Posts have been a little lacking of late - sorry.
I spent the week after my interview on Tuesday at Alice's in Greenwich. On the Tuesday Alice was working from home in order to take delivery of a load of furniture for her new house, which gave my interview day an interesting twist - building a double bed before leaving for the train.
The interview went well, I thought, if a little bizarre. No details here, sorry again.
War - Skip This Bit If You Like
Everything at the moment seems to revolve around the impending war in Iraq. Returning home from Blockbuster, four kids on Allie's street were standing outside a house.
"We're doing an anti-war protest!" cried one.
"Look, we even done some posters!" another pointed to an upstairs window, where some large bits of paper with 'NO WAR' and 'NO GEORGE' covered the smaller window.
Allie and I gave some 'caught rather unexpectedly' style praise.
"We've got a chant too..."
"2-4-6-8! Who don't we appreciate? Geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeorge Bush!"
I am having difficulty viewing everything that is going on and taking it at face value. With the (first?) Gulf War, there was at least a country that Saddam had invaded, and the coalition forces played the avenging white knights. It seems to me, that after the collapse of the regime in Afghanistan and the ensuing international effort at 'nation building', that is now an acceptable course of action if a country's government doesn't meet with international approval ie: isn't a democracy.
I'm not saying that the government in Iraq isn't terrible, or that the Taliban's rule wasn't terrible, I just think that this anti-nasties crusade that the US and the UK are now up to their necks in might backfire. If the Iraq issue is about terrorism, it would have been about Saddam and Al-Qaeda from the off. That alleged link only started being discussed after months of anti-Iraq noises from both countries.
If they're going to take on anywhere that holds weapons of mass destruction, there's most of the developed nations of the world on that list, and if taken by a humanitarian motive, the countries of the world with less-than-shining human rights records could, potentially, include China, Malaysia...some of the Central American Republics...?
I don't like Bush, I must confess. Any man that after two weeks in power takes his country out of the latest global hope for the reduction of pollution because 'it would detriment America economically', and also, seemingly at the same time, out of the nuclear armaments agreement that put a seal on the end of the Cold War, well...in my admittedly small and personal book, he's got a lot of work to do to raise himself in my estimation.
There will be a war in the Gulf. It will more than likely be called the Second Gulf War. In all probability, 'we' will win. Clare Short will get to play at 'nation building', and Iraq will have the normal 'civilised nation's' allocation of UK and US armed forces bases.
Oh, as a matter of interest on the 'nation building ' front...anyone have any idea who is running Bosnia-Herzegovina?
Paddy Ashdown.
Riiiiight.
That's all I'm going to say on the subject of Iraq and everything. It is done.
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