This latest round of Israeli/Palestinian hos­til­it­ies (includ­ing sup­port­ers and detract­ors of both sides)is exactly that, another bout in a deeply com­plex and long run­ning series of scuffles, con­flicts and tit-for-tat repris­als. Before we rush to con­demn Israel, as it is often so easy to do, or defend them, we should put this in con­text (a very simplistic con­text for brevity):

In 1947 the Palestini­ans were offered a two state solu­tion but declined it; The Palestini­ans were evicted from Jordan for caus­ing trouble (brev­ity!), the wars of 1947, ’67 and ’73 were all ini­ti­ated by Arab nations (and yes, I am aware of the pre-emptive strike) with the declared intent of wip­ing Israel off the face of the map, an aim still main­tained by many neigh­bour­ing states and organ­isa­tions within the West Bank and Gaza.

Israel’s for­eign and domestic policy fail­ings are well doc­u­mented but as an example we have the count­less thou­sands of dis­placed and dis­possed Arabs res­ult­ing from the ’47 war, vari­ous inva­sions of neigh­bour­ing coun­tries, most sig­ni­fic­antly Lebanon; the seal­ing off of Gaza, turn­ing it into a vir­tual prison; the imple­ment­a­tion of a form of apartheid and the obses­sion with build­ing set­tle­ments for ter­rit­orial con­sol­id­a­tion and gain.

This is no simple story and there is no simple answer. I have just seen an argu­ment on Twit­ter ask­ing why, if the aid ships had noth­ing to hide, did they not allow the Israelis to search them? My imme­di­ate thought, in a con­tem­por­ary Brit­ish set­ting, was that if you have noth­ing to hide, why get aggrieved with being searched by the police or about car­ry­ing an ID card? If they had fol­lowed Israeli instruc­tions they could have appar­ently filled in the neces­sary cus­toms forms and shipped the sup­plies, but that wasn’t ever going to be allowed and wasn’t really the point, was it? The point was to break the block­ade that had kept a people con­fined to rot. How­ever, I digress. There are two real issues here and both need to be answered by the Net­an­yahu gov­ern­ment immediately.

Firstly, what is to be gained from the isol­a­tion of Gaza? Weapons and sup­plies to con­struct weapons are still get­ting through by sea and land. The Olmert admin­is­tra­tion allowed sup­plies to be delivered by sea, although in my mind this is a vir­tual admis­sion that aid is required and that the effects of the embargo are hurt­ing inno­cent civil­ians. What is to be gained from turn­ing the whole area into a prison? Cur­rently Israeli sol­diers are the best recruit­ing ser­jeants (I am an ex-Green Jacket, the spelling is cor­rect) that the Arab ter­ror­ists have, Israel must learn from the mis­takes made by other coun­tries such as Bri­tain and the United States. This will require a change in tac­tics to deal with insur­gents but it must be done.

The second issue is the method in which the oper­a­tion was car­ried out. The IDF had months of notice that this flo­tilla was going to sail, they had months to work out their tac­tics and prac­tice for every even­tu­al­ity. They got it very, very wrong. Who thought that fast rop­ing into a con­fined and hos­tile envir­on­ment would be a good idea? Who thought send­ing naval com­mandos with little exper­i­ence of crowd con­trol tac­tics would be a good idea? Why not block the ships or seek to divert them? Why not dis­able them with elec­tronic counter meas­ures or the myriad of non-lethal weapons pos­sessed by the IDF? It is here I would like to point out that I sup­port the troops who opened fire, just as I do the police­man who fired the rounds into Jean-Charles de Menezes. I real­ise this is con­tro­ver­sial, it is not delib­er­ately so, but faced with an extremely hos­tile and viol­ent crowd, in fear of their lives, I fail to see they had any other option. I also fail to see that until any­one has been in a sim­ilar situ­ation, that they are qual­i­fied to comment.

The entire oper­a­tion was a total fail­ure on every level. Israel is a pariah. The abil­ity of the IDF, senior officers and the gov­ern­ment to plan for mil­it­ary oper­a­tions is being ques­tioned around the world. The deterrence factor of the once invin­cible Tzva Hagana Le Yisra’el is slip­ping with every ill thought out mis­ad­ven­ture. Israel must learn from their enemies and allies alike. Sadly PR is as import­ant as effect­ive mil­it­ary cap­ab­il­ity, some­thing the Brit­ish learnt in Borneo and the US failed to in Viet­nam, and in this battle the IDF is light-years behind their neigh­bours, no mat­ter how soph­ist­ic­ated their main battle tanks are. How did they ever think this was going to look, even if it had gone well? And des­pite what they will tell you, that really does matter.

