Get the Abbey Habit

It's a relief to know that most reputable Building Societies are protecting their director's salaries ... er .. I mean, shareholder's interests ... by ensuring that their flexible mortgage products aren't quite as flexible as they seemed to be.

If you own such a mortgage, I would strongly suggest that you do not watch this video, as it will lead to a lack of confidence, and possibly panic, which, I am sure you will agree, we all wish to avoid in these uncertain times.

I'm sure you won't let me down.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE EDGWARE PHANTOM (Part 1)

It was Manton who out of boredom first asked our faithful retainer Sibbes to go down into the club archives and fetch up something interesting. Sibbes returned presently pulling a large tin box behind him. This he placed in the middle of the floor. “This was the best I could find sir.”

“What is in it?”

“I have no idea sir”

Squatting down upon a stool in front of it, Manton looked it over. The box was dusty and rusted in parts and was marked with the initials MH. He unfastened the leather strapping and threw back the lid. I could see that it was a third full with bundles of paper tied up with red tape into separate packages.

He lifted bundle after bundle glancing at the handwritten wording on each. One said “The Tarleton Murders” and other “The Case of Vamberry”, “The Adventure of the Old Russian Woman”, “The Singular Affair of the Aluminium Crutch”, “Ricoletti”.

“What on earth’s this little lot do you think?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t say, Sir,” said Sibbes.

“Where did you get it from?”

"When I was cleaning out the basement some months ago, after we had that leaking pipe you remember, sir?"

“Yes I recall.”

“...Well I saw the box then and thought it very curious. And when you asked me to bring you something interesting I recalled it to mind.”

"Very good. Well leave it here for now and I will have a look through it more carefully.”

After Sibbes left, I picked out a bundle at random and relaxed back into an armchair with a glass of The Macallan for company and began to read.

THE ADVENTURE OF THE EDGWARE PHANTOM

I had called upon my friend Mr Sherlock Holmes early in January in order to wish him the compliments of the new year. He was sitting upright at his desk, dressed in an old dun-coloured dressing-gown, a glowing meerschaum pipe in one hand and a lens in the other. A silver pair of spectacles lay in front of him and was the evident study that took up his full attention.

"You are busy," said I; "I shall call another time."

"Not at all, Watson. Come in, come in. I should be glad of your company and in any case you might be able to shed some light on this little problem here. The matter is of course quite trivial, but there are one or two points of interest. What do you make of these?” He held out the spectacles then tossed them to me.

I seated myself in front of his fire. The flames danced and gave out a welcomed glow. "Are you working on some case?" I asked, "and are these the clue to some clever crime?”

"No, nothing so ordinary," said Sherlock Holmes, smiling. "What you hold in your hand is the memento of a ghostly visitation upon one of our local shopkeepers Watson. It is said that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of – well here is the evidence of it in your own hand.” He sat back in his own chair and smiled at the puzzled look upon my face. “You know Jennings, the constable who walks our particular patch of Baker Street?"

“Yes.”

"He dropped those by for me yesterday."

"And why did he do that?"

"He found them and thought they might interest me. But let me tell you the story. Jennings, who as you know is a most diligent law officer, was making his way down the Edgware Road two nights ago on his usual beat. As was his practice Jennings spent some time looking into premises and trying the door handles. But one door he looked into gave him a start. As he tried the handle, it flew open and out shot a man screaming as he went. He pushed passed Jennings and ran out into the street yelling “Lord God Save me! Don’t let it get me.”

“Jennings was in two minds, whether to follow after the man or enter the building to see what caused the fellow to take to his heels in such terror. As the man was halfway up the street by this time, he decided to enter the building which was Mr Comfrey’s patent shoe shop. Making his way through the shop found nothing out of the usual and decided to ascend the stairs to the upper floors. Halfway up, in front of him he saw, in the dim gaslight, a luminous shape, gliding across the landing.”

“A luminous shape?”

“That is how he describes it. But that is not all. Jennings says that the glowing spectre glided right past him and then headed straight though the wall. Jennings made a thorough search of the upper floor but could find nothing.”

"But surely you don’t accept that?"

“If it were anyone other than Jennings I would certainly have my doubts, but you know him as well as I do and he does not strike me as one who would easily be deceived. He is certainly one of the best of our flat-footed friends. No, my dear fellow, I think we have to take the evidence as it presents itself. However, the one thing that Jennings did find was those spectacles you are holding. They were on the floor by the wall at the very place the spectre vanished.

"I presume they belong to the owner of the shop”

"Ah well there lies the problem. He has not been seen these last two days and cannot be traced. Jennings believes that the man who passed him was already wearing glasses which suggests that these belong to another, does it not? Either way they are the only tangible evidence that Jennings was able to recover that might shed any light on the disappearance of the shoe seller.”

"What, then, did Jennings do?"

"He brought the spectacles round to me, knowing how interested I am in such puzzles.

“And what can you gather from these?"

"Only as much as we can deduce."

"Huh! What can you gather from these old things?"

"Here is my lens. You know my methods. What can you gather?”

I turned the spectacles over in my hands rather indifferently. They were handsomely constructed, gold-rimmed spectacles of the sort that were much in fashion a few years ago. They had clearly become worn through constant use. One of the arms had lost its returning spring and one of the lenses was a good deal scratched. The nose pads were also missing and some attempt had been made to replace them rather crudely with cork. For the rest it there was very little remarkable about them. "Beyond the obvious fact that the owner is long-sighted, I can see nothing," said I, handing them back to my friend.

