France discovers the old Kennedy magic
France, a country of extra-ordinary beauty, which houses its most arrogant and miserable people in its capital Paris, is famous for being amazed by its own civilisation and culture. The French sincerely believe that they have the best wine, food, women, fashion, art and literature and make the world’s best lovers. Naturally they tend to skip over their war record. They despise the Americans, openly hate the English, secretly hate the Germans, look down on everyone else and think that the Maltese think they are European property developers when in reality they are Arabs who own tacky hotels and eat rubbish.
How strange therefore that the French have apparently come to the conclusion that their new President, who celebrated his recent victory in Malta, and his wife are more like J.F. Kennedy and his First Lady Jackie than they are like any previous French presidential couple. What is it about the Kennedy alliance that is so similar to President Nicholas Starkozy and his attractive wife? Could it be that the French public believe that young Nic was elected with Mafia help? Could he also be an addicted womaniser who might order his own ‘Bay of Pigs’? Or could it be that Nic and his other half don’t enjoy any sort of a sex life just like Jack and Jackie? Or have I missed something here?
Fornigate almighty, could the US really elect Hillary?
Meanwhile, back in the ‘good old US of A’ a recent Gallup poll gave a respectable 54 per cent approval rating to Hillary Clinton, with old hubbie Bill still very popular at 60 per cent. And despite the media frenzy that greeted Mr Obama’s candidacy, and his initial fund-raising success, the young black challenger still trails Hillary by several points in the national polls for who should win the Democratic nomination. Can this be true? How can a woman whose chilling laugh is like the cackle of a witch get elected? An old bag whose face in a Disney cartoon would terrify kids, be a world leader? A girl who knows were the White Water bodies are buried and whose husband was recently described by R Emmett Tyrrell Jr, editor of the American Spectator, as “the most low-grade lout ever elected president” go on to perhaps become President of the United States? Can no one talk HRH Prince Charles’s global warming mate Al Gore into standing for the sake of world survival? Come on Al just think of how much hot air will escape into the atmosphere if the ‘Dynamic Duo’ were sent back to the White House.
The bear is on the road to recovery
The signs are that the sick old bear known as Russia is getting better. The flea-ridden beast was never more pleasant to the outside world than when its Soviet bosses were booted out and the country was in chaos as it struggled to come to terms with a painful conversion to something of a capitalist system. The Cold War seemed dead and buried. Indeed, when the second Gulf War erupted most political commentators were more worried about what Paris was saying than Moscow. But no longer. Mr Putin has quietly consolidated his internal stranglehold as the nation’s mineral wealth has improved its economic prospects and now there can be no doubt that his KGB former life is slowly seeping through at home and abroad. We should have known that leopards never change their spots. With human rights abuses everywhere and nearly a hundred journalists mysteriously murdered in the last five years at home, the little dictator now feels he is able to flex his international muscles as well. So Russia has taken a new combative stance on a number of issues. It refuses to recognise Kosovo, ignores criticism of human rights’ abuses both at home and in Chechnya, and robustly refuses to extradite the chief suspect for the murder in London of Alexander Litvinenko despite a mountain of evidence that Mr Lugovoi should stand trial in the UK.
But all of this is small beer compared to his recent outburst just before the G8 summit. Now he is opposing a missile defence system the US wants to set up in Eastern Europe to defend itself against Iran and North Korea. Although the Americans have assured the Russians that such a system is not intended to be directed at Russia, Mr Putin has his doubts and believes such proposals have alarming implications for Russia. This is his right but to threaten a Russian nuclear response by pointing their missiles at major European cities is very much a move back to the bad old days. What has given him the confidence to behave like some latter day Brezhnev? Why, the growing power of Russia to control much of Europe’s future energy needs of course. “God I miss the Cold War,” said Judi Dench’s ‘M’ in the recent Bond film Casino Royale. She shouldn’t have concerned herself as Mr Putin has assured us all it could well be back if he has anything to do with it. Luckily for us, it seems unlikely that he will bother to point one of his missiles at Valletta.
Rip great Blair’s ‘Little Britain’
Today Great Britain is anything but great. It tops most of the most undesirable league tables in the western world. It boasts most pre-teenage pregnancies, most unmarried teenage pregnancies, most pre-teenage criminal offences, most violent teenage street crime, most serious drug abuse among the young, most adolescent murders in schools – and so on and so forth. Therefore, to those who have watched Albion’s spectacular fall from grace it was hardly surprising when in early 2007 a United Nations report named Britain as the worst country in the developed world in which to bring up children. A fact so accepted as obvious by the British media that it hardly received any attention.
Indeed it might not be too harsh to say that Britain has become little short of the cesspit of Europe. A place where religious conviction, or the need to appreciate man’s humanity to man and legitimate respect for the rule of law have been replaced by greed, an I-me-mine culture and a belief that you can’t be guilty of anything as long as you don’t get caught. All of this has been created under the misguided control of a politically correct lunatic fringe who have reduced teaching and parental responsibility to nil in their obsession that only they know best. This has resulted in an ever left, left march towards central governmental control and a world where the criminal has an amazing amount of human rights but the victim seems to have few.
And so a public attracted by capitalist greed but controlled by socialist idealistic bureaucracy is the result. It is a world obsessed by money, shallow celebrity and the fact that everything that glitters must be gold. A nation more interested in drink, drugs, watching mindless reality television and surfing the net for sex than bringing up its children properly, who in turn are growing up all the poorer as a result. Indeed, today’s children in the worst areas of Britain are now the fourth consecutive dysfunctional generation in the making. Here, either the taking of drugs or the dealing in them can be common among nine-year-olds, while their elder brothers carry knives at 12 and guns by 15. A place where even their sisters might be guilty of gang violence and bullying at school, and alcoholism resulting from binge drinking every weekend from the age of puberty.
So now that the British Prime Minister has concluded his extended farewell home and world tour, as if he were some rock star of the same stature as Sir Paul McCartney, he may yet hope in his vanity that this, along with the spin of the last 10 years, will somehow forge a bright legacy. In the short term it may well do. But spin is short-lived and history nearly always settles on the facts. In reality he leaves behind a country that once boasted the best transport system, the best police force, the best health service, the best armed services, the best pension system and a nation that was also respected for its civilisation and humanity. Today, in each case and in many more, nothing could be further from the truth.
His genuine legacy is one of bambini terrorising housing estates while their hooded big brothers mug the elderly in the shopping centres all secure in the knowledge that the police will never arrive. It’s a legacy of hospitals that kill rather than cure and trains that never keep time. A legacy where teachers can’t teach and parents are prevented from parenting. A Home Office that is, by the minister’s own assertion, not fit for purpose and a ministry of defence that sends soldiers into battle without the right equipment and has allowed the Royal Navy to fall apart in front of demoralised sailors’ eyes.
Back in Malta and at the wedding party of an aristocratic Maltese family, I bumped into a Labour MP. He enthusiastically explained that the Maltese Labour Party intended to become exactly like Britain’s New Labour. I asked what he meant. He said the perception of Tony Blair as an attractive middle-aged man with a lot of charisma was what was needed if Labour was to regain power in Malta. He looked most crestfallen when I replied that in that case I sincerely hoped that however poor the present government might be that they remained in power for the sake of the Maltese people.
Howard Hodgson was born in Birmingham, England in 1950. He was locally educated at a private preparatory school before being sent to Aiglon College in Switzerland.
• Attended Birmingham College business course followed by apprenticeship with a Cardiff firm of funeral directors with the view to joining the family funeral business.
• Eventually bought this business from father in 1975 for £14k and took over its debt burden of £120k.
• The business was then grown from one branch to 546 by 1990. It was floated on the USM in 1986. The market capitalisation was £7.5m. Named ‘Top 40 under 40’ by Business Magazine in the same year.
• Voted Entrepreneur of the Year by the USM Magazine in 1987.
• A full market quote was achieved in 1988 and was also included as one of “Maggie’s Dozen of the Decade” by The Sunday Times as the market capitalisation exceeded £125m.
• The business was merged with Kenyon Securities PLC (part of the French Lyonnaise des Eau) in 1989. They were also the Royal Family’s funeral directors. Was appointed CEO of the new company.
• Sold shareholding for several million 1991.
• Appointed CEO of Ronson plc in 1993 and CEO of Colibri International Corporation in 1998.
• In 2000 retired in order to pursue private business interests (currently chairman of Memoria – a company formed in 2001 to build and manage crematoria) and be able to concentrate on writing, broadcasting and social commentary having gained considerable experience over the previous 15-year period.
• Presented the How Euro are You series for BBC 2 in 1991 and its sequel in 1992. Made over 10 business documentaries and from 1992 to 2002 was a guest panellist on every series of the Radio 4’s The Board Game during the same decade.
• From 1991-1993 worked for the Prince’s Trust on a voluntary basis and as a result got to meet and talk at length with the Prince of Wales. Over the years he also met many other members of the Windsor family and those close to them including the late Princess of Wales and Her Majesty the Queen. Details of recollections of Prince Charles and Princess Diana are contained in a book about HRH the Prince of Wales in chapter 11.
• Previous books include How to Become Dead Rich 1992, Six Feet Under 2000, Exhumed Innocent 2002, Charles The Man Who Will Be King 2007, and Look into the Embers yet to be published.
Charles The Man Who Will Be King is an 800-page history of the life and times of the Prince of Wales. In following his life the book also reflects upon the dramatic changes in British life style and national character from Attlee’s rationed Britain to Blair’s Cool Britannia and how such changes – often voiced through a fabricating and inaccurate tabloid press – has affected the Royal Family’s lives and the way the nation sees the monarchy. This is the true story of Prince Charles and Princess Diana. It is drawn from the evidence available and carefully verified by independent witnesses many of whom were close to the couple and were actually there at the time. It is neither his nor her version of their lives but an account of what actually happened – a historical piece with no axe to grind which takes no sides and makes no attempt to be sensational. Nevertheless, the facts uncovered reveal a completely different picture to the one so continually expressed in the media and is therefore a revelation in itself. The book was published in January 2007, received excellent reviews and immediately became a bestseller.
• Also works occasionally as a freelance journalist when commissioned from time to time by various newspapers as diverse as The Guardian and the Daily Mail. Wrote the Saturday Essay for the Mail in October 2002. The two-page article, about the behaviour of dysfunctional families on a Leeds housing estate, attracted over 2,000 letters and e-mails in response and caused the Mail to run a second two-page feature the following Saturday.