Sex and the City lawyer

A FORMER City lawyer has launched a claim in the High Court that could set a very interesting precedent for all of us.
Patrick Raggett is suing the governors of his old school, and the Jesuit society which ran it, for £5million.
He claims his career was wrecked by sexual abuse at the hands of one priest during his time at Preston Catholic College in Lancashire.
The supposedly offending priest is now deceased, which gets one or other of them off the hook.
Mr Raggett says that after leaving school in 1976 he started to gamble, got into debt and underperformed at university. He had difficulty in forming relationships, drank excessively and took drugs.
All this I am prepared to believe. I know a lot of people you could say all that about. Some of it (the bit about "underperforming" anyway) you could say about me.
So who should we all sue?
Our old schools for failing to prepare us adequately to excel in later life?
Our parents ditto?
That old bloke who used to look at us funny when we got on the school bus?
What about the games teacher whose shortsightedness kept him from picking me for the school football team? He is obviously to blame for my failure to embark upon a playing career that might have led… well, anywhere.
A few starring games at left-back at the age of 14 and who knows – maybe, like Neil Warnock, I’d "still" be a Premier League manager now.
Perhaps I could also sue all those potential employers who unaccountably failed to see what a brilliant job I'd have done for them.
Then there's the question of how much we set our claim at. Why stop at a paltry £5m?
In my case, obviously, if I'd lived up to childhood promise and fulfilled my writing ambition, I'd be out-earning JK Rowling by now.
Of course, I doubt my old school (any or even all of them) could afford that much. But perhaps it's worth a try.
Now, all right, maybe I am getting silly now. But not as silly, it seems to me, as Mr Raggett. After all, I'm only indulging my fantasies in print – while he seems to think the world really does owe him a living. And a pretty decent one too.
I'm not denying that he may have been interfered with at school. I wouldn't know, would I?
And I'm certainly not saying it's OK for priests, teachers or anyone to do to children the sorts of things Mr Raggett apparently claims were done to him.
It's up to the High Court, with presumably a lot more evidence than I'll ever see, to decide what, if anything, that might have been.
But if he really wants to lay blame for all his own personal inadequacies at the door of one (conveniently dead) priest, he'll have to be pretty convincing. And there is one huge problem there.
He says himself he only realised he had been sexually abused three decades later "during a Sunday lunch with friends". Some Sunday lunch that must have been.
One does wonder what exactly his friends might have been telling him.
His whole claim is based on memories that have recently "surfaced". And you don't have to be an expert on Freud or psychoanalysis to know how dodgy "recovered memories" can be.
I once had a friend who blamed the breakdown of her already very bizarre marriage on having been abused by her father when she very young.
Yet she knew nothing of this supposed abuse until the memory was "recovered" with the help of a psychiatrist.
"Recovered" or "created", that is the question. A question neither I, the psychiatrist – nor my friend – will ever truly know the answer to, if we are honest.
In the meantime, has she been helped to "recover"? Or has her elderly dad been scurrilously smeared and her relationship with him ruined for the sake of a fashionable fiction?
As for Mr Raggett, is his recovered memory worth £5m – or should he, rather, be paying the school for enabling him to become a City lawyer at all?
He told the court: "My employment record is so far away from what it should have been. To know what one could have been and not be anything remotely approaching that is very painful."
I know the truth of that second sentence very well myself. I'm sure of lot of people reading this will have nodded at it too.
So should we all find someone to sue? Or should we learn to accept the blatant truth that life ain't fair? Count the blessings we do have.
And maybe, just maybe, take some responsibility ourselves for our own lives instead of playing victim and looking for someone to blame.

• For legal reasons, this post did not appear as my column in the Ipswich Evening Star.