"My dear Watson, you see everything, but discover nothing.”

“Then, pray tell me, what significance do you see in them?"

He picked them up and held them languidly in that peculiar fashion of his that told me his mind was alive with activity. "It is perhaps less suggestive than it might have been," he remarked, "but there are some clear and certain inferences which can be made and one or two guesses which must hold at least a strong balance of probability. That the man has a thin narrow face with an unusually broad nose is of course obvious. He is, as you pointed out, long-sighted with slight astigmatism in his right eye though his left eye has deteriorated to the state where he can see almost nothing out of it. He is around 50 years of age and he has been well off financially until quite recently when he has lost all his money – perhaps through gambling or some other hardship.”

"I don’t see how you see all that in these spectacles.”

“Furthermore, he has a poor memory to the point of being habitually forgetful,” he continued ignoring my interruption, “and since he has no other pair of spectacles than these, their loss will no doubt be much missed. He is a solitary man without wife or friends and spends much of his time alone. He also suffers from low morale.”

“Holmes!”

“Also, by-the-way, it is extremely likely that he has recently redecorated his house and painted his woodwork white within the last month."

“You are certainly joking."

“Not at all." Sherlock Homes sat back and smiled. "I am surprised that after all these years of following my methods you are still unable to see how they are attained?"

"No doubt you think me very simple, but I confess I am still unable to follow you.”

“Well, the shape of his head is plain is it not? The width of these frames is quite narrow, yet the nose rests are unusually broad, thus we have a narrow faced man with a broad nose.”

“Well that is clear enough. What about his age?”

Any optician will tell you that presbyopia is the most common cause of long-sightedness and is the natural result of aging. The ability to focus on near objects declines throughout life and follows a set pattern. The strength of these lenses indicates an age around 50 years when he bought them. The astigmatism is clear from the cylindrical lenses which are evident when you rotate them.

“And his left eye?”

There are deep scratches on the left lens, which you have yourself noted. But they are so deep as to obscure the vision almost totally. I doubt if anyone with half reasonable eyesight could bear to have it obscured to this degree. It is my guess that it has deteriorated to the point where he can see nothing from it.

“Well that is plain enough. And the loss of his fortune?"

"If this man could afford to buy so expensive a pair of glasses three years ago, yet cannot afford to have them repaired now he has surely had a change in fortune. These spectacles are gold rimmed and would have cost a tidy sum.”

“You said they were his only spectacles. How do you know he doesn’t have another pair?”

“My dear Watson, when you see nose pads which have been cut out from cork so roughly as this, it suggests that the man who cut them could not see clearly what he was doing which means that he had no spare pair of glasses to use. For the same reason it is unlikely that he had any friend or close relative who he could have called upon to help him. No, we have here a solitary man who is friendless."

"Well, that is clear enough, certainly. But how about the habitual forgetfulness?"

“The ends of the spectacle arms show small marks that indicate they have been attached to a neck strap. When a man is reduced to wearing his glasses around his neck then one can conclude that he not only misplaces his glasses but does so habitually. And since the neck strap is missing and he has not troubled to replace it, it is also obvious that he has become more careless and indifferent to loss, which is distinct evidence of a lowering of morale, probably linked to his financial losses.”

"You have an answer to everything. And how do you deduce that he has recently been painting his woodwork?”

Sherlock Holmes laughed. "Observe closely how the left lens has some very fine spots of paint which are clearly clean and fresh. You may have seen them through the lens. They are flecks of a glossy white paint, the sort which is used on woodwork and the angle of the droplets indicates that he was painting above head height; hence decorating must come to mind. Satisfied?"

"Well, it is quite obvious now that you explain it.”

Sherlock Holmes had opened his mouth to reply, when there was a sharp rap on the door. It then flew open and Jennings the constable, rushed into the apartment.

"Mr. Holmes! Please come at once, sir!" he gasped.

....to be continued.

The Non-Transitive Voting Paradox

It was around this time of the year that we used to hold the elections for the club president. There are many who scoff at the need for such things and it is true that today most members prefer a much more egalitarian approach to membership and would shy away from any suggestion of a club hierarchy. But it was not always so. There have been 29 successive presidents of the Diogenes Club as indicated on the plaque on the library wall. But that all came to an end the year the elections took a strange turn.

Three people stood for president that year, Anstruther, Baldwin and Caldwell. A poll showed that there was almost equal support for each of the three candidates. One third of the members rated the candidates in order of preference A, B then C. Another third of the members rated the candidates in order of preference B, C then A. The last third of the members rated the candidates in order of preference C, A then B.

ORDER OF PREFERENCE
1/3 A, B, C
1/3 B, C, A
1/3 C, A, B

As a consequence Anstruthers quite rightly claimed that 2/3 of members preferred him to Baldwin. Baldwin claimed that 2/3 of members preferred him to Caldwell. And Caldwell claimed that 2/3 of members preferred him to Anstruthers. And the truth is they were all absolutely correct.

And there in a nutshell was the problem. The more deep thinking amongst us then realised that a clever committee could decide who would get the post by simply deciding the order of the voting. If they decided to vote first between A and B, then A would win, and the final run off vote between A and C would mean that C would win overall. But if we started off with a first vote between B and C, then B would win and the final runoff vote with A would see A winning. It didn't depend on the members wishes but on who was put forward first.

