No more gunboats

China’s decision to press ahead and execute Akmal Shaikh is repellant : for once Gordon Brown speaks for us all when he says, “I condemn the execution of Akmal Shaikh in the strongest terms, and am appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted”.

But there are two things that have most forcibly struck me about this case: the impotence of the United Kingdom and its diplomatic effort, and China’s intemperate reaction to criticism.

From the FT.com report this morning

A Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman said in Beijing that no country has the right to comment on China’s judicial sovereignty.  “It is the common wish of people around the world to strike against the crime of drug trafficking. We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British government’s unreasonable criticism of the case. We urge the British to correct their mistake in order to avoid harming China-UK relations,’’ she said.

There is no mistake; and, whether China likes it or not, any country has the right to comment on China’s judicial sovereignty.

Whether as at Copenhagen, or as in this sad case, it seems that the unspoken excuse of the Chinese leadership for the actions it takes, or more often does not, is its domestic situation. That should not deter us from condemning it.

Looking south towards Dawlish

Looking south towards Dawlish

Originally uploaded by crosstreeparents

A cold afternoon’s birding on Dawlish Warren: very little at sea, but from the hide Grey Plover, Dunlin, Curlew, Oystercatchers, Sanderling, Ringed Plover, Turnstones and a pair of Twite.

Another lame excuse

You would have thought, with five children between us, that there is very little any of them might now do or say that would surprise us. By and large this is the case, but #5 (the only boy) is the exception.

He has just finished his first term at Loughborough, mainly, if his Facebook photos are to be believed, spent in the usual manner (this involves liberal amounts of alcohol, body paint and attractive fellow students). This was followed by a week snowboarding in France. Earlier today, with Christmas a scarce three days away, his thoughts turned to buying Christmas presents for his siblings. But who wanted what? He decided to call home.

His conversation with #4 did not go well, as she chided him for failing to get his act together, and order things sooner. He remarked that while in France there had been no internet access. Why hadn’t he sorted things out sooner, she asked. Quite a reasonable question, you would have thought. Apparently he didn’t.

“I have had a very busy term” was his reply. Somewhat ill judged to someone in her final year, struggling to get her dissertation finished, essays in and reading completed. He will learn.

Truss loses support

If New Labour is finding the re-emergence of its Union paymasters uncomfortable to live with, David Cameron’s Tory-lite party has problems of its own past. The report in this morning’s Sunday Telegraph of the goings-on (possibly, given the story, the wrong expression) in Norfolk takes us back to the wonderful alternative world of Tory backwoodsmen and Sir Tufton Bufton (although in this case Sir Jeremy Bagge).

This, if Melissa Kite who interviewed him for the Telegraph heard him correctly, is his take on the role of women in the modern world:

Sorry, no, I have never said I’m anti-women. I have got absolutely nothing against women.

Who cooks my lunch? Who cooks my dinner? How did my wonderful three children appear? Women, you can’t do without them. My god, take my wife.

What does she do for a living?

What does she do? She looks after me. Looks after the children. Runs the house.

Well, thank goodness we’ve got that straight: keep her in the house and not the House.

Apparently Sir Jeremy is to speak tomorrow at an emergency meeting of the Swaffham Conservative Club, supporting a motion to remove Elizabeth Truss as the candidate for true blue South West Norfolk. In his own words, “I might make a complete bloody idiot of myself but I will have done my bit and not done a u-turn.”

I have news for you, Sir Jeremy, you have already succeeded with the first bit. NFN springs to mind.

“I have let you down” – and in more ways than one

On a day when the BBC showed Into the Storm, and the Economist came through the letter box – and I got to read the obituary of Richard Sonnenfeldt, the chief interpreter at Nuremberg – the report in the Daily Telegraph of David Wilshire’s email reply to one of his constituents beggars belief. It included the following,

“Branding a whole group of people as undesirables led to Hitler’s gas chambers,”

Whatever the rights or wrongs of the MPs’ expenses story, comparing the treatment of MPs to that of Jews in Nazi Germany is a quite astonishing thing to say.  One of  Mr Wilshire’s constituents has suggested that he should go now, rather than stay on until the election. He cannot be the only one.