A platform for the ravings of a faith-betraying saddo

I HAPPENED to pick up a copy of the Evening Standard on the train home from London the other night and was appalled. As of course I was meant to be.
The Standard is one of those papers (you can no doubt think of others) whose readers clearly like nothing better than to shake their heads and tut-tut a lot. If the editors themselves aren’t hooked on raised blood-pressure, then they know at least that’s what keeps their readers happy.
For such papers there’s nothing better these days to rouse the blood than a good Muslim. Or rather, a bad Muslim.
Someone, for example, like Anjem Choudary. Or Andy, as he apparently used to be known in his allegedly wild-living student days.
A couple of quotes should be enough to give you an idea of Choudary’s world-view.
He wants "to fly the flag of Allah above 10 Downing Street" and bring about "a pure Islamic state with Sharia law in Britain".
This would mean "every woman, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, would have to wear a traditional burkha and cover everything apart from her face and hands in public".
Oh, and "people who commit adultery would be stoned to death."
I’m appalled of course by Choudary’s barking-mad views, but also by the fact that a self-styled "quality newspaper" should choose to trumpet them as its main story.
If I spent enough time in the pubs of Ipswich, or maybe hung around the Cornhill, I could find people with a wide range of weird, maybe offensive opinions.
It wouldn’t take me long, I’m sure, to find someone to spout vile gibberish about some or all of the following: black people, white people, old people, young people, gay people, straight people, working people, non-working people, rich people, poor people, foreigners of any kind you can think of, atheists, Christians, Jews – and, yes, Muslims.
I could find all manner of mad viewpoints (and not just in Ipswich, of course – any town would do). I could get quotes reflecting all kinds of idiocy.
But I wouldn’t expect the Evening Star – or the Evening Standard – to put them on the front page.
By picking on one particular nutter and giving his ravings the big treatment, the Standard (and lots of other papers too) have given him exactly what he wanted. A big platform to rave from.
At the same time, it implies that his nasty, twisted outlook is shared by most British Muslims. Which it isn’t.
Now I’m not a Muslim, and neither are any of my close friends, so I can’t pretend to know exactly how they do all think and feel. But I can be pretty sure that like the rest of us, what most want most is a peaceful and secure life.
The one Muslim I’ve spoken to about it told me: "People like Anjem Choudary and the Luton protesters aren’t even proper Muslims. They betray the faith and they betray all of us by making our lives more difficult."
And this I do know: Choudary got his 15 minutes of fame by inviting many thousands of Muslims to join a "protest" at Luton Airport. A grand total of 20 individuals turned up. Presumably those who like a bit of a rumble.
Whatever he might like to think, and however some of the press may brand him, Choudary isn’t a leader. He’s a pathetic, mean-minded saddo – and should be treated as such.

AN EVENING Star reader branded me last week in the Letters page as a "bleeding heart left wing liberal". Some of which may be true, but the clearly insulting intention is strange because I agree with much of the letter.
I certainly couldn’t argue with the headline: "We don’t need religious nonsense." And I agree with the implication that all religion is to some extent nonsense.
The Bible, Koran etc are indeed "made up of myths" and "legends" – though I think I’d draw the line at "lies". Let’s say "stories" and accept that it’s not the writers’ fault if some deluded readers choose to take fiction literally.

Unnatural selection hurts our oldest and best friend

THROUGH the course of my adult life, some of my best friends have been dogs.
I have known years when my best company, my best support, came from dogs.
I wasn’t brought up to this. My parents were never “doggy people”. But the comfort with which I took to canine company suggests what I think many people with dogs know in their bones.
That it’s not only dogs whose breeding has been affected by centuries of living with people. It’s ours too. We have literally evolved together.
The history of our two species, human and dog, has been so intertwined for so many generations that it is a genuine symbiosis. We surely started out, several millennia ago, hunting together to our mutual advantage. Then came mutual warmth, mutual protection. Our two species long ago became literal best friends.
Of course, we like the cats we brought in to keep down the rats and mice. And they like the reliable sources of food and warmth we provide.
But the relationship is much shallower, probably much more recent, than is the case with dogs. Cats are our temporary guests, dogs our partner species.
Some people no doubt sentimentalise and exaggerate the extent of understanding and emotional involvement between people and dogs. But people who live without dogs generally under-estimate these things too.
Anyone who says – as some serious people do – that we are the only species capable of empathy has surely never lived with a dog.
As for those scientific researchers who recently announced their “discovery” that dogs experience emotions such as jealousy… For them I have just three words. The first is “no” and the third is “Sherlock”.
So yes, I love my dog. That’s “my” dog as in “my” friend, “my” family. I’m claiming a relationship of care, not of ownership.
You might have noticed I described myself as my dogs’ “guardian”, not their “owner”.
It may be a subtle difference, but it’s a nice distinction of attitude – one I’ve picked up from Peta.
I don’t subscribe to all the views or campaigns promoted by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.
For example, I’m not a vegetarian (not any more) and I don’t (totally) abhor zoos.
I think it’s better to accept the vital aspects of keeping animals for food or other purposes and concentrate on doing it ethically. Which means caring for the well-being of all animals, including us.
But I share much of Peta’s basic outlook. And I’m with them much of the way in their condemnation of the Kennel Club and its flagship show, Crufts.
I’ve been to the odd dog show, and enjoyed them – as I did TV coverage of Crufts before the BBC rightly pulled out of it. But the deformities and indignities inflicted on some dogs by wilful breeding have always appalled me.
Bulldogs that can’t give birth naturally. Pugs that can neither eat nor breathe easily. Prize-winning german shepherds whose sloping backs and weak legs would rule them out of police work. Spaniels with skulls too small for their brains. Other dogs with skins too big, ears too long, legs too short, a Pandora’s box of congenital diseases.
I wouldn’t want to accuse all dog-breeders of being uncaring – far from it. And of course breed characteristics, including to some extent aesthetic ones, come into consideration whenever anyone chooses a dog.
But humanity isn’t always a very good guardian to its best friend. The co-evolution of our species is horribly imbalanced.
Dog-breeding provides a textbook illustration of how evolution works. Trouble is, it has long since ceased to revolve around “natural” selection.
And since we started selecting for looks, rather than suitability for work, our selections have had dire effects on some dogs’ fitness for life.