Well, when the members realised this, then they understood that it meant that the whole democratic voting system was faulty. It was not a problem with the three candidates, but a problem with the system itself. How often has a candidate come in first with less than half of the vote, which meant that more people didn't want him than did.

Every voting system was faulty and the members decided to have nothing more to do with it. So we did what any logical club would do. We did away with voting and with presidents altogether. And much better we have all been for it.

2.7182... and the meaning of e

The year 2009 promises to be a very interesting one as far as banks and credit are concerned. The banks have been bailed out by government but they have not been so keen to pass on their good fortune to other less powerful industries. On Monday of this coming week the last Woolies shop will close its doors and others such as Adams have gone into receivership. How many more before the end of the this year?... well only time will tell.

Entwhistle, or "The Prof" as one of our more distinguished club members is known, was muttering about 'exponential increases' and other mathematical terms that had some members hot under the collar. "what is all this exponential stuff about?" asked Carruthers blithely.

The Prof looked at him as though he were addressing an ignorant student. "There are two mysterious numbers. One is pi and the other is e. Pi = 3.14159... and e = 2.7182... Most people know about the first but have not heard much about the second.

"Look has this got anything to do with banking?" asked Carruthers.

"Oh quite a bit," said the Prof, "if you will just give me a moment of your time.

"Is it going to affect my savings?" interjected Manton.

"Well if will affect how you understand them. For instance suppose you borrow £1 and suppose the interest rate is 100% per annum."

"Bit steep isn't it?"

"You wait until next year!" shouted someone from the back. "It won't be far off that!"

"Anyway," said the Prof, ignoring the interruptions. "After one year you owe £1 borrowed plus £1 interest making £2 in all."

"That clear enough," said Carruthers.

"Yes but the bank wants to get more than that. And it can do it by not putting up the interest rate."

"How can it do that?"

"Simply by spreading the interest out over a number of payments and making it compound." People looked perplexed so he continued. "Look, if they split the interest to two payments of 50% every six months what would you pay then?"

"The same."

"No. You would owe £1 borrowed plus £0.50 first interest plus £0.75 second interest equals £2.25 total. Which is the same as (1+1/2)² It compounds because you owe £1.50 after the first six months and so interest is more. Not a bad way to earn even more."

"The banks know all the tricks," said someone.

"And if you make the interest monthly, then that becomes (1+1/12)¹² = 2.6130 which you end up owing."

"It gets more every time."

"Exactly. and if they could make it daily interest you would be paying (1+1/365)³⁶⁵ = 2.71457. Of course if you paid interest at smaller and smaller intervals you would pay more, but there is a limit and that limit is 2.7182 which is exponential number that is given the symbol e. If you take 1000 intervals you get 2.7169, and if you take an infinte number you end up with e. Strange isn't it? It is one of those special beautiful numbers that are always turning up in mathematics. It can't be expressed as an exact fraction, just like pi, but it is important never the less."

"Is it going to help us with the credit crunch Prof?"

"I doubt it very much. But it will help you with your calculus problems." The Prof looked very pleased with himself. But no one else did. He always did go off on a tangent.

"Happy new year, Prof!"

A Ghost Story for Christmas

I was sitting in a comfortable armchair by the log fire and had a warming brandy in my glass to keep out the cold weather when Charters came over and dropped himself into the chair next to me. I could see he was a little troubled and he started poking the fire. Eventually he spoke.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked without even looking up.

"Well there are a lot of queer things around," I ventured.

He poked the fire a bit more and then put down the poker and stared vacantly into the flames.

“Are you alright Charters?" I asked.

He looked up at me. There was an expression of consternation across his face.

“Look you had better tell me all about it old man." He slumped back in his chair and looked exhausted. “Here let me get you something to drink.” I summoned our retainer. “Davenport! Get me another double brandy.”

“Yes sir.”

Charters went on, "You know I used to have a brother?"

"Lived somewhere out in the country didn’t he?"

That’s right. It’s over Shillingstone way. It was an isolated spot. His was the only house for miles, and I think that sometimes it got on his nerves, especially when the weather was bad like it has been recently with all the snow about. He often used to get blocked in and then he could be cut off for days.”

The brandy arrived and Charters held it pensively in his hands for a moment then took a large swig.

"He was on his own wasn’t he?" I asked.

“That’s right. Well last year...to this very day in fact, he rang me up. He was very distraught. He thought he’d had prowlers around the house. It was late evening, the snow was still falling and he had gone outside to put out some rubbish. And that’s when he realise someone had been sneaking around.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“He saw footprints.”

“What kind of foot prints?”

“A man’s. They were clear as anything in the snow. He looked around but couldn’t see anyone. He thought they must have been made by a passerby. But they went round the side of the house. So he followed them until he came back to the front again. They went all around the house.” He took another gulp of brandy and finished it off. “And there wasn’t a trace of anyone and no idea where they came from. There was just him and the trees and the snow and empty silence. He rang me up and told me. He wasn’t too worried though, not the first day.”

“The first day?”

“Yes, next day there was more snow and more footprints. There wasn’t a soul. And that’s what got to him. That really shook him that did. One set of footprints you can put down to an over curious person just looking round. But the second time... well that’s something else. And he wasn’t going to put with that. He rang me again and told me he was going to make damn sure that there would be no more prints the next day. Any more brandy?”

“What did he do?”

He set up a mantrap. Yes, I know it’s not the done thing. And I tried to talk him out of it, but he was adamant. I said I’d come over and see him but he would have none of it. I wish I’d gone over there now.” He stared back at the fire then to his glass. “Davenport, another brandy!”

“Right away, sir”

“He’d had a trap in the barn for goodness knows how long... inherited it with the place. Well he was always good with his hands was Frank. He’d cleaned it up and stuck it on the wall as a souvenir of the bad old days. But it was working. Oh yes he had tried it out and it nearly snapped his hand off.

“Isn’t that illegal old chap, mantraps and things?”

What I’ve found out is that when a man is driven to the end of his tether he doesn’t think about things like that. He doesn’t think straight. Anyway my brother was always one for acting first and thinking afterwards. But I’ll give him this; he first went and put up a sign at the front gate warning people not to trespass. “Danger, trespassers do so at their own risk.” Then he took the trap and he set it up round the side of the house, right where the footprints had gone. It was where the footpath narrows. There are bushes there, jutting out and there’s one point so narrow you could not avoid it. That’s where he would put it. He sprung it back and it took some force I can tell you, I’ve seen it working and it takes two men normally to do it, but my brother had fashioned up some leverage device that meant that he could just about manage it alone. Have you ever seen one of them? It’s a vicious thing, break your leg and leave you trapped in agony until the person who set it came to release you, or if he didn’t, you’d die from exposure and pain.”

Davenport arrived with the brandy and refilled the glass. “I have to remind you sir that Club rules do not permit any further refills sir.”

“Are you suggesting I can’t hold my liquor Davenport?” he asked.

“It’s not me sir, club policy sir,“ and he politely withdrew.

Charters just stared at him and then continued. “Where was I? ...Oh yes, so he set this thing up in the snow and covered it with leaves and waited. It was the first time he slept easy that night knowing his defences were up and he had the upper hand at last.” He drained his brandy in one. “He didn’t know what to expect in the morning – nothing really because there had been no noise, no disturbance, no snap of the iron jaws and no screams in the night. It was what he found later that had scared him and now more than ever.”

He put his glass down and I waited patiently for him to continue.

“Anyways, he got up early and decided to go out and check the trap before breakfast. There had been another fall of fresh snow during the night and the previous footprints were almost obliterated. But when he got to his garden path, there they were – new footprints wandering around the house in the same way. Someone had been here again and been to the trap. Well it was time to see what he had caught, but not before he had gone back for his shot gun. There was no knowing what he would find. “

“But why hadn’t he heard anything? Nothing could have got round that path without being caught. He loaded the gun and tucked it under his arm and followed the footprints round the house. They were perfectly clear in the crisp snow. He felt like he was stalking some elusive prey. Gun at the ready he turned the corner and approached the trap. The footprints went right to the trap and then right through it and then on round the house. He stopped where he knew the trap should be. The leaves that covered it were themselves covered in snow and the footprints lay right through the centre as though some ghostly phantom had passed that way.”

“At first he thought the trap had failed. There must be something faulty with the mechanism. No one could leave a trail like that and not trip the lever. He bent down closer to examine it. He could just make out the edges of the trap. They were there, unmarked. He couldn’t understand it. How could the trap not be sprung? If he walked through it, there’s no doubt it would have caught him and any other person too. He kicked out pushing the trap along with his foot. Nothing happened. It’s broken, he thought, that must be it. He could just discern the pressure plate though the leaves. The trap had failed to spring. He stood back and pushed the shoulder of his gun on the pressure plate.”

“With a violence that completely took him unawares the steel jaws sprang to life and snapped shut on the gun. It was a miracle the gun did not go off. If it had it would have been nasty as it was pointed upwards and directly towards him. He sat down in the snow with a bump, the shock echoed through his bones.”

“Back in the house he took stock. Whatever this prowler was, he was lucky. He had come round the house for the third time and had walked right though the man trap and been very, very lucky. Well he was going to make darn sure that he didn’t escape again. Luck was about to run out for this phantom.”

“That evening he set to work rigging up his contraption. It didn’t take him long and when he had finished he went back inside and thought he had solved his problems and was in for a good night’s sleep.”

“But that night he didn’t sleep well. Half awake and half asleep he heard a noise coming from outside. A plaintive noise more a weeping than a yelling. He peered through the windows but could nothing but swirling snow in the dark night air. And yet there it was again like the soulful whimpering of a trapped dog. The sound was caught on the air and sinewed its way through the open window and echoed round the house. The sound seemed to amplify in his head till he could stand it no longer and he clapped his hands to his ears to blot it out rocking back and forth on the bed. In desperation he rang me about and told me he was going out to get it. I pleaded with him to wait until morning. But he put the phone down and that was the last I heard of him.”

Charters was about to call out for another brandy but thought better of it. If someone looked like they needed a brandy then it was him. “Here old man, have mine.” And I offered him my glass.

“Thanks,” he took another sip. “They had found him the next morning outside. He was caught in the mantrap and the side of his face had been blown off by a shot gun. The police came round and investigated everything of course. Their forensic pathologists went over it all with a fine tooth comb. They said he had set up a booby trap with his own shotgun. There was some tripwire thing apparently. He had constructed it in the garden out of wooden stakes and thin twine. They couldn’t understand what made him do it. The inquest said it was probably suicide.”

“Did they check out the footprints? Did you tell them about the footprints?” I asked.

“Yes. Oh yes, they looked at them most carefully. And they came up with nothing. They were quite adamant about one thing though. All the footprints, all of them mind you; they were all the same, made by the same person.... They were all made by my brother.”

“Are they sure?”

“Absolutely – they matched only his shoes. He was his own phantom.”

The Top Ten Christmas Movies of all Time

The Diogenes Club met for its annual festive gathering in a little out of the way pub in a quaint Dorset village - which shall remain nameless - if only because we want to keep it as a quite retreat and wouldn't like it to become too popular. During our evening conversation over a glass or two of mulled wine the vexed topic of which were the best movies to watch over Christmas came up. And as usual no two members could agree.

So in the absence of any definitive list, I humbly offer here my own top ten of Christmas movies, and make no apologies if they seem set in a "certain age". I confess to you now that modern movies are rather lacking from my list. They may have the action and the Computer Generated Watsits but sadly lack the character and the atmosphere of what I consider to be a good movie. So in reverse order:

10 The Bishop’s Wife (1947)
Cary Grant, David Niven
The bishop (David Niven) is preoccupied with the plans for a new cathedral, while his wife is struggling to make Christmas for the family. An Angel called Dudley (Carey Grant) is sent to help but the bishop becomes jealous of Dudley’s popularity , especially with his wife and daughter. A parable on what is truly important in life. Nominated for 5 Academy Awards in 1948.

9 Bell, Book and Candle (1958)
James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack Lemon
Kim Novak is a witch who falls in love with a mortal (James Stewart) and starts to lose her powers, all over Christmas.

8 Going My Way (1944)
Bing Crosby, Barry Fitzgerald
Parish life at his first "assignment" includes gossip, youth mischief, and a rather shady landlord, but young Father O'Malley (Crosby) seems to land on his feet. As older Father Fitzgibbon (Fitzgerald) watches Father O'Malley in action, he feels his days as pastor of his flock may be numbered.

7 The Bells of St. Mary's (1945)
Bing Crosby, Ingrid Bergman
Father O'Malley (Bing Crosby) is sent to St. Mary's to revitalize the school and finds himself at odds with Sister Benedict (Ingrid Bergman), but the skinflint Horace P. Bogardus is going to have the school condemned. Sequel to Going my Way. Nominated for 8 Oscars in 1946.

6 It’s a Wonderful Life (1946)
James Stewart
George Bailey (James Stewart) has lost $8000 and feels that his life has made no difference to anyone and so he is about to end it. So Clarence the angel is sent to take George back in time, to show George the tremendous difference he made in the lives of the people around him. Some say it is the most popular Christmas movie ever made, but in my opinion not quite.

5 A Christmas Carol (1951)
Alastair Sim
The classic Christmas story by Charles Dickens, in which the miserly Scrooge learns that amassing money is not the ultimate goal of life; Without doubt the 1951 version is head and shoulders above every other.

4 We’re no Angels (1955)
Humphrey Bogart, Aldo Ray, Peter Ustinov, Basil Rathbone
Three convicts escape from Devil’s Island and stay with kindly Leo G Carroll and his family over Christmas and help him deal with his difficult and pompous cousin (Rathbone). The humorous conflict between Rathbone and Bogart is a sight to be seen.

3 White Christmas (1954)
Bing Crosby, Danny Kay
Bob Wallace (Bing Crosby) and Phil Davis (Danny Kaye) get together after the war as the top variety entertainers. They perform their Christmas show in Vermont in the inn owned by their former general, who has fallen on hard times. Romance ensues as the foursome tries to put together the perfect show to help the general.

2 The Man Who Came to Dinner(1941)
Bette Davis, Monty Woolley, Jimmy Durante, Anne Sheridan.
Sheridan Whiteside (Monty Woolley) the rudest author and broadcaster in the world (and the prototype for Gregory House) slips on the front porch of his hosts home and has to stay over Christmas where he does what he does best – interfering in other lives to great hilarity

1 Miracle on 34th Street (1947)
Edmund Gwen
A nice old man (Edmund Gwen) is institutionalized for claiming that he really is Santa Claus. Fred believes the old man, and arranges the legal hearing to let Kris prove himself. An undisputed Christmas classic nominated for four Academy Awards and two Golden Globes in 1948, and miles better than the Richard Attenborough remake.

And Justice for All...re-stated to kill the last story and reinstate this one

The Diogenes Club does not exist in a vacuumn and members are encouraged to make intelligence gathering forays into the world. We are supposed to bring back how things are or might be to our table for our mutual consideration.

We are not simple consumers of the news, in fact as you will have read, sometimes we make the news, or are or have been a part of it. However this experience has bought us close to the manufacture of the news, and it is perhaps time to contemplate the truth or otherwise of the possible orchestration of our discriminations.


The London School of Economics conference, “Under Siege: Islam, war and the media” combined a concern for better reporting with the diet of news and impressions we actually do get. So I attended.

Sceptical news gatherers and intelligent readers have long debated if we are being misled by the news machine over important matters of our time. I saw a documentary soon after the hue and cry over 9/11 that argued Al Queida didn’t actually exist. Not only that it didn’t exist in the wild, then anyway, but it was originally a data-base of sponsored anti communist freedom fighters bent to the mast of the US’s initially covert foreign policies. This is nothing new in history, by the way. But it might be misinformation.

My own library bought “Unholy Wars” by J K Cooley as a corrective to this view, indicating the threat was palpable, and real. Terrorism had adopted or created a self-perpetuating quality in our time whatever the name, that many on the ground had not for seen cascading from the Afghan adventure..

Yet the suspicion lingers here and there outside the mainstream press that the actus rea of handing a loaded gun to freedom fighters might have been a mens rea conspiracy all along. Or become a kite of convenience to fly when the time was ripe.

The neo-con adoption of this idea being allegedly to engineer a dissent that would coalesce the rest of the world against a common enemy…. via terrorism....with said terrorism becoming a scapegoat that would occasion perpetual measures to contain any sort of as it happens anti-western (read anti-capitalist) freedoms.

At the level of geo-politics it was a genie that was deliberately let out of the bottle. Or so the conspiracy theorists argue.

This assumes some cabal is orchestrating events, as historians know has happened in the past. Think of the murmurings about the Red Brigades and the Italian secret state. Think of the Italian film Illustrious Corpses. Think especially of
Romanzo Criminale. And think of the decades between those films. It is an idea that has considerable persistence, outside of the mainstream media at least.

Not surprisingly one speaker from the floor I think argued the scape-goating of the Jews in the last century under Nazi rule was clearly orchestrated for military and strategic ends.

It is a fact, borne of academia, that in the tabloids 96% of coverage since 2001 of Muslim affairs has been negative, and the LSE conference speakers claimed this carefully measured distortion of the real world is not just ‘ambient’ racism. It is orchestrated by the industry…the media industry for whatever reasons.

As one (not so dumb) blonde student argued, “we need to go higher.....”

Inayat Bunglawala, (present) of the Muslim Council of Britain, claimed this practice betrays a process clearly designed to marginalise Muslims, and was a recipe for driving people to extremes.

A representative of Indymedia from the floor asked an apparently rhetorical question, “was this orchestrated and if so, by whom?”

I should perhaps state at this point that I have seen the documentary “The Century of the Self” i.e. “The Engineering of Consent” about the history of the Public Relations industry and how it has been bent to the mast of American foreign policy in orchestrating popular conceptions. Perhaps you had better see it now. Here it is:

http://uk.youtube.com/results?search_query=Edward+Bernays&search_type=&aq=f

http://uk.youtube.com/results?orig_query=Edward+Bernays&search_query=century+of+the+self&orig_query_src=2

That was something I suggested everyone in a workshop on “Journalists and the “terror” laws” should see.

Jeremy Dear, the president of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) was chairing the debate, and he argued that the consequence of this coverage, of having a “war” on “terror” had come to mean that our freedoms, our civil liberties, our human rights, our privacy even was under threat.

Our emotions over extremism was dictating the discourse and was being driven by major media groups. At least , Jeremy Dear suggested, this directing our attention was for what he saw as “being for military and strategic ends”.

This is something other speakers debated, saying evidence for this was difficult to find.

At the end of the day, our blonde student went against this measured orthodoxy of the other speakers and argued that such orchestration did exist, and suggested the reason was that Islam was in a significant way a threat to Western capitalism, and the fight to suppress Communism so well documented by serious historians, could apply to secret state moves against Islam through state orchestrated Islamaphobia. Apparently some Muslims at least may not observe Western values and interests observed in ‘interest rates’, for example.

By the way, apparently the reactionary (?) Taliban have banned Teddy bears. This I do find easier to understand as a symbol of a different world-view.

It is hard not to be ethno-centric in finding such moves difficult to countenance. . It is just I have yet to hear an actual justification why Teddy Bears were added to the list of banned items, even if a BBC journalist was there when it was decided.


I for one would like to know why teddy bears are banned, even if I accept that the gift of a teddy bear can indicate a possible inappropriate love between two people?

It was not all plain speaking at the conference however.

Or do I mean conspiratorial thoughts writ large?

Nick Davies, BBC trainer of journalists and author of the devastating recent Flat Earth News, thought that this ideology of marginalising Muslim world views was the usual commercial news filter to do with meeting readers’ expectations. He saw no proof it was orchestrated by a minority group. Even if the result is that of maintaining a dominant ideology.

A leading Irish journalist, Eamonn McCann was speaking on the same platform, advised those present that whilst there undoubtedly was an ideology hostile to Islam, he saw no cabal directing it. However, he did remember Tony Blair saying once that his invasion of the Middle East was more to do with supporting moderate Islam against reactionary Islam, rather than the whole debate over weapons of Mass Destruction or Regime Change. This was an emphatic point of Eamon’s testimony.

From the floor someone from Global Vision 2000 said that especially now there was a financial meltdown in the West, his organisation was going to focus on there being a “usurious” military, industrial and financial cabal directing events, even if the speakers were playing this down.

A point was made about the oil price being fixed to the dollar having some influence or effect in all this, but I started to lose it at this point.

Nevertheless, dear reader, I am trying to bring you some of the flavour of the debate. To avoid otherwise inevitable parochialism. I do not intend to become a slave to Rupert Murdoch’s world view, if indeed he has one, and neither do I wish you to be tied to his mastheads which industry speakers felt beat to a different drum

There was considerable support for the view that the media has been reduced to a ‘slave’ status, of an anti-intellectual or anti-investigative culture in our media-houses and an inevitable recycling of uncritical second hand information supplied by an Edward Bernay’s like Public Relations Industry. At least the Diogenes club forgives the errors of high debate for the sake of what it might provoke. For The Diogenes Club is a kaleidoscope of experience before the world of opinions and ideas.

For journalists, it was pointed out, are victims to a terrible weakness in the experience they have of their editor’s or their reader’s world-views, never mind journalist’s own contracts, conditions of service and job security.

Sinister developments were suggested by workshop chair photojournalist Marc Vallee who specialises in photographing political protests. He produced a colleague (present) who had been stopped and searched about 28 times this year despite having spotless press credentials. And the cause, Sections 43 and 24 of the recent Terrorism Act.

It would be a little like a member of the Diogenes Club being shunned for his or her ignorance at a meeting. The Diogenes Club follows the principle of “instructive sympathy” not intimidation.

A man in the check shirt present was political photographer Marc Vallee, next to him was Mr Hicham Yezza, an Algerian-born researcher and downloader of the Al Queida training manual. (This is something he and I have both done, but he spent 6 days in jail for it until his liberty was recovered) The Guantanamo Human Rghts lawyer Louise Christian sat at the end next to Hicham Yezza’s own moderate magazine on political discourse.

This de facto harassment limiting research and news coverage happens regularly, said Marc, despite his own carrying around a letter from the Home Secretary that “there are no legal restrictions on photography in a public place…” with a plausible caveat currently disputed that some restrictions “may be justified in reasonable circumstances”

See for how crazy this can become:

http://web.mac.com/beachhutman/Beachhutman/Blog/Entries/2008/7/15_community_of_secrets.html

Secret state researcher Tony Gosling (left) attended and interviewed one of the audience. See his website: www.bilderberg.org

He recently demonstrated his grasp of world affairs on Sky’s Channel 200.

Tony has another website www.public-interest.co.uk and maintains a constant presence in the world of intrigue as an independent public interest journalist. I must ask him about a man formerly from the CIA and a book on circuses in the USA that never got published. He has touched on many stories like that, but may not have been aware of his connections connections?




Various clear victims of state suspicion were present. Our researcher imprisoned for 6 days and questioned for 20 hours continuously (Hicham Yezza) had only looked at the Al Queida training manual online. Also there was a (7 year) former inmate of Guantanamo Bay speaking, (Inayat Bunglawala).

Your author himself has been a “victim” of state suspicion in the past, but thankfully ‘This is England’ and it has never come to anything.

Anyway a refreshing argument came to the fore. It was claimed that any repression, any over-reaction by the state or its organs, is likely to be counter productive, and exacerbate the situation. In fact this is a stated aim of the PPOG anti –terror group of the American state for solely military reasons. Please see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proactive,_Preemptive_Operations_Group

I wrote this up before at the end of this article:

http://web.mac.com/beachhutman/Beachhutman/Blog/Entries/2006/12/17_SHOOTING_STARS.html

I hope you agree with my sentiments. My point is that the US government is seeking to provoke or at least monitor reactions from extreme events to mop up dissent and establish presumably consent for the war on terror. This is as close I get to the charge of the state orchestrating negative news coverage, by the way.

But my perceptions are not those are not those of “the ‘Lyrical’ terrorist” who got into hot water for her poetry allowing for violence...in arguably a disproportionate way.

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=0&ct=result&cd=1&q=the+lyrical+terrorist&spell=1

I might even sympathise with the non-violent but anti prevailing existing world order perspective as outlined by Global Vision 2000, if it is viable or vaiid.

http://www.globalvision2000.com/

Please note, I know nothing about this, it is an offer for you to pursue this link for the sake of completeness. My time is short and a lot of this is new to me. I am but a beach-hut man.

Anyway, why am I writing all this stuff about terrorism, Islam and the media? I have no monopoly on the truth, even if I am starting to see the coinage of our dissent and consent to be policed in this way.

The answer is that my freedom, to wander into London to listen to academics, activists, journalists and previously suspected terrorists on matters of topical concern, is only possible at a massive cost in surveillance and covert state supervision.

What do I mean by that? Well, I am no stranger to counter surveillance training, ( I downloaded that part of the Al Queida manual a few years ago, remember ~ before it was illegal presumably) The video cameras trained on the speakers on the platform periodically turned on the audience. I hope I am not betraying a practice that might be useful for terrorists to know ~ for that might be an offence. Some of the “usual suspects” I recognised from other media meetings seemed to clock the fact i clocked the roaming camera work, and as you can see from this article, I publish what I see. It is all on You Tube, by the way.

In a public place you might remember this is quite lawful. But we must get used to this. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. And hopefully exposure of anything untoward. For we live in a democracy where ideally debate is open, transparent and accountable. We need to be on top of events, and not permit abuses of our awareness of threats or our trust in the organs of the state.

The important thing is that if we now live in a global village, we do not want to be the ‘village idiot’, nor do we want our guardians to be idiots either. Nor do we want our organs of news to be missing anything …which currently, according to the BBC’s Nick Davies, they are, despite whatever honesty under his tutelage they can muster.

The lesson from the participants…all of them… was that the only defence for our liberties is to challenge, comment, report and if necessary expose abuses of our human rights.

And, for necessary balance, I should add that everyone in the conference hall at the LSE was reminded by one speaker that “whilst some of these powers are disproportionate to the risks, inciting, influencing, grooming or brainwashing a generation must be kept under review.

(But it is not just terrorists that would influence or brainwash us, as we have seen).

The speaker added the caveat no one wants to glorify terrorism or provide anything likely to be useful to terrorists”. Who was that speaker?
It was Louise Christian, lawyer to many (state legitimated) forced detainees at Guantanamo Bay. She was most concerned that laws are being passed where the perpetrator may not know that they are offending the new often disproportionate terror laws.

By way of example, after seeing an Algerian born researcher arrested for downloading the Al Queida manual, something I have done in part, I am a bit cautious about setting foot on foreign soil. In England I feel reassured our checks and balances remain proportionate. But I am hopeful to travel to Woodland Hills in Hollywood to authorise a screenplay for a film of the “World of Tim”

(my idea for a working title for my adventurous past).

Yet I fear that thanks to my touching on so many sensitive subjects in the last decade… and downloading the bit of the Al Queida manual .. just the bit on counter surveillance (thanks to my seeking any meaning or uses of the words “two blue seeds” and “twig” after these strange objects were prominently left in my beach hut after a break in after a bizzare episode in my life ) …my freedom to travel might be compromised in a hostile world.

As it is when I travel abroad a message flashes up on the (Condor Ferries) booking computer if I change my plans, saying “Inform UK CID”.

Not that I mind, it is better to be “looked over” and “known” than to be “overlooked” and then possibly maltreated through some misapprehension in the heat of a moment. I still regard the police as my friend and am anxious that I do not waste their time with my Quixotic researches.

If you think none of this matters, just listen to the world’s real news on the magazine programme Outlook on the BBC’s World Service at 3am and compare it with the diet you get for popular consumption in the more popular media. It is a dangerous world beyond my trivial orbit, limited influence and supposed understanding

I am proud to pay my licence fee, just for the World Service. It may be my only contribution to achieving some real mediation of the real world to us all. For I am limited in what I can see, hear and understand.

We all need an antidote, a corrective, to parochialism.

The BBC can and does provide it, you just need to be awake in the wee small hours, or make time to listen again when you can…for the sake of your own education, for ignorance is no defence against terrorism…from any source.

My money is on the blonde in the audience. Ironically, as the conference drew to a close, I heard one academic claim a certain student …”was not a particularly good student”…

I suspect they were referring to her negatively for in their view oversimplifying a subject for which they as lecturers had an absolute monopoly.

But she was no Dumb Blonde, and maybe, she was not a Muslim either, for as such (judging by a 96% negative press in the unthinking tabloids) she would almost certainly have been marginalised even further by those guardians of the truth that seemed to me to be talking of this forward creature only to dismiss her as a “poor student” .

I hate discrimination, I hate ignorance. I hate slavery. I hate racism I hate sexism, well, pretty much.
See:
http://storiesfromthediogenesclub.blogspot.com/2008/09/why-i-hate-slavery.html

Did I say I hate violence.

But if you are a pantomime star, or maybe the heroine who fights for the downtrodden, Xena: Warrior Princess, please get in touch. Some female interest is apparently just the thing for the pipe-dream biography “The World of Tim”.

Even if for Xena” Warrior Princess, the quickest way to a man’s heart was through his ribcage. Ignoring that violence, we need to remember that for peace we should plan for war. But here I mean the war of ideas, for hearts and minds, or we will all be driven to extremes.

I like people who can put their finger on the nub of a problem. A sword, even a pantomime sword, is a very useful pointer in any theatre. Our blonde student, for me was only saying what the President of the National Union of Journalists had said. It was just that her point came at a lull in our thinking...we had been lulled into complacency and lazy thinking through advice the evidence for a cabal was not there. And other activists from the floor had been saying the same thing...we have had our views orchestrated for us by a dominant ideology.

Everything is a meme, struggling for survival.

So many academics have become apologists or consultants to the secret state there is currently a debate as to how far the LSE can be trusted to maintain academic freedoms. This is healthy. This is normal. For we must guard the good as well as the bad.

For a little diversion here look at what one determined researcher has discovered about the well-respected Columbia University in America.
http://www.namebase.org/tour1.html


My apologies to academe, the Taliban, and the Security Services I am an ignorant hut dweller, but happy to oblige anyone in discourse and not I hope compound any discourtesy if I have caused offence.

When I return to my tiny circumscribed world, beach hut or barrel, , I will be a bit happier that I can see behind the sensationalist headlines about radical Muslims. For they have a case.

The Diogenes Club has rarely intervened in the world, we have had a hundred years of secret state influence in the political agenda with, for example, communism. Witness P2 in Italy, P25 and was it P26 in Switzerland, never mind all the conventional history supporting this dominance where better documented or more transparent. The Diogenes Club may have had something to do in all of this, but certainly it has had little to say “on the record”. For we are not it would seem a “results driven” organisation with the urgency and agenda of, for example, the P organisations, and now the PPOG or the original (?) CIA.

But then that is the practice of diplomacy, is being a little like a politician, that is: sitting on the fence but keeping an ear to the ground on both sides at the same time. I prefer talking to fighting. Even if it is talking about fighting. In a pre-emptive sense perhaps.

For you can learn more about the world by the light of a candle than the intervention of a flash gun. Oh! that everyone thought so. And Oh! that we could settle our differences without fighting or committing any violence on the truths we encounter. The trouble is we keep encountering or maybe keep creating falsehoods.

Maybe the world should be run by truth seeking and truth establishing monks, not quite of this world, but for it.

For I like a little discipline. Discipline of thought that is. Of action sometimes. Of restraint., maybe. Or do we already have it? And if so, where?

Perhaps I should draw a veil over these bovine machinations. Or seek some leadership from famous figures or a movement of some kind. Yup. There has recently been a programme on The Universal Declaration of Human Rights . A shame the MediaWars people sought to ban one Revisionist Historian from speaking? What he said needed hearing.