Don't Be Glum!

Here's my piece defending New Year's Eve from today's Daily Express.
Can anyone guess who the old misery guts was who wrote 'I am proud that I hate New Year's Eve'- and who assures us he'll be tucked in his bed by 10.30pm tonight?. Here's a clue- he also hates Christmas Day- but does get pleasure from cheering on illegal wars of aggression, (from a safe distance of course).
Happy New Year!

DON’T BE GLUM, IT’S THE MOST MAGICAL NIGHT OF THE YEAR
Daily Express
31st December 2005

Yes, it’s that time of the year again when gloomy and misanthropic social commentators dip their pens in acid and explain why they just can’t stand New Year’s Eve. Here’s one in suitably wrist-slitting mood. “To me, there is always an element of sorrow and pity involved, possibly at the idea of a load of idiots celebrating another year wasted, another load of opportunities passed by, another year of life gone”. Another writes: 'I am proud that I hate New Year’s Eve. Every year it serves up the same combination of discomfort, expense and misery…it is quite beyond me how any sentient human being could actually enjoy it’. The author of these words, who claims that his ‘proudest moment’ was going to bed at 10.30pm on December 31st 1999, and who assures us he will be doing the same this year, would no doubt heartily concur with the sentiments expressed in Woody Allen’s 1987 film Radio Days that ‘only creeps and crazy people go out on New Year’s Eve’. Expressing a hatred of New Year’s Eve and everything it stands for seems to have become fashionable in recent years-and there are no doubt millions of Britons who tonight will be long before Big Ben rings in 2006. I, however, will not be one of them. The saying ‘Youth is when you’re allowed to stay up on New Year’s Eve, middle aged is when you’re forced to‘- may hold true for some- but for me- New Year’s Eve is simply the most wonderful night of the year. I have loved New Year‘s Eve ever since, as a seven-year-old, I was allowed to stay up to watch Big Ben chime on television. More than thirty years later, I am just as excited about the coming of this most unique of evenings as I was then. In common with thousands of other ‘creeps and crazy people’, my wife and I will be spending tonight, not in bed with mugs of Horlicks, or in our living room watching Jools Holland and Natasha Kaplinsky usher in 2006 on t.v.- but celebrating New Year’s Eve in the best possible way: in the company of other members of the human race. The idea of celebrating with people you have never met before in your life-is repugnant to our misanthropic New Year’s Eve haters but the genuine camaraderie the night engenders is for me its great attraction. On 31st December 1999, while the gloom-mongers were tucked away in his bed, my wife and I were at a party in an ex-servicemen’s club in central London. Having enjoyed a few dances with the other couples and families present, we started talking with a family group at an adjoining tabel, who on hearing that our son was away in Hungary, insisted on giving us money to phone him to wish him a happy New Year we didn’t own a mobile then). As midnight approached, we made our way across to Trafalgar Square to see Big Ben chime in the millenium and to enjoy twenty minutes of greeting, kissing, and embracing total strangers. The atmosphere in central London that night was quite remarkable and the memories of it will remain with my wife and I for as long as we live. It’s true that for some, the coming of New Year’s Eve is a genuine cause of sadness. The loss of a loved one in the year which is just about to pass is heightened at the very moment the calendar changes. We all know, too, that calls to the Samaritans increase around Christmas and New Year’s Eve and that anyone who is in a bad way is going to feel worse if everyone else in the world appears to be enjoying themselves. Melancholic as the passing of the old year may be, there is every reason to accentuate the positive on New Year’s Eve. However disappointing 2005 was, here’s the perfect opportunity to start afresh. And if 2005 was a good one, let’s try to make the next year, even better. The New Year’s Eve Haters say that it’s all so arbitrary- why should one pay more attention to midnight on the 31st December than 3.47am on 15th April? What utter nonsense! New Year’s Eve denial is a sad business and the pretence that it is ‘just another night’ masks the fact that New Year spooks an awful lot of people. It forces us to take stock, to look back at the year just gone, to think about where we’re going and what we can do to make things better. Could it be that it is this process of self-analysis which the hater really wants to avoid?Whether its taking more exercise, not drinking so much, not being so grumpy in the mornings, or remembering Auntie Maud’s birthday, is there anyone who can say, in all honesty, that there is no aspect of their livesor their behaviour, which they could not improve? But before we can overcome our failings, we must first own up to them, which is why // making New Year‘s resolutions is a good idea. Even if we only keep a couple on our list -the important thing is that we at least have sat down to think about ourselves and our lives in an objective and critical manner. New Year’s Eve may indeed mark the end of one chapter but it also marks the start of another. T.S. Eliot put it beautifully: ‘For last year‘s words belong to last year‘s language/And next year‘s words await another voice/And to make an end is to make a beginning’. Far from being a night on which to take to our beds early, the passing of the old Year- and the coming of the new- really is cause for celebration.

