein and zeaxanthin (you can Google those two yourself). Milk? When I was a kid, it was top of the pops, delivered to our door by a friendly milkman, pecked at by the local robins, helping us all grow tall and strong-boned. At school we got free milk (to which we kids sneakily added chocolate powder, sugar and heat from the school radiators - yummee!). Mrs Thatcher, as Education Minister, scrapped school milk to save taxpayer money. Schoolkids’ reaction hit the headlines: “Thatcher! Thatcher! Milk Snatcher!”. Then suddenly milk was out, the source of high cholesterol inside and ballooning bellies outside. Today? Well, it depends who you ask. As part of an overall health check, I recently had a colonoscopy (photos taken inside my insides. The specialist advised me to stop eating nuts: “Tend to get trapped in the crevices, leading to inflammation”. For the next 3 days I went nutless, until I did some due diligence on the internet. According to widescale research reported by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), “nuts harm your guts” is total nonsense. Care is needed if you suffer from peanut allergy, but then peanuts aren’t really nuts. Deeper digging in the data reveals that going nuts on nuts brings a slightly enhanced risk of liver cancer, which my colonoscopist didn’t mention. Let’s look into vitamin D, an essential item which the body cannot create; lack of it brings rickets and bowlegs to the young, osteoporosis to the elderly. As it’s absent from most food, you must get out more, sit in the sun. But watch out, too much sun will bring your sunbathing days to an early cancerous close. So best to take a daily supplement. Hold on, mushrooms contain Vitamin D and the shrooms themselves can be put out to sunbathe and build up even more of that delightful D. More time with the googled data reveals two varieties of the magic compound: D2 and D3. Whatever happened to D1? Bear with me while we go into yet more detail. The correct dosage can be measured in at least two ways: IU/day (give me 400–800, please) or micrograms (that’ll be 10–20, thanks). And the heathy level in your blood stream? Tricky. The NIH propose 50 nmol/L or, if you prefer, 20 ng/mLnanograms per milliliter. Sadly, half the US population scores well below this which perhaps explains all those bow-legged cowboys (just don’t blame the horses). Within the EU you’ll get by on 30 nmol. In the UK it’s somewhere between the two (at least since Brexit). With me so far? Be careful you don’t overdo it. Over-D will lead to excessive calcium in your blood (hypercalcemia), which can cause nausea, vomiting, weakness, frequent urination, and stones in your kidneys. Not much to worry about there, then. My approach in practice? Diversify. I don’t observe or measure myself closely: I don’t do selfies, I haven’t weighed myself in years, don’t have a step monitor and have never counted a calorie. Not to say I don’t get obsessive. For example, my regular recipe for morning porridge includes at least 18 ingredients*, described in normal language, without considering the microscopic level or chemical structures. With the Neolithic revolution, farming boosted population survival but reduced dietary diversity. More of us survived but in poorer condition. This paradox is even greater today: people are living longer, populations are bursting, but narrowed food range means obesity, diabetes and other long-term debilities are increasing. We all live in a degree of ignorance; even the experts have only limited knowledge; scientific conclusions shift over time. So eat a highly diversified diet. On the one hand, you’re picking up at least a trace of that microbe or mineral, fungus or fibre that will do you some good. On the other, you’re not pumping yourself full of that harmful stuff which will only be found to be so ten years from now. *My porridge ingredients: oats (large and small flakes), buckwheat, millet, rye, barley, oat bran, wheat bran, kefir, yoghurt, raisins, 5 kinds of nuts [almond, brazil, cashew, pistachio, hazel], mixed seeds, and on top a swirl of honey or molasses, plus a handful of blueberries, chopped in half if time allows.