Lahore attack – my portion of guilt

TERRORISM has become one of the defining characteristics of our age. Wherever you lay the blame, that fact in itself is a sign of terrorists’ success.
Their ultimate goals are various, often hard to determine, and probably often pretty vague. But one aim all terrorists have is to create public shock and fear out of all proportion to the actual threat they pose.
Their tools may include all sorts of weapons, but the most powerful, the one essential to their purpose, is publicity. The media. Press and TV.
Hundreds of people die every day in Lahore without us hearing anything about it. But an attack on an international cricket team, with a handful of deaths, is world news.
That simple fact makes Tuesday’s outrage a result for the perpetrators.
Does it make those of us who report or comment on such things in some way accessories? I have an uncomfortable, queasy feeling that it does.

Why it’s wrong to deliver Mail into private hands

THE letter, from a former pupil, was addressed simply: Mr Semmens, the headmaster, England. It landed on my father’s desk in north London just three days after it was posted in Sierra Leone, west Africa.
This glowing example of efficiency actually occurred 40 years ago. But I wouldn’t rule out the possibility of something like it happening today.
Modern automation might militate against the degree of initiative involved. But I still wouldn’t bet against a similar display of postal chutzpah.
But what if today’s 30 per cent proves to be just the thin end – well, more like the middle – of the wedge? What if the Royal Mail, a few deliveries down the road, is delivered entirely into private hands?
Will we still get such sparkling service then? Will we still be able to post a letter in Ipswich today and expect it to reach Carlisle, Penzance, Belfast or Inverness tomorrow – and for just 36p?
In a way, the troubles of the mail are a consequence of its own success.
Nobody alive today can remember a time when it wasn’t there to be relied on. We’ve all grown up with it, so we tend to take it for granted.
After all, it’s a public service. But now the service is under threat.
In the post-Thatcher world the old Post Office has lost the telephone system – which might by now have made it a highly profitable source of national income.
It has lost the post office branches – the closure of so many of which is a national disgrace.
And what is left has to compete in an unfair market. Rival delivery companies cherry-pick the lucrative jobs without the Mail’s commitment to reach every home six days a week.
No wonder, as Peter Mandelson says, the Royal Mail “cannot survive in its present form”.
This is precisely because successive governments, including his, have for the past 28 years bullied it and butchered it, forced it to fight with tied hands.
Almost all that’s left is the commitment to provide a service. Which it still does, mostly brilliantly. But for how much longer?
If the government was true to Labour principles – instead of Thatcherite ones – Mandelson would today be saving the service, not kicking it while it’s down.
He would be re-nationalising all the bits that have been scandalously sold off or given away, not selling off more
He would be putting the old Post Office back together. And he would be committing the government to keeping it going as an efficient, reliable national service.
It would cost a lot, of course. Maybe as much as a tenth of what the government has handed out to failed bankers.
(OK, that figure is a complete guess, picked out of the air almost at random. But isn’t that what bankers – and governments – do with their big figures?)
It’s perfectly possible. Merely unthinkable for a government that has lost all touch with its roots.
But isn’t maintaining the post – along with water, power and railways – an essential part of what a government is for?