Daily Express/Neil Clark 2005

Double Standards and Dishonesty

Here's my review on the books 'Neo-Conservatism and Why We Need It' by Douglas Murray and 'Anti-Totalitarianism: the left-wing case for a Neo-Conservative foreign policy' by Oliver Kamm from today's Daily Telegraph.

IDEALISM LOSES ITS WAY IN DOUBLE STANDARDS AND DISHONESTY
Daily Telegraph
31st December 2005

Did neo-conservatism meet its end in 2005? The collapse of the levees in New Orleans and its exposure of President Bush's policy of paying for wars of intervention abroad, by cutting back on public provision back home, led many thinkers to believe that it had. Douglas Murray and Oliver Kamm are not among them. For these two young British writers, neo-conservatism is not only still alive and kicking- its finest hour is yet to come. Murray, described by historian Andrew Roberts as 'the Right's answer to Michael Moore', believes that the creed of Leo Strauss, Paul Wolfowitz and Irving Kristol should not only be the ideology of a rejuvenated Conservative Party, but of 'any political party committed to the ideals of freedom at home and abroad'. For Murray, neo-conservatism can provide the 'moral and practical answers' to the political and societal malaise of our country. As to the extent of that malaise there can be no dispute: Britain has the highest level of violent crime, drug abuse, teenage pregnancies and one parent families in Europe. But would the neo-con domestic agenda which Murray advocates make things any better? His attacks on welfare dependency, the glorification of misanthropic rap culture and other examples of multicultural idiocy are justified, and his call for 'broken windows' policing, an increase in church schools and for the state to withdraw from its life-long support of single mothers makes plenty of sense. Yet on what is arguably the main cause of 'societal defects' in Britain today- the pernicious effect of uncontrolled consumer capitalism, Murray is strangely silent. The problem for Murray is that economic liberalism -which he likes- fuels social liberalism which he doesn't. If we really want to see happy families promenading together again on Sunday afternoons, we need to erect “Keep Out” signs to stop the encroachment of market forces into areas they have no right to go. This is something which Murray, in his enthusiasm for a low-tax, deregulated economy, is unwilling to do. And when it comes to our political malaise- most visibly demonstrated by our leaders' failure to tell us the truth over Iraq- Murray once again falls short. Murray would have us believe that the government really did think Iraq possessed WMDs, and incredibly castigates Blair, Campbell and co for 'telling the public too much'. But if our leaders did think Iraq possessed the stockpile of chemical and biological weapons the various dossiers claimed- why on earth would they do the one thing which would provoke Saddam to use them? History tells us that countries attack others only when they are sure of their opponent's relative weakness- something one might have expected Murray to have learnt during his years at Oxford. In trying to put the case for “Left-wing” case for war against Iraq, Oliver Kamm is equally unconvincing. Having told us how the principle of deterrence worked so well during the Cold War, he fails to explain adequately why the deterrence of Saddam, which Secretary of State Powell had been lauding only months before 9/11, could not have continued. Kamm has fun baiting the woolly minded peace activists of the 1930s, and the supporters of unilateral nuclear disarmament in the 1980s, but is on much shakier ground when trying to portray those who opposed the invasion of secular, Ba’athist Iraq as apologists for Islamo-fascism. In fact, it is the neo-cons themselves who have a track record of siding with Islamic extremists- either in Afghanistan in the 1980s or in the Balkans a decade later. Similarly, while lambasting the “amoral quietism” of the Major government for its non-intervention policy in Bosnia, Kamm fails to inform readers that the Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegovic- whose separatist cause neo-conservatives enthusiastically championed- not only wrote “the first and most important lesson from the Koran is the impossibility of any connection between Islamic and non-Islamic systems”, but also recruited for an SS division in the Second World War. It is difficult to think of a man for whom the term “Islamo-fascist” could be more appropriate - yet that didn't stop arch the neo-con Richard Perle acting as an adviser to Izetbegovic's delegation at the Dayton Peace Conference in 1995. On the issue of terrorism, there are double standards too. Terrorists, according to Murray and Kamm, should be always be condemned wherever they are found- but not it seems if they are the gun-runners, drug-smugglers and civilian-murderers of the Kosovan Liberation Army, on whose side NATO acted, with strong neo-cons approval- as an armed proxy in the war against Yugoslavia in 1999. And amid all their words of praise for Israel, there is nothing from either Murray or Kamm on the role that Zionist terrorism played in that state's foundation. If neo-cons really want us to take their ideas more seriously, a little more consistency- and honesty- is surely called for.

Daily Telegraph/ Neil Clark 2005

A Christmas Carol for 2005

Before we all settle down to watch Scrooge- let's hope that all the self-serving politicians- the warmongers and those journalists who peddle their lies- are visited tonight by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present and Christmas Yet to Come. And that we wake up tomorrow to read that George Bush and Tony Blair publicly acknowledge their lies over Iraq, that Harry's Place has decided to advocate a left-right anti-war alliance and that Stephen Pollard has joined the campaign to release Slobodan Milosevic.
A very happy Christmas!

A season too far- The Death of a Champion

'At least he died enjoying what he did best' -the words of trainer Philip Hobbs on his Champion Hurdle winner Rooster Booster, who collapsed and died while exercising on the gallops.
Am I the only one to feel that on this occasion the oft-repeated words we hear on a racehorse's death somehow have a hollow ring to them? Those of us who defend horse-racing against its many critics don't have our job made any easier by the decision to keep in training a former Champion Hurdler- a horse who had achieved all there was to achieve- up to just days away from his 12th birthday. Amid the tributes to a wonderful horse we should not shy away from asking some awkward questions.

Havana a good time

Here's my piece on the merits of cigar clubs from The First Post. These clubs, which are widespread in Europe and the US- but sadly not in Britain- don't have to be exclusive- membership of La Cape D'Epicure is not much more than £100 a year.


We just ain’t Havana good enough time

Britain should turn to cigar clubs to restore a culture of pleasure, says Neil Clark

France has over 70, Switzerland has 20 and in Berlin there are two for women alone. Yet London, home to eight million people, has none.
While anti-smoking campaigners will no doubt be rejoicing that Britain has missed out on the cigar club culture sweeping Europe and the US, there is, I believe, a good reason to hope that cigar clubs will eventually spring up here too.
The point about these clubs is not so much the smoking, but their underlying philosophy. "Networking" and the exchange of business cards may sometimes play a part, but it is the spirit of epicureanism which predominates. Nowhere more so than at La Cape D'Epicure, a club for les amateurs de cigares, based in northern France.
For La Cape D'Epicure, "the ideas of conviviality and of pleasure are paramount";
Cigar clubs represent cultures that understand having a good time does not mean indulging in excess
its members meet not only to smoke and compare notes on cigars, but to enjoy the pleasures of friendship, conversation and good food.
Sadly, the spirit behind La Cape seems to be woefully lacking in modern Britain. Although Epicurus taught that "pleasure is the beginning and end of a happy life", he also emphasised moderation in all things, for the simple reason that excess leads to pain instead of pleasure.
Anyone doubting how far Britain is away from the Greek philosopher's ideal only needs to spend a night out in any of our towns and cities. Binge drinking, and the manic shrieking and undercurrent of violence which usually accompanies it, are not the signs of a society that knows how to enjoy itself - quite the opposite.
Cigar clubs, by contrast, represent cultures that still understand that having a good time does not mean indulging in excess but calmly savouring the things which really make us happy.
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 19

Where have all the chickhawks gone?

One week after I issued my challenge to seven prominent pro-war writers and the bloggers at Harry's Place to enlist in the Territorial Army, I have had my first reply, from Mr David Aaronovitch.
Come on you others!- please explain why you will not be answering the T.A.'s call for more recruits.
If you wanted this war so much, why aren't you prepared to put your own lives and security on the line- as so many others have? Anyone would think you're just a bunch of lily-livered cowards......

The Stumpy Bedside Tyrant

Here's a great piece on the important of a good night's sleep from today's First Post by William Leith.
For anyone who doubts the thesis, I have just two words: Margaret Thatcher.


Don't go there
Tune out the stumpy bedside tyrant
by William Leith, from The First Post

I know what you're thinking, because I'm thinking the same thing, too. I'll set the alarm an hour early. Six hours sleep - possibly six and a half, if I can get off immediately - should just about do it. That way, I'll be able to finish everything tonight. I pick up the alarm clock and wind the nasty stumpy little hand a few degrees backwards. And then I lie there for a few seconds, feeling smug.
More and more of us are doing this. We have to work harder, and stay later, and the rush hour is longer. And everybody's solution is the same: reach for the alarm clock. Take the extra hour from the unconscious part of our lives. And of course, it's a vicious circle - when one person works a 10-hour day, everybody else must work a 10-hour day, too, just to keep up. And then the first person winds the stumpy little hand a smidgen further.
So you get more tired. So you drink more coffee. So what's the problem?
Actually, the problem is huge, and extremely sinister. Sleep is not just a chunk of time that you can't remember. It's amazingly complex. Left to sleep naturally, you would typically have five distinct dream sequences, the final one acting as a summing-up of the whole narrative. And dreams, as we know, counteract depression - they wash our minds clean, if you like, of negative feelings.
So that last hour of sleep is the most important bit. It's what keeps us human. It's the bit that keeps you calm when you get stuck in traffic.
If you're thinking of activating that nasty little thing on your bedside table, do us all a favour - don't go there.
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 16