I’m afraid this response is a little con­fused, it is a con­fus­ing situ­ation. There are no good and no bad sides, both have their argu­ments. Israel is a coun­try under con­stant attack and that must be recog­nised, as must the his­tory of the Jews in Israel. Many argue that the Israelis have used up their right to play the holo­caust card, I would dis­agree. It is impossible to under­es­tim­ate that col­lect­ive exper­i­ence and the impact on those run­ning and fight­ing for their coun­try. One slip, one sign of weak­ness and a small nation sur­roun­ded will be gone and with it the safety and inde­pend­ence of an entire people. How­ever, this is not a carte blanche to carry out any and every oper­a­tion in clear con­tra­ven­tion of accep­ted inter­na­tional law and human­it­arian prac­tice. Israel can­not afford to hem­or­rhage sup­port as it con­tin­ues to do so, espe­cially in such an embar­rass­ing, ama­teur man­ner. Equally, the people of Gaza and the West Bank can­not be left to rot in the jail that their lands have been turned into

I go through periods when I think I’ve got away from it. Life appears to be going well, I’m a world away from the heat and stench of the Middle East and Africa. I’m equally as far away from any barrack room or mess. I go to galleries and trips to Europe. I discuss literature or film and get angry about politics and the law. But every so often I get a stinging reminder about what I am always running away from. I have avoided military association. I try not to go to reunions, I make excuses about exams to get out of the Army V Navy rugby match. I don’t want to talk about what we got up to and the exploits of the dead. I have nothing in common with these people. We share little now. But that’s not entirely true.

Moments like this hit me physically. I feel sick and have a splitting headache. I get angry.

I sat on the Jubilee line feeling numb and angry. Look at these people. I’m both jealous of and I hate them.

Profit and loss. Action points and minutes. Metrics and spreadsheets. Work life balance. Flexible working hours. Must respond to this email and chase a response to that one. Libel reform, Rylands V Fletcher, critical legal theory, MPs expenses, Samantha Cameron is pregnant…fuck you.

Deep breath. Open office door. ‘Good morning everyone, and how are we all on this glorious spring morning?’

Not actually the protest I attended.

I had little to do on a Thursday night and having seen an advert on the Space Hijackers website I thought I would pop along to watch them demonstrate outside the annual arms dealer’s dinner in Park Lane.

By the time I got to the Hilton, Park Lane there were probably about 30 protesters. Some were milling around carrying various placards while some were sitting on the floor outside the front door of the hotel. Also in attendance were probably about 100 police officers. Amusingly, the Space Hijackers were dressed in dinner jackets carrying signs saying: ‘Arms Dealer’ with a large arrow. They then followed people going into the dinner pointing their signs as they went.

The police had obviously had enough of the protesters outside the front door and rightly so. They were obstructing entry and exit and getting in the way of the taxis. At was at this point that my sympathy with the Met ended.

Having also decided that they did not want protesters on the street the senior officer decided to invoke Section 14 of the Public Order Act 1986. And for those of you who are in any doubt about what this means:

Section 14 — Imposing conditions on public assemblies
provides police the power to impose conditions on assemblies “to prevent serious public disorder, serious criminal damage or serious disruption to the life of the community”, but the conditions are limited to the specifying of:
the number of people who may take part,
the location of the assembly, and
its maximum duration

An extended line of policemen descended on us and informed everybody that Section 14 had been invoked, as a result if we wanted to protest we would have to make our way to an enclosed pen. The pen happened to be off to one side behind a bush. A few people started telling the 5–0 that they didn’t want to be kettled and asked if they would be let out if they wanted to go home. The policeman said that this could not be guaranteed. He also told us we would be arrested if we didn’t move. When asked what for a wouldn’t tell us. I asked him if he thought this was Kafka-esque and received a blank look in reply.

It seems the police had got a little bored of trying to round people up s nobody was keen for a good kettling. We milled around for a bit, I say we but I was off to one side twittering on my phone. A little later the officer in charge had obviously had enough and the line advance once more. By this point I was rather bored and standing next to the bus stop. The line passed me by but the inspector spotted me, pointed and shouted ‘watch that one, he’s been here for half an hour.’ I should probably point out that by this then the only time I had been with the protesters was when I had my short discussion with the copper about Kafka. I was dressed in a suit and standing on Park Lane.

6 policemen circled me and asked what I was doing. I stated that I was waiting for a bus. They asked which bus. I said that bus and pointed at the number 74. The bus pulled up and one of them shouted ‘You’d better get on that bus’ I replied that I would but that the driver hadn’t actually opened the door and this was impeding my journey. Randomly another man in a suit waiting for the bus started yelling ‘You’d better get on that bloody bus, don’t you realise this is east Germany?!’