Hot Bagels had me kvelling up

A FUSE blew and all the lights went out. But the band simply went on playing. It must have been, if you’ll pardon me, an electrifying moment.
But then the whole performance was electrifying anyway. I know, because although I wasn’t at the Roundhouse in London I did see the band the next night. And they were something very, very special indeed.
I caught Moishe’s Bagel in the unlikely surroundings of Garboldisham village hall, Norfolk. And they proved to be everything I’d hoped and more.
They’re not quite like any other group, the Bagels. I can’t really describe the sound better than their http://www.moishesbagel.co.uk target="blank">website puts it: “Rip-roaring, foot-stomping, jazz-inflected klezmer and Balkan music from some of Scotland’s finest musicians. An intoxicating, life-affirming mix of Eastern European dance music, Middle Eastern rhythms and virtuoso performances.”
Sadly – foolishly, in my opinion – the organisers of the Cambridge Folk Festival thought the jazz element too strong to include them on the bill.
The players’ backgrounds also bring classical, bossa nova and Indian elements to the mix. But it’s the traditional Jewish flavour of Pete Garnett’s accordion and Greg Lawson’s intense violin-playing that really defines the Moishe’s Bagel sound.
Greg (pictured left)is one of my oldest friends. But last time I saw him play in public it was as leader of the Scottish Opera orchestra about 15 years ago. That was good, but this was something else.
Only one member of the band is actually Jewish. The rest just love the music.
The one is sparkling pianist Phil Alexander, whose mother put on the Garboldisham show and admitted she was “kvelling” – a Yiddish word meaning “gushing with family pride”.
If you can extend that from family to friends, the whole performance had me really kvelling up.

Yes we can - but should we?

DWIGHT D Eisenhower is applauded. His successors Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton and Bush all get it in the neck. And Obama? Well, we’ll have to wait and see on that one.
The precedents, frankly, aren’t great. The tendency – one might say the expectation – for all US presidents is to go messin’ where they ought to not mess.
The thumbs-up for Eisenhower in a huge new book, A World of Trouble, is essentially for leaving well alone.
Not in Europe, of course, where if you’re to believe the Hollywood version he won the Second World War virtually single-handed. But in the Middle East, where decades of US intervention have created one unholy mess after another.
And that, by some accounts, has led directly to America’s status as Public Enemy No.1 in the eyes of at least one big part of the world.
By that version, the War on Terror is really the war against Arab and Muslim anti-Americanism. A self-defeating struggle if ever there was one.
Or, to take the more cynical view, a self-perpetuating one – good for arms sales, oil annexation and general alpha-male chest-beating.
But George W wasn’t the first to go striding into Biblical lands like a six-gun-toting John Wayne. And neither was his daddy.
In fact Eisenhower is the only president exempted from blame by author Patrick Tyler, whose book is subtitled ‘America in the Middle East’.
Tyler gives ‘Honest Ike’ credit for untangling the mess made by Britain and France over Suez in 1956 and for “recognising the perils of intervention in distant lands”. And even that is to overlook one of the many wrong turns taken in the region.
In Iran in 1953 the democratically elected PM Mohammed Mosaddeq was deposed in a military coup that installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as dictator. Thereby paving the way for all that country’s subsequent troubles (and those of its neighbours).
It didn’t just happen on Eisenhower’s watch, but with the active involvement of the CIA. Backed by American – and British – funds.
British responsibility for Middle East problems goes back even further than the catalogue of US interference. At least as far as the Balfour Declaration of 1917 which led directly to the founding of the state of Israel 31 years later.
You can’t blame all the troubles of the region on the existence of Israel. But it’s clearly been a huge factor and continues to be so.
It might have been better if Israel had never been created. But it was, and that’s the reality the world has to live with now.
The stated wish of those in Iran and the Arab world who wish to wipe Israel off the map is the biggest reason for Israel behaving as aggressively as it does.
And having once put the Israelis there, the Americans, the United Nations and Britain can hardly just leave them to get on with it.
Much the same can be said of Iraq. America should never have got involved – but having done so they are left with a huge responsibility.
Just to say “whoops, sorry” and leave could make a bad situation worse. It certainly did in South-East Asia, where the US withdrawal led directly to the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
So, like so many of his predecessors, Obama has inherited a huge problem in a part of the world he was not elected in.
One can say – as Patrick Tyler virtually does – that the problem with America’s Middle-East policy is that there is one. But they can’t just stop now.
Or can they?
That’s one of the biggest questions Obama has to answer. By appointing Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state he seems to have answered: No we can’t.

######

DAVID NUTT’S job as chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs is to advise the government on drugs policy.
As an experienced professor of psychopharmacology, he is as close to an expert on the subject as you will find.
Now he has another experience under his belt, though he’s hardly the first to learn it the hard way.
The lesson is that speaking the truth in public and to government ministers is not always what’s wanted.
Nutt said the dangers of taking ecstasy were no greater than those of riding a horse.
Actually, given the statistics on both, that may be slightly underplaying the dangers of riding. But I’ll bow to his superior judgement.
Unlike home secretary Jacqui Smith – effectively his boss – who chose to lambast him in parliament and then ride roughshod over his considered advice.
The difference between Nutt and Smith is that he knows what he’s talking about.

Green can also mean gullible and naive

I AM all for making human endeavour as environmentally responsible as possible. In fact it’s probably up there with tolerance and non-violence as my most treasured moral principle.
But sometimes I’m tempted to wonder whether green isn’t, for some people, merely the new black.
Take these innovations being trumpeted this week as great designs for our glorious green future.
First up, the ingenious gadget that converts coffee grounds into “a sustainable source of ink for your printer”.
That rather begs the question just how sustainable it is to drink real ground coffee every day. But I suppose if you’re doing that anyway, using the ullage to save on chemical ink is at least a neat trick.
I’m always fascinated by architecture that makes a claim to environmental friendliness. Building with straw bales, for instance, or Scandinavian-style turf roofs seem good to me – and that’s just the basics.
These days there are plenty of grander architectural projects in which environmental economy seems to play as big a part as aesthetic values. In fact, it’s often hard to disentangle the two.
Take the latest fine building in Concepcion, Chile, a bustling university city about the size of Birmingham.
In the heart of the thrusting, high-rise business quarter a new office block has appeared that enjoys “the insulating and air-purifying benefits of green walls”. Which is clearly a good thing.
It’s actually the head office of the architecture firm that built it, so it had better be good. And I think it is.
Plus points for using mostly local materials – and for being a pleasantly eye-catching addition to the street scene.
Maybe we could do with something like it among the welter of new buildings that have so changed Ipswich in recent times.
But what is that “green wall”?
It’s a “double green skin” that both insulates the building and shades it from the hot Chilean sun. It’s “a wooden outer structure overflowing with bougainvillea, jasmine and plumbago”. Lovely.
Or, to put it another way, it’s a big trellis with creepers growing up it.
So potentially it’s not just the language that’s flowery. I bet it’ll look great when it’s in full bloom.
But plants growing up the outside of a building? Whoever would have thought of such a fancy idea?
And finally, how about giving your kids some “cute organic play-food”?
Or, to put it another way, soft cuddly burgers, bagels and cheese-on-toast.
That burger may be knitted out of “amazing sustainable textiles” – in this case kapok fibre from the Malaysian rainforest. Which may or may not be a good thing.
And you may pretend the fabric bun is filled with “organic” lettuce, tomato and pickles, “organic beef patty” and “farmer’s pickles”.
But to any kid presented with it it’s surely just a big fat juicy burger. And at about £27 it’s not the cheapest way to get them started on the greed-is-good, fast-food road.
Remember sweet cigarettes? The cuddly burger doesn’t sound that different to me.



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AS a once committed trade unionist, I have seen few more depressing sights lately than that of strikers protesting against foreign workers.
Yes, I have sympathy with those who have lost their jobs, or fear losing them. I’ve been there. It’s not nice.
But one glimpse of that “barge” in which the Italian workers live, moored near the controversial Lindsey refinery, should tell you one thing. These people are themselves the biggest victims of the situation.
The banner waving over the strikers there and at other troublespots bears the ironic name “Unite”.
That word was once part of a famous slogan which ought to mean something to trade unionists.
It followed the words “Workers of the world…”


#####


I DON’T think much of the Israeli government. I can’t disagree with all those friends of mine who find Israel’s war-making against Palestinian civilians in Gaza repulsive. Or the view that Jews, of all people, should know that genocide is evil.
One dissenting voice told me the other day that he thought of Israel as “our team” and that criticising Israel was an act of anti-semitism.
To him I can only point out that nothing is more calculated to foster the anti-semitism he rightly deplores than Israel behaving badly.
But having accepted all that, one tricky question remains. What SHOULD you do when your neighbour keeps lobbing missiles at you?
The Israeli government, as usual, has come up with one seriously wrong answer. But what is the right one?

My imaginary friend just got off the bus

IT’S been one of the big questions – arguably THE big question – wracking the best brains of philosophers for centuries. Now it’s come down to the Advertising Standards Authority to settle the matter: Is there a god?
Some Christians, including an uppity bus-driver from Southampton, have got all hot under the collar about a British Humanist Association ad that proclaims: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”
Which seems like very sound advice to me. But that hasn’t prevented the posters being referred to the ASA.
On what grounds, I wonder?
The authority’s brief is to ensure that advertisements are “legal, decent, honest and true”. Which of those requirements does the BHA ad fail?
It’s certainly decent. It’s undoubtedly honest. If it’s true it must surely be legal. And that little word “probably” must make it true.
In my opinion it’d be true even without the “probably”.
Yup. It’s an opinion. Just as those who say there is a god – or fairies, or unicorns, or little green men on Mars – are only expressing their opinion.
Anyone who invokes the law, or the ASA, against the proposition that there is no god (probably or otherwise) had better watch out. You’re living in a glass house and shouldn’t throw stones.
Not far from my home is a poster that proclaims: “Jesus Lives!” I wouldn’t have to go far to find others claiming he’s saved me (what from?) or that he’s offering me eternal life.
Decent? I suppose so. Honest? Maybe. Probably.
But true? Go ahead and prove it.
There is just one other point I want to make about all this god-or-no-god stuff, though. And it applies to god-bashing atheists such as Richard Dawkins at least as much as it does to bible-bashing Christians or Koran-waving Muslims.
I don’t believe in Noddy, Humpty-Dumpty, the tooth fairy or Santa Claus either. I gave up my imaginary friend decades ago. But I don’t see why that non-belief should define who I am – or even be particularly important in my life.
So can we please just get on to the bit about stopping worrying?


Man City owe it all to Jesus

IT’S probably just as well Kaka turned down a record-smashing move to Manchester City. For several reasons.
OK, it might have been nice for all of us armchair sports fans to be able to watch a world-class footballer at work in the Premier League. But what effect would it have had on his team-mates to know that one among them was collecting half-a-million quid a week in wages while they had to make do with perhaps a mere tenth of that?
And what of next season after the destabilised City are relegated?
What would it do to the economics of the Championship to have one player picking up roughly the equivalent of Doncaster Rovers’ annual turnover every time he trots on to the field?
In these times when the average fan, even the average club director, is facing worries over money and jobs, how can we identify with young men whose pocket-money would fund a small hospital?
But perhaps more serious is the question of the horrendous paperwork – and potential major scandal – City have narrowly avoided.
Across the city at United, another highly talented South American forward is still, after two years, at the centre of a complicated controversy. One that could yet have dire consequences for his former club, West Ham. And has arguably already had a devastating effect on a club he is never likely to play for, Sheffield United.
(If you’re not following this, don’t worry. The Carlos Tevez affair has already baffled more football and legal brains than he’s had hot dinners or scored goals.)
The nub of the matter is that Tevez is “owned” not by any club but by an Iranian businessman, Kia Joorabchian.
Now consider Kaka. Who would City have paid that reported £103million transfer fee?
If a T-shirt can be considered a legal document, Kaka belongs to Jesus…


No more beating about the Bush

AT the time we thought Tricky Dick Nixon was the biggest scoundrel ever to have held the American presidency.
When he died in 1994 his funeral was attended by the serving president and four other ex-presidents. Even the candidate he cheated and beat in the infamous Watergate election of 1972, George McGovern, later said: “I think… Nixon will get high marks in history.”
Now, with the release of the film Frost/Nixon, his reputation is set for a cuddly makeover.
At the time we thought Ronald Reagan was the stupidest and most aggressive president. Remember The President’s Brain is Missing?
History seems to have decided (rather generously, I think) that he was a shrewd operator who brought the Cold War to a peaceful end.
So what will history make of George W Bush?
Even as Barack Obama takes over on a wave of high hopes, the Wall Street Journal is already trying to rehabilitate the reputation of his predecessor.
So let’s just have a reality check. Bigger scoundrel than Nixon. Stupider and more aggressive than Reagan.
Goodbye George. And good riddance.