by Lynda Goetz Roedean, the prestigious private girls’ school in Brighton, announced recently that it is holding lessons on issues which will affect its pupils in later life: one of them is the menopause and the other is finance - investing wisely and making sure you have a decent pension. In fact, since 2019, the menopause has been included in the compulsory element of PSHE (Personal, Health, Social and Economic) education. Both matters seem eminently worthy of consideration. Women notoriously generally fail to secure as much in their pension pots as men and, although pensions and the menopause seem light years away when you are in your teens, being made aware of both early on must count as sensible preparation for life beyond school. In Scotland, or at least in South Ayrshire, schools are seemingly more concerned that children should ‘read woke’ and study books which claim that racism was invented by white people and that it is impossible to be racist against white people. In Wales last year, a group of parents lost a legal challenge against teaching children about gender identity in primary schools. At the end of October, the Education Secretary, Gillian Keegan sent out a letter to schools confirming that they should share RSHE (Relationships, Sex and Health Education) materials with parents, after concerns were expressed by MPs and parents that some teaching was inappropriate and that the material used was subject to copyright and could not be shown to parents. Apart from the obvious basics, what should schools be teaching children and how much should parents be involved? The world has changed dramatically in so many ways since the turn of the century. A lot of what past generations had taken for granted has been turned on its head. Information is freely available to all, in ways more accessible than ever. All you need is a small device, called a phone, but which of course is so much more. Books, newspapers, journalists, libraries…who needs such things when your favourite celebrity actress or erstwhile footballer can pronounce on any subject to their millions of followers on social media and influence the thinking of those followers? Who needs to remember facts when a few taps on a screen can give you not only the information, but what all those influencers currently think of those facts and how they interpret them. The only problem with all this is how on earth do you teach independent thought and how do you explain the importance of debate, discussion and the art of civilised disagreement in a world that is so polarised? How do you underline the need for community IRL (in real life) when so many of the young live in a virtual world that is an echo chamber? Of course, we are all predisposed to find like-minded souls, to seek out those who share our interests and our views, but it is also so important to be able to listen and to hear those who do not. Debate and discussion used to be part of education. They no longer are. As we have all witnessed in the last decade, the intolerance and polarisation has increased. Free speech is only allowed if you agree with the prevailing view. Protest is fine if you are protesting about the right things. Universities and even schools have become bastions of the illiberal left. Those who disagree are ‘cancelled’, ignored or accused of racism, transphobia, or ‘hate speech’, indeed anything to remove or silence them. How much of this is starting in schools and institutions and how in tune with the wider population are these institutions? The last week has been a case in point. Amidst heightened tensions, the Metropolitan Police (the same force where officers took the knee for Black Lives Matter) have not only allowed the protests for Palestine to go ahead and turned a blind eye to obvious cases of anti-Semitism, they have at the same time actively discouraged others from waving British flags (for their own ‘safety’) or from putting up posters of Jewish hostages held in Gaza following the horrendous massacre by Hamas in Israel on October 7th. Free speech is vitally important to our democracy, the right to march probably less so, particularly when those who are marching do not, self-evidently in many cases, respect our country’s values but are merely taking advantage of them. When we have amongst us those who have been welcomed in, but who clearly hold our culture in contempt, we are surely entitled to say enough is enough? Our politicians, academics and institutions, in so many cases, seem to be unclear or undecided as to what is important. It is important that our children are socialised, that they learn to interact with others and find those with whom they get on and to whom they relate. It is important that they find friends, that they value those friendships, that they do not bully or pick on those who are not their friends, that they learn tolerance and respect for others. It is equally important that they learn how to interpret facts and analyse information and that they recognise that others may not share their interpretation. To this end, it is equally important that teachers, from kindergarten to university, do not attempt to impose their own interpretation or world view onto those they are responsible for teaching. Too often in the last few decades, teachers have sought to impress their own ‘decolonising’ ideology, their own view of racism or their own ideas on gender identity onto impressionable minds. Children naturally look to teachers for information and guidance. It must surely be the responsibility of those who have gone into the teaching profession not to abuse that trust by attempting (as is the case under communist or autocratic regimes) to brainwash those in their care or under their tutelage. Teachers should not be condoning or encouraging confused children to conform to their ideas on gender identity; nor should they be teaching Critical Race Theory or ideas that racism cannot be perpetrated against white people (as notoriously voiced by Labour politician Diane Abbot earlier this year and American actress Whoopi Goldberg last year). PHSE is, according to the Department for Education (DfE), “an important and necessary part of all pupils’ education”. Since 2020, under the Children and Social Work Act, it is taught right through school from primary onwards with certain elements being compulsory. The PSHE Association is provided with funds by the DfE and offers materials and advice on teaching the subject to all age groups. It aims to “help children and young people stay healthy, safe and prepared for life - and work - in modern Britain”. The letter sent out by the Education Secretary in October (following on from the Press Release on 31st March) was an important admission that all has not been well in the world of teaching RSHE, but parents are still awaiting the new statutory guidance which has been promised by the end of the year. Our teachers should not be able to hide behind legal arguments about materials brought into their schools with their blessing any more than our police should be able to hide behind legal arguments about their plainly biased advisors understanding of the word ‘jihad’ or of the meaning of anti-Semitic chants. A lot has changed in the last few decades and much of it for the good, but we must not lose sight of what is important and what we need to stand up for.