I was then threatened with arrest. Half of me was inclined to let them arrest me and then have them explain under which piece of legislation I was being held for loitering. I then remembered that I could be arrested for anything and got on the bus. We then had the comedy spectacle of a bus stuck in traffic while 6 policeman stood, staring at a man on the bus through the window.

My thoughts of the day were thus: While we have the right to protest it is on the terms of the people you are generally wanting to protest against. When they’ve decided you’re getting in the way you can be dispersed or kettled at will. The invocation of Section 14 was and is entirely arbitrary, were 30 people holding signs about to commit: “serious public disorder, serious criminal damage or serious disruption to the life of the community” I don’t think so. It seems the Met have 2 gears; soft or hard. At one point I was shoved in the back by a sergeant, if I’d have thought about it on inclined to trouble I could have pulled off a football style dive, I could have taken their shoulder numbers but to what avail?

As we stood around the TV discussing how such a terrible accident could have happened we saw the second plane hit. It slowly dawned on us and those presenting the live news feed that this might not have been an accident. There were a few of us in my infantry regiment that were rather up on current affairs, we read a lot and had an understanding of global politics. I counted myself as one of those and a guy nicknamed Cat was another. We happened to be standing next to each other watching this unfold. We both muttered: ‘We’re going to war.’

Fast forward two years: I’m standing in down town Basra.

Fast forward six years from then: I’m making arrangements to bury a friend.

To the field they took. Most just wanted a rest, some pork based fancies or a cup of tea but it wasn’t to happen. Led by the irrepressible Bonnie Prince Tanner they formed their battle lines and awaited the onslaught stoically. The House of Hannover (Not the MCC) opened hostilities with Perks and the predictably German sounding Hamer das Boot. Sensing an easy victory, they strode out purposefully. Tanner led from the front and staked his intentions from the off. They may have been weakened but they were by no means out of the fight. He bowled with pinpoint accuracy swinging the ball in off a length. While the batsmen showed young Tanner a fine array of flourished defenses and streaky singles, their arrogance was to be their downfall as Behl showed the awe-inspiring effectiveness of the highland charge (or a big Aussie with lamb chop sidies steaming in). The first five wickets all fell to the big man, including 3 with timbers shattered in consecutive blows. Yet this team were no one man band, this was not a duel but a battle. Wilson took two stunning catches in the field: one coming out the sun, from his versatile leader’s devious bowling and one low to his right (his dive for the cameras, making it look harder than it actually was). MacKinnon behind the stumps let nothing through and threatened, constantly, to stump any errant batsman: his fine performance was capped with a full length dive to his left to take a sublime catch in his weaker hand, from the marauding Beckman. Davis, bristling with venom as usual, broke any remnants of a stand while Hutchinson mopped up the survivors. Finally, Behl struck once more with the assistance of a well held catch from the hithertofore lackadaisical Bowman.

198 was the final score posted in a little past 35 overs. With a full strength unit the LICCs could expect to mop this up with time to spare, yet they were without their main hitter and it showed. Wilson and MacKinnon, two heroes in the field, strapped up and stepped out to face the best their enemy could throw at them. MacKinnon playing with flare in his usual cavalier manner was cut short after 4 balls: it seems so many hours behind the stumps had taken their toll as he fell for a duck. Don, undeterred by the loss of such a big name stepped into his place and played a vital role with Wilson in seeing off the new ball. Indeed, the latter’s score of 10 before his unlucky demise did not reflect fairly the actions of the man. Bowman, another clearly exhausted by the efforts earlier in the day, fell for a primary. Yet there was a glimmer of hope. Galagedera, who had been in self-imposed exile for so long, stepped into the breach and stemmed the flow, swinging his way to a well fought 49. With Don falling on 6, Sadler stepped forward next, offering resolute defiance with every nonchalant leave. He held out for several overs, yet he could do little in the face of such overwhelming odds. Davis, hostile as ever, swore, cursed and flailed his was to 21 but could do no more. Behl, the hero of so many engagements held his own and plundered one last defiant six, as his captain cut his way to 4 and then out.

67 runs short was the eventual total. Not the MCC may have had their victory but it was certain to be Pyrrhic, such was the intensity and ferocity with which the Itinerants defended their rain soaked patch of Wandsworth that day.

(Due to the kind of memory that means he annually forgets his girlfriend’s birthday, the author can not vouch for the accuracy of any facts, cricketing or historical.)

