The curious case of convenient liberalism

 Swapan Dasgupta in Times of India
15 December 2013, 03:20 AM IST

 Last week, liberal opinion that enjoys a virtual monopoly of the airwaves pilloried the Supreme Court for what some feel was its most disgraceful judgment since the infamous Habeas Corpus case of 1976. The decision to overturn the Delhi High Court judgment taking consensual same-sex relationships outside the purview of criminal laws has been viewed as an unacceptable assault on individual freedom and minority rights and even an expression of bigotry. Overcoming fears of a virulent conservative backlash, mainstream politicians have expressed their disappointment at the judgment and happily begun using hitherto unfamiliar shorthand terms such as LGBT.

Indeed, the most striking feature of the furore over the apex court judgment has been the relatively small number of voices denouncing homosexuality as ‘unnatural’ and deviant. This conservative passivity may even have conveyed an impression that India is changing socially and politically at a pace that wasn’t anticipated. Certainly, the generous overuse of ‘alternative’ to describe political euphoria and cultural impatience may even suggest that tradition has given way to post-modernity.

Yet, before urban India is equated with the bohemian quarters of New York and San Francisco, some judgmental restraint may be in order. The righteous indignation against conservative upholders of family values are not as clear cut as may seem from media reports. There are awkward questions that have been glossed over and many loose ends that have been left dangling.

A year ago, a fierce revulsion against the rape and murder of a young woman in Delhi led to Parliament amending the Penal Code and enacting a set of laws that extended the definition of rape and made punishment extremely stringent. It was the force of organized public opinion that drove the changes. Curiously, despite the Supreme Court judgment stating quite categorically that it was the responsibility of Parliament to modify section 377, there seems to be a general aversion to pressuring the law-makers to do their job and bring the criminal law system into the 21st century. Is it because India is bigoted or is there a belief that there are some issues that are best glossed over in silence?

This dichotomy of approach needs to be addressed. Conventionally, it is the job of the legislatures to write laws and for the judiciary to assess their accordance with the Constitution and to interpret them. In recent years, the judiciary has been rightly criticised for over-stepping its mark and encroaching into the domain of both the executive and the legislatures. Yet, we are in the strange situation today of the government seeking to put the onus of legitimising homosexuality on the judges.

Maybe there are larger questions involved. The battle over 377 was not between a brute majoritarianism and a minority demanding inclusion. The list of those who appealed against the Delhi High Court verdict indicates it was a contest between two minorities: religious minorities versus lifestyle minorities. Formidable organizations such as the All India Muslim Personal Law Board and some church bodies based their opposition to gay rights on theology. Liberal promoters of sexual choice on the other hand based the claim of decriminalised citizenship on modernity and scientific evidence. In short, there was a fundamental conflict between the constitutionally-protected rights of minority communities to adhere to faiths that abhor same-sex relationships and the right of gays to live by their own morals. Yet, if absolute libertarianism was to prevail, can the khap panchayats be denied their perverse moral codes?

The answer is yes but only if it is backed by majority will, expressed through Parliament. Harsh as it may sound, it is the moral majority that determines the social consensus.

There is a curious paradox here. On the question of gay rights, liberal India prefers a cosmopolitanism drawn from the contemporary West. At the same time, its endorsement of laws that are nondenominational and non-theological does not extend to support for a common civil code. Despite the Constitution’s Directive Principles, the right of every citizen to be equal before the law is deemed to be majoritarian and therefore unacceptable by the very people who stood up for inclusiveness last week.

For everything that is true of India, the opposite is turning out to be equally true.

Khobhra-gate in New York may end nanny service for Indian diplomats

Chidanