Here is a video of Greek commandos pointing automatic weapons at the US vessel of the Gaza peace flotilla. The contriving of all authorities to attempt to prevent the flotilla from leaving is quite remarkable – including US and Greek governments. It is to me quite astonishing that we live in a world where it is now perfectly accepted by all officialdom and mainstream media that humanitarian protest should simply be stopped.

Haaretz is trumpeting that Netanyahu was able to use his support for the Greek bailout to block the Gaza flotilla. I don’t buy that Netanyahu had that much influence on the bailout, or could persuade Papandreou that he had. But the actions of the Greek government are disgraceful, and unlawful in preventing ships from sailing on politically motivated false pretences. Every Greek should be deeply ashamed of their government. Of course, they already are, for different reasons.

Some of my FCO sources tell me that the Israeli government has now been supplying the Greek government with emergency supplies of tear gas and other unspecified “anti-riot equipment”, as the Greek government ran out. Isn’t the Greek government lucky to have a friend like Natanyahu?

I think I am entitled to claim some wisdom in what I wrote about the DSK rape allegation, which was this:

The allegations against Dominique Strauss Kahn are of a different order as they do seem to involve violent assault and non-consensual sex acts. Plainly there is a very serious case to answer, especially given his known highly charged sexual history.

But I have been given pause today by learning that the police have amended their accusation to say that they were one and a half hours mistaken in the time that the rape took place. Given that it was reported pretty well immediately, how can there have been this confusion about when it happened? A ten minute mistake would be natural, but one and a half hours wrong in a period of three hours?

The difference is very significant, because the police were alleging that he raped her, then rushed from the hotel to the airport to flee. They now acknowledge as true the defence statement that he actually went to a lunch engagement quite close to the hotel before going to the airport. Given that his alleged hurried running away was a major factor in not granting him bail, this seems to me inportant. I repeat – how on earth could an investigation make such a very fundamental mistake?

My feelings of unease were then increased by US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner coming out to lead international demands for DSK’s replacement – as the prosecuting authority, surely it would behove the US government to shut up until he has been found innocent or guilty? Since then I have been listening to Ghanaian radio (I am in Accra) where callers are more or less unanimous that as the woman is from Guinea, in Francophone Africa, the Sarkozy connection is to blame. That fact is certainly a boon for conspiracy theorists.

DSK deserves the benefit of the presumption of innocence for now. We just don’t know what happened yet. The failure to grant him bail appears to me completely unjustifiable – where on earth do they think he will vanish, and how? There seems something peculiarly vindictive in the handling of this – of which his bail appearance without being allowed clean clothes or a shave was a stark symbol.

I have added the emphasis because I had got hold of absolutely the key point. It turns out the woman lied to the police, and in fact had gone back to cleaning rooms after the alleged assault, before reporting it – but then not told the truth about that. it also turns out that the woman – who you may recall we were told at the time was a very quiet religious Muslim – has a long term relationship with an imprisoned drug dealer and had received US $100,000 in recent months, largely from him. It is also the case that she had admitted to a flase claim of gang rape in her political asylum claim, and she has been taped discussing how much money she might make from the case.

Here is part of the prosecutor’s letter to the court:
“Additionally, in two separate interviews with assistant district attorneys assigned to the case, the complainant stated that she had been the victim of a gang rape in the past in her native country and provided details of the attack. During both of these interviews, the victim cried and appeared to be markedly distraught when recounting the incident. In subsequent interviews, she admitted that the gang rape had never occurred.”

Actually, for me the scariest and most evil thing about this entire episode are the warped feminists at the Guardian who conflate the terms “men” and “rapists” as though they were the same thing. As in this:

How do we get men to stop raping lesbians or independent or highly sexual women as a “corrective act” rather than addressing the forces and powers they are truly angry at? How do we get men to understand the impact of rape: how the external bruises are internalised and remain for ever?

The hate speak involved in conflating “Men” and “rapists” in this way is a vital insight into the viciousness of the militant feminist movement.

None of that, of course, makes it impossible that DSK raped her. But I considered it unlikely before, and I consider it still more unlikely now. Fascinating that the Guardian chooses to lead the first of their articles I link to with the ludicrous bluster of her lawyer, rather than the damning facts about her which come right down later.

It is an unfortunate boon to the Daily Express tendency that it turns out this case plays right into so many of the stereotyped categories Black Americans still have to struggle against – lying asylum seekers, convicted drug dealers, out to make crooked money. But in a criminal trial, Strauss Kahn, wealthy white banker though he is, still has as much right to have his story heard as her. That is what the equality of human beings means. And bluntly, from what we know at this moment, his side of the story seems a great deal more believable than hers. That may change as more evidence emerges; but the public bluster of her attorneys to date outlines an extremely weak case.

Talking of which, yet further evidence of stunning illiberalism by the coalition was revealed in Teresa May’s unjustified – in the literal sense of the term – action against Sheikh Saleh. What precisely is Sheikh Saleh alleged to have done that made his visit to the UK so harmful? Is there any evidence of any Lib Dem influence in any direction that can be described as liberal, in any area of government policy? Answers on a postcard please.

It is worth noting that in the two occasions I have stood for parliament, just as independent me with no party behind me, no organisation except this little blog and definitely no Deputy Prime Minister to back me, I have always obtained more votes and a higher percentage vote than the Liberal Democrats did at Inverclyde in the early hours of this morning. Unless the Scottish Lib Dems abandon the hard line unionism they have adopted – which would not have been supported by either Jo Grimond or Russel Johnson, and certainly not Rosebery – they are going to be annihilated.

A reader has pointed out that Sherard Cowper Cole’s new book. Cables from Kabul, looks uncannily like Dirty Diplomacy, the US version of Murder in Samarkand, published four years previously. The books are indeed very similar. Except that Dirty Diplomacy has a sexy picture of a young lady on the spine – and the content is interesting.

Here is just one little story of the everyday humiliation, the destruction of Palestinian livelihood and culture, carried out by the ruthless, racist Israeli military machine.

I could post such stories every day, including many much worse, and could describe more of the political context which beggars belief – the Israeli Knesset, for example, has just passed through its committee stage a bill providing for Palestinians and other Arabs to pay the costs of the demolition of their own homes by Israel bulldozers. There is a horror to that which should not lead you to overlook a yet more horrible underlying fact contained in that sentence – exactly as in apartheid South Africa, thousands of Israeli laws are ethnically explicit.

I haven’t checked out this little olive tree story, I don’t have to. it is prototypical of thousands of such stories throughout my adult life. I have met victims and know such stories are true.

This is why I support all those working to give some justice and hope for Palestinains. And this is why I cannot understand how such controlling sections of the media and political establishments of the west have signed up so completely to defend the indefensible, to deny to themselves what kind of state Israel has in truth become.

I am sorry that writing a book (at least the way I do it) requires periods when all else is blotted out and you only come out of that immersion as though for a gasp of air. I am still mostly researching Alexander Burnes, though I have just started jotting down the odd phrase and papragraph that will probably feature in the final version. I can’t get the phraseology on this right:

The clash of Burnes and Vitkevich, pushing the respective British and Russian interests in Kabul, is the moment which, more than many other, encapsulates the entire romance and intrigue of the Great Game. Within four years, the events now unfolding would result in the violent deaths of both of them.

Should that last phrase rather be “in the violent death of each of them?”.

I am sorry this preoccupation has precluded me blogging about the appalling marketisation of univerisites, with students seen as consumers and education as a commodity, rather than a university being an academic community in pursuit of knowledge.

The physical sabotage of the propellor shaft of the Swedish Gaza peace flotilla ship is only the start. I would strongly advise all the convoy ships in harbour to run their props in very short bursts at random but not infrequent intervals. That might deter other Israeli Buster Crabbes.

I am currently reading “Outline of the Operation of the British Troops in Scinde and Afghanistan Betwixt November 1838 and November 1841 with Remarks on the Policy of the War” by George Buist, published by the [Bombay] Times Office, Bombay, 1843. Only 200 copies were printed, but on Google Books you can get a full copy of one in the library of the University of California, without leaving your desk in Ramsgate. The information technology is truly amazing.

But I am taunted once more and wracked with enormous frustration. Buist quotes Burnes on 23 October 1841, ten days before he was killed, as writing in his Journal:

“I have often wondered at the hatred of the officers towards the Affghans… they are blamed because they fight at night, when in fact the poor wretches are at any other time unable to cope with disciplined armies; it was the same as the Scotch highlanders pursued a century since.”

Buist adds this note:

This is copied, nearly verbatim, from an entry, dated 23 October, in a private journal of Sir Alexander Burnes which extends to 1 November, the day before his murder, and which, singularly enough, amidst the wreck of all other things has been preserved entire. It is now in the hands of his friends

This is tantalising. What can have happened to Burnes’ journals? The historian Sir John Kaye had access to them – or at least to those volumes covering Burnes’ younger years, – in the 1860’s. But they seem simply to have vanished; I found a cache of Burnes’ official correspondence in his hometwon of Montrose, but no sign of his diaries.

I have discovered that at one time a cache of Burnes’ papers were in the safekeeping of his agents, Forbes and Co., Burnes placed them there before leaving for Afghanistan specifically as he was furious about government editing and publication of some of his dispatches to falsely portray him as in favour of the Afghan War. I was surprised to find that Forbes and Co still exists and is a thriving shipping company in Bombay. While considering it very unlikely they still had Burnes’ papers, I though their archives might have correspondence relating to their dealings with him. But despite having a website that seems to indicate an interest in their fascinating history, Forbes & Co tersely denied to me having any company archives at all. or knowledge of what had happened to their company archives.

I just tell you this as an insight into the byways a biographer must tread. I have no idea if Burnes’ journals still exist or were destroyed. Are they with a descendant or private collector, or were they burnt or thrown away? Were they destroyed because of sexual or religious revelation, like so many of Burton’s papers? Certainly for a couple of generations Burnes journals were in the hands of people who respected their historical value and used them in that way. How they then came to vanish is still at this stage an infuriating mystery.

The US ship in the Gaza peace convoy has been blocked from sailing by the Greek authorities on the grounds that they have received a “Private complaint” that the vessel is unseaworthy.

This is ludicrous. What if I were to choose a large commercial vessel in a Greek port from Lloyd’s Register, and make a “privare complaint” that it is unseaworthy. Would it be blocked from sailing? Of course not – I should be asked to produce grounds for my complaint. Vessels cannot simply be detained on the basis of vexatious complaint. International trade would grind to a halt.

We do not yet know who actually made this complaint, nor why the port authorities have chosen to act on it. They have told the vessel it will now be subject to inspections which may take some weeks. The legal way forward must be to seek in a Greek court to stop the Greek authorities from this obviously political action in detaining the ship and disrupting the peace convoy. Secondly it is difficult to believe that the Greek people, who are not fond of their government, will approve of it acting as a pure US and Israeli puppet in this way. Political pressure needs to be brought to bear as well.

I should not be surprised any more by the cynicism of western governments, yet I still am, continually. I wonder if I will die still expecting the world to get better.

Jerry Rawlings’ office has today put out a press release accusing me of publishing a series of “scurrilous” articles about his wife, aimed at damaging her electoral chances. This is being carried widely in the Ghanaian media.

This is strange to me because I have written no articles in the Ghanian media for years, and have not written anything about the Rawlings for over four years. Possibly someone is reproducing (without my permission, and in breach of copyright) some old material, or someone is writing pretending it is by me. But I am certainly not interfering in Ghana’s election in the way suggested.

A few years ago, I was thrilled to be asked to give a talk at the Glastonbury Festival, in the “Left Field” as they called it. But when I dialled the number given to organise the details, the man who answered was very curt and rude indeed, treating me as though I was trying to cadge a free ticket, despite the fact they had contacted me and asked me to speak. In fact he was so very rude, I declined to go.

I learn today that actually the VIP area at Glastonbury is swarming with minor Tory politicians who are chummy with David Cameron. I am sorry to hear one of them died, but if Glastonbury has become this cosy with the establishment, it is time to end it.

On Friday I took Nadira and Cameron on the train to see the wonderful old town of Sandwich, one of the best surviving medieval and early modern towns in England. It was as lovely as I remembered, but both the town and our experience were absolutely ruined ny the cars. The whole ancient centre is entirely devoted to throbbing traffic; streets with no or tiny pavement are premanently swished through by commercial vehicles and cars, and there is a permanent stench of exhaust fumes. It is impossible to enjoy the sight of any of the medieval town, because virtually every single old house has a permanent flow of traffic right past its doorstep.

The old tollbridge is no longer the only crossing of the Stour, so the failure to pedestrianise any part of Sandwich is simply appalling, and was to me quite unexpected. They must have the most dismal and undynamic council in the world. I strongly advise everybody against going there, unless you are interested in traffic.

I am proud to call Ray McGovern a friend. He is a retired senior member of the CIA, and was so valued as an analyst that he used to give the US President his daily intelligence briefing. Ray and I both had senior government service careers, in the course of which you make personal friendships that last, hopefully as long as you do. So sometimes we both get told things from the inside of government.

As Ray sets out on the US Gaza peace flotilla ship, he has been warned in the starkest of terms that the Obama administration will do nothing to protect their US flagged vessel, or the US citizens on board, against attack by the Israelis.

I also have been cautioned by a source with access to very senior staffers at the National Security Council that not only does the White House plan to do absolutely nothing to protect our boat from Israeli attack or illegal boarding, but that White House officials”would be happy if something happened to us.” They are, I am reliably told, “perfectly willing to have the cold corpses of activists shown on American TV.”

While I know Ray to be an extremely honest man, motivated by a genuine activist christianity, I tought it was possible that his source was exaggerating. I therefore set my own diplomatic sources to work in Washington, without giving them any indication of Ray’s information. They came back with an independent report from a different source – close to Clinton rather than the White House – with exactly the same result of which Ray was warned. I was told that Obama will welcome an Israeli attack on the US ship, as giving him a chance to confirm his pro-Israeli credentials and improve his standing with AIPAC ahead of the Presidential election race. Fatalities would be “not a problem”.

There was no information that the Obama regime has quietly given Netanyahu a green light to attack the ship. But I strongly expect they will; by deniable means, of course.

Could anyone watch Jeremy Bowen’s piece on BBC News last night, which showed a grieving father hugging the wrapped bodies of two tiny children killed in a NATO bombing? The fact the tiny childrens’ grandfather was a Gadaffi minister seemed to Jeremy Bowen a possible justification – he posed a dichotomy that by killing these children, more civilian lives could be saved.

But how could this warping of utilitarian judgement work in practice? Bowen quoted NATO as saying there were command and control structures in the house as well as the Minister’s family. So bombing it saved civilian lives elsewhere. What constitutes a command and control structure in these circumstances? A mobile phone? A computer? And how does destroying that little bit of infrastructure save lives so directly that it could atone for our killing of tiny children? Jeremy Bowen, who interviewed me in Tashkent and I like, should be ashamed of himself. But he did get the tiny dead children on the ten o clock news for two minutes, which has done something to undermine the pro-war propaganda pumped out everywhere.

NATO is not saving civilian lives. It is killing civilians.

Meanwhile, Obama announces the beginning of the end of the utterly pointless occupation of Afghanistan. The Afghan war was was not as illegal as the Iraq war, as it did have a connection to 9/11. But we have achieved nothing after ten years we had not achieved after one year. There is still no non-fraudulent democracy, no rule of law, no women’s rights and no economic development outwith the narcotics sector. Nor will there be, and we will have made as little societal change as the Anglo-Afghan Wars or the Soviet occupation.

We have, however, killed an awful lot of small children. And lost many of our own who were little more than children,

Nadira has been refused the hire of our local church hall in Ramsgate for rehearsal because Medea is “Greek” and “Pagan”. I had thought that the Church of England had come fully to terms with the classical world since before Gibbon. And we are talking the church hall, not the church.

It is a tremendous mistake for the Church of England to start taking an interest in religion. Promoting intolerance is not what the Church of England is for. It is still an established church – do we really want a state church that bans Euripides? I fear for some reason the CofE feels a need to compete with the lunatic evangelist establishments which attract large congregations and promote miracles, speaking in tongues and other arrant rubbish. Oh dear.

It has been pointed out to me that there has been a reply to my Independent on Sunday article on our illiberal foreign policy, by the obscure and evidently untalented Baroness Falkner.

Craig Murray’s polemic against the Liberal Democrats gives examples which are inaccurate, ill-informed or at best unknowing (“The biggest threat to Clegg lies overseas”, 5 June).

On Trident, Mr Murray says we have given up our opposition to an automatic renewal. The policy states that due to the “desire of the Liberal Democrats to make the case for alternatives… we are setting up a study to review the costs, feasibility and credibility of alternatives”.

To imply Lib Dem silence on Bahrain is plain ignorance. We have had discussions with the Foreign Secretary, ministers, the Bahrain ambassador, Bahraini opposition groups, human rights groups and in public meetings, to some effect.

Baroness Falkner of Margravine
Lords Chairman, Lib Dem Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs

On Trident, she fails to answer what I actually said, as opposed to what she says I said. The coalition government has approved £3 billion in development costs for Trident 2. That makes the pretence of consideration of an alternative by a “study” rather difficult to maintain.

On Bahrain, she reinforces my point. What effect have those Lib Dem “discussions” actually had on coalition policy? Where are the ministerial actions, or even statements?

Update: I have corrected Falkner’s name, which I got wrong initially.

At least I think it is Persian. I have found a transliteration but not a translation of the poem on Shah Shuja’s coinage, and the parody of it by Kabul wits popular in 1840. It is from the Afghan historian Ghulam, recorded in Christine Noelle’s State and Tribe in Nineteenth Century Afghanistan. She transliterates it thus:

sikka zad bar sim o zar raushantar az khurshed o mah
nuur-i-chasm-i durr-i durran Shah Shuja al-Mulk Shah

was changed to

sikka zad bar sim o tila Shah Shuja -i armani
nur-i-chasm-i Lard Burnes o khak-i pa-yi Company

I certainly get the jist, but if anyone can have a go at translating I would be grateful. From experience the talents of readers of this blog are quite extraordinary!!

A new Gaza freedom convoy is preparing to sail, this time including a US flagged vessel. My friends Ann Wright and Ray McGovern are going to be on it. Ray tells me the ship, which is registered in Delaware, has been renamed “The Audacity of Hope”. I am not quite sure if he is joking. I hope it is true as the irony is delicious.

The boarding of a US flagged ship on the High Seas is something which, in any other circumstances, the US would never tolerate, and I am hoping that it will give Clinton a headache now – which is why that possible ship name would be so great. What is for certain, is that a US court would have jurisdiction over any incidents that happen on board, and I cannot imagine any US judge would renounce that jurisdiction. So if the Israelis shoot Ann, Ray or any of their fellow passengers, the implications could be profound.

At Ray and Ann’s request, I have added my weight to the legal assessment of their actions:

Ambassador Craig Murray is a former Alternate Head of the UK Delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Commission on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. He was deputy head of the teams which negotiated the UK’s maritime boundaries with France, Germany, Denmark (Faeroe Islands) and Ireland.

Ambassador Craig Murray is therefore an internationally recognised authority on maritime jurisdiction and naval boarding issues.

“The legal position is plain. A vessel outwith the territorial waters (12 mile limit) of a coastal state is on the high seas under the sole jurisdiction of the flag state of the vessel. The ship has a positive right of passage on the high seas. The coastal state can regulate economic activity exploiting the resources of the seas and continental shelf up to 200 miles, the extent of the continental shelf, or the agreed boundary, but there is no indication of fishing, oil drilling or analagous economic activity in this case. The vessel is entitled to free passage.”

“This right of free passage is guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas, to which the United States is a full party. Any incident which takes place upon a US flagged ship on the High Seas is subject to United States legal jurisdiction. A ship is entitled to look to its flag state for protection from attack on the High Seas.”

“Israel has declared a blockade on Gaza and justified previous fatal attacks on neutral civilian vessels on the High Seas in terms of enforcing that embargo, under the legal cover given by the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.”

“There are however fundamental flaws in this line of argument. It falls completely on one fact alone. San Remo only applies to blockade in times of armed conflict. Israel is not currently engaged in an armed conflict, and presumably does not wish to be. San Remo does not confer any right to impose a permanent blockade outwith times of armed conflict, and in fact specifically excludes as illegal a general blockade on an entire population.”

“It should not be denied that Israel suffers from sporadic terrorist attacks emanating from Gaza. However this does not come close to reaching the bar of armed conflict that would trigger the right to impose a limited naval blockade in terms of San Remo. To make a comparison, in the 1970’s and 1980’s the United Kingdom suffered continued terrorist attack from the Irish Republican Army, with much more murderous impact causing many more deaths than anything Israel has suffered in recent years from Gaza. However nobody would seek to argue that the UK would have had the right to mount a general naval blockade of the Republic of Ireland in the 1970’s and 1980’s, even though the Republic was undoubtedly the base for much IRA supply and operations. Justifications of Israeli naval action against neutral civilian ships by San Remo is based on special pleading and an impossibly strained definition of the term “armed conflict”. ”

Craig Murray

They already have a more thorough and academic piece here, which I cannot fault.

All the boats and volunteers from various countries have my most earnest good wishes, and admiration for their courage as they brave the attentions of the murderous thugs of the Israeli state.

A couple of interesting articles in today’s Independent. Yet more evidence of the terrible human rights violations in Bahrain, with a report from Medecins sans Frontieres. And the Americans are fed up with Karzai for sometimes telling the truth about the occupation.

Last week a report cited in the Guardian named Afghanistan as the worst country in the world for women. We do seem to have come to an end of the rhetoric citing feminism as the justification of the occupation. Indeed, the entire media seems to be working to prepare the public for the idea that handing at least a share of power back to the Taliban won’t be such a bad thing after all. The US were quite prepared to discuss protecting the Trans Afghanistan Pipeline project with them before 9/11, so we are back at square one – only with many scores of thousands of dead and wounded, and trillions of money squandered.

But it is Bahrain which for me has come to symbolise the complete lack of concern with morality in coalition foreign policy. I can understand how the Lib Dem ministers have convinced themselves they have to rescue the public finances at home in face of unpopularity and conflict (though that in now way explains their support for acagemy schools or the marketisation of the NHS). But why they are so in thrall they cannot utter a protest at a vicious “allied” dictatorship abroad, is absolutely beyond me.

I was struck during the Great Hispano-German Cucumber Scare to learn from the BBC that Russia had banned EU vegetables, and this was difficult as Russia imported 40% of its vegetables from the EU. I suspect that figure excludes Russian vegetables grown and consumed in the informal rural sector, but it is nonetheless astonishing that Russia, which has a greater area of unforested potential arable land per head of population than any other major state, is highly dependent on vegetable imports.

A small fact indicative of a huge malaise. As China and Russia hold a key summit today, China is heading for global economic supremacy, probably within my lifetime (though US resilience should not be ignored, and the process will be slower than many think). Russia, by contrast, slips further and further down the league table of global influence. We can predict future importance for China, India and Brazil. Europe faces genteel relative decline.

But Russia faces renewed absolute decline. It is a third world economy, configured around exports of raw commodities, exactly as African countries are. Because commodity, and especially energy, prices are high and likely to remain so, there is a superficial aura of wealth. But because these commodities are exported virtually unprocessed, the employment effects, and thus the distribution of wealth inside the economy, are extremely limited. Russia has oligarchs involved in energy and mineral export. They are unimaginably wealthy. It has a technocratic and labouring class employed in these industries. They are doing well. It has senior officials corruptly gaining from the state interaction with these commodity producers, either through regulation or ownership. They are doing very nicely. It has a limited service economy catering for the above groups.

All of this is the active economy. It just does not spread far enough into Russian society to carry it along. Russia is looking more and more like Nigeria, with a tiny elite, few technocrats, a corrupt officialdom and a few people servicing them, all doing OK, while ordinary people live in squalor.

Like Nigeria, Russia does not make anything. When did anyone reading this last buy a Russian manufactured good? The Soviet system collapsed in large part because it could not provide consumer goods to a population that wanted them. Like Nigeria, Russia makes very little indeed – less than in Soviet times. Russian manufacturing industry as a whole has still not recovered to Soviet levels of production. I am willing to doubt it ever will. Russia just exports commodities and sucks in manufactures – disproportionately for the luxury end of the market, reflecting its crazy wealth distribution. Exactly like Nigeria, in fact.

Of course, government extracts some tax from the commodity industries and puts it into social benefits and funds the bewildered and status diminished professionals in education, healthcare etc. But the government’s tax revenue is exceeded by capital flight, as the oligarchs simply export the mega profits from commodities into numbered bank accounts abroad. No oligarch has ever thought “Wow I made billions from aluminium or gas, now I will invest it in manufacturing expresso machines and cyclone vacuum cleaners in Russia.” They think “Which way is Switzerland? Where do I buy Highbury?”

Foreign Direct Investment into manufacture in Russia is negligible for a country of its size, because there is absolutely no guarantee of a fair rule of law, of redress against a government or that some oligarch will not covet your factory, or local big man decide to shake you down. Democracy has vanished as Putin has made it impossible for opposition groups to operate and tightened his grip on the media. The killing of independent journalists and investigators has become routine. The situation both on human rights and judicial independence is actually worse than Nigeria.

Russia is not a great power in decline. It is a third world country in decline.

It is today announced that the 200 “worst performing” primary schools are to be handed over to the private sector to run.

We recall from his second-home flipping expenses dodges that Gove is a man very keen on private gain. But this ideologically driven lunacy must stop. The subjective notion of “worse performing schools” will, more than any other factor, be found to depend on the home environment and, bluntly, family income, housing conditions and level of education from which the children come. Handing over 100,000 of our most disadvantaged schoolchildren to be practised upon by rich individuals with nutty religious backgrounds, is an abomination.

This will also deliver a great deal of cash from the Lib Dems trumpeted “Pupil premium” for schools with disadvantaged children, into the private sector.

This is an utter disgrace. If she has any honour at all, Sarah Teather must resign immediately (she is one of my Facebook friends. I shall send her a message saying that).

One of the delightful things about historical research is when it throws up completely unexpected facts irrelevant to what you are looking for. I remember thirty years ago finding that Richard Cobden had investments in railways in Illinois which increased sharply in value after the repeal of the Corn Laws opened up new trade routes for the vast agricultural produce of the mid-West.

I discovered today that Lord Liverpool – Britain’s most repressive Prime Minister bar Tony Blair – was an Anglo-Indian, though whether his Indian blood was an eighth or a quarter I am not quite sure. I had no idea of this. It is also a great thing that, though it seems the fact was well known, even in the bitterest period of modern British politics (1815-20) I can find no evidence of any racial jibe being made against him.

Lord Liverpool an Anglo-Indian. A black Prime Minister two hundred years before Barack Obama. Well I never.