As I sit in my grey office on a grey day in a grey suit there is a light. It comes in the shape, or rather sound, of TMS (Test Match Special for the philistines) playing via the BBC on my PC. Cricket obviously has its detractors, I am constantly mocked for my unhealthy obsession with a game which can go on for five days and still end in a draw. A game that stops for drinks and lunch and tea. A game that doesn’t seem to move that quickly and is just the same repetitive action played again and again. Yet I and countless millions love the game. Why?

For me, and I warn you this is sentimental, cricket is more than a game it is a way of life, it is something pure. As I crouched behind the stumps on Sunday I saw an opposition batsman hit a lovely shot which was applauded by our team. Where else, but on the cricket field, in today’s fast paced competitive world, would you see that? Where else would the incoming batsman be clapped and wished good luck? As it happened we managed to beat the other team in record time. So the day wasn’t wasted and in an attempt at offering them some redemption from ignominy we played again. We then de-camped to the pub, together.

I’m not naive enough to suggest the spirit of fair play and decency extends into all levels of the game. I have no doubt that those with actual talent are as competitive as in any other sport. I am sure that WG Grace was a ruthless bastard, but at the amateur, rank amateur level, things are different. That said, even in today’s game there is a faint whiff of a mythical, old world where nothing more than a stiff upper lip and Corinthian spirit were needed to run an empire. There is a fair argument that cricket was developed to further the Christian ideals of the motherland to the colonials yet cricket with its Silly Mid Offs and Deep Backward Square Legs and Corridor of Uncertainty, for me, conjures images of something warm and fuzzy. When I listen to TMS in my office I feel like I should be wearing flannels and tweed rather than a suit and listening to it on an old Roberts rather than a PC. There is a strange part of me that likes the ritual of tuning an old radio to Radio 4 LW, hearing the other stations fizzing in and out until the genteel sound of mass clapping fills the airwaves.

I love the stats and, for a man with no head for numbers, the obsession with figures. I’ve just heard a commentator stating that this is the lowest score by an England team batting first at Headingly since 1953 — depressing yet glorious. A friend of mine has kept a spreadsheet of every ball bowled and faced since he was 11, he can reel off his batting and bowling figures on request without blinking. As I said, some think cricket is nothing but a man bowling a ball at another man endlessly for 5 days. They’re wrong. This simplistic view fails to take into consideration the endless personal duels, the traps, subtle changes of flight, and line and length.

Cricket will never replace football as the game of the masses, I wouldn’t want to it to. I suppose there is a part of me that enjoys being one of a self-selected band who huddle together in pubs selling real ales discussing obscure elements of a random game. This sums it up for me. It’s a game that even those of us who have been playing and watching for years don’t fully understand — most footballers can explain the off side rule but how many people know the penalty for a cricket ball hitting a hat placed on the floor by the fielding team? We don’t understand it, we’re not very good at it despite inventing and exporting it — how wonderfully British.

For better or worse Britain is stuck for the foreseeable in a part of the world where few outsiders have had military success. America had more helicopters than you can shake a oily monkey wrench at during their ill fated exploits in South East Asia yet what good did it do them? None, bar the enduring image of that last chopper leaving the roof of a Saigon compound. A war fought on dubious grounds increasingly lacking in popular support against an insurgent force, sound familiar? So what to do? Increase the size of the army James Forsyth argues in the Spectator. The States had over half a million men in a significantly smaller country, again, I ask what good did that do them? To put it into perspective, if the US generals get their anticipated troop reinforcements they will have just shy of 100,000. Britain does not need a bigger army. The men and equipment necessary to operate properly are required but what Britain needs is a coherent exit strategy from a bloody and pointless conflict.

The only way for us to get out of Afghanistan is through a negotiated settlement with the tribes, insurgents and Afghan government. A multi-national force could provide a safe buffer zone to protect as much of the border with Pakistan as they can but that’s it. It is at this point when Britain needs to take a good look at itself in the mirror. We, as much as it pains us to admit it, are not a major world player. We are a small to medium sized country lingering on the outskirts of Europe. We need to forget our colonial past. Yes, we have brought many wonderful things to the world — cricket, golf and rugby to name but three — but we need to grow up. You don’t see Greece, Italy (well not seriously), Tunisia or Belize claiming any divine right to intervene where they are not wanted. We need to start behaving like countries of a similar size — yes, maintain a small, professional, well armed and trained defence force but do we need space aged nukes? Not really. By all means we can join multi-national military ventures but let’s leave the global policing to the big boys.

Conventional wisdom and an interview with Nick Clegg in today’s Independent suggests that many will be driven into the arms of the Liberal Democrats. Some to the Greens. This is probably a fairly safe assumption for the coming European/Local elections and may be true for the next general election, when it eventually comes. But then what? There will be countless voters who have voted nothing but Labour for generations with a real dilemma on their hands

In many ways I think Brown should call an election as soon as possible. He won’t of course but I think it would be beneficial to the Labour party as a whole. Get the pain over with quickly without fooling yourselves there is any way you can win and re-group. Comparisons can be drawn between the Labour Party and Newcastle United; use the time in the lower division to get rid of an iffy leader and get a load of over-paid talentless whelps off your books. Sadly I think many voters are scarred so badly by the New Labour experience that the party is destined to years in the wilderness. They should, however, use this time wisely. Re-engage with the core, grass root support. Remember its proud history and re-take the moral high ground. The UK is now one of the only democracies to have no party of the working man (the US is of course debatable) and Nouveau-Labour should rectify this, immediately

I, for my sins, cherish freedom of speech above most rights. I think it is the hallmark of our tolerant society that we are not afraid of criticism and are strong enough to endure the most ludicrous of ideas being circulated. Sadly people who share the views of the BNP are always going to lurk in our wings; they are the disenchanted, the disenfranchised and the down right stupid. Yet who are we to tell them how to think? If we accept that we can’t tell someone their thoughts are wrong, we accept that we cannot stop them banding together with like-minded people.

What concerns me is that the minute we ban them we are admitting they are a threat. We have had to use the force of the law to suppress them, drive them underground and make martyrs of them. In many ways I see the BNP as a necessary evil. They are a check and balance, a reflection from a circus mirror — the dark half of ying and yang. These are in many ways worrying times, comparisons can be drawn between now and the death throws of the Weimar Republic. The BNP should be a reminder to us all, more so to our politicians, of what lurks on the fringes.

So we ban them.  Who are ‘we’? Whose opinion is it that counts. Ban the BNP and what next? The Socialist Workers Party? The Communist Party? Maybe the Green Party? Under whose measure of acceptability do we operate?

Rather than ban them, look at the people who are being driven into their arms. What are their drivers? If it is pure racism, let them go, you can’t argue with lunatics. But if there is more, and I suspect there is, listen to them. As I said, we now have a class of the disenfranchised, people who have been forgotten and left out of the political process. These people need to be re-engaged.

Voltaire didn’t say: “I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it” but if he had have done he would have had a point.

We have been kept in check by a cocktail of debt and aspiration. Both are related and are products of each other but are effective in keeping us from rocking the boat because we are scared. We aspire to be better off, to move up the social ladder, to be influential & etc. Debt is a symptom of this. We aspire to things we can’t afford so get in debt, debt that we aspire to pay off. Because we are saddled with this debt all we look to is the next pay-day, the next bonus or promotion. This cycle has been propagated by business and the free market — it is a cycle that has failed us and a system that we are now bailing out. But for what? So it can begin again.

The politicians we elect to represent us have lied and failed, putting their own agenda and that of the businesses they will consult for (Blair, JP Morgan etc etc) first. We contract with them to govern us as we want to be govern, we give them the mandate. But the contract has been broken. 1998 saw the introduction of the Human Rights Act. 2001 saw the beginning of a concerted effort to derogate those rights in a Schmittian state of exception. So we can vote them out and everything will be better, right? Wrong. Following the Belmarsh case the Tories openly condemned the courts with accusations of judicial activism, as did Herr Blair. Gordon Brown promised a written (his choice of words) constitution but now won’t even hold an election until he is obliged to (constitutionally).

Benjamin Franklin argued that the social contract/constitution should be renewed every generation. Is now not the time to do this? But how? We can’t vote them out. By them I mean the career politicians, those who are indistinguishable but for their tie colour. We have no real democracy. The Diceyan concept of Parliamentary sovereignty is now defunct. Parliament is self serving, its mandate is hollow and built on lies. It is time to put something above the cretins that milk their expenses, a code of conduct that is binding on everything they do — a codified constitution. By demanding that we change the method and form of our government we create the ‘event’ that the foundation of most constitutions spring from. In the way that Americans look to their founding fathers for inspiration, we should look to the Levellers, not the Glorious Revolution or Cromwell. We must change Hart’s rule of recognition to something we recognise and we re-write the contract. As I have said, we can’t vote them out. Turkeys won’t vote for Christmas (hackneyed, I know). I’m not advocating an uprising, more mass demonstrations, less velvet more cashmere or tweed.

I’ll be the one waving my umbrella at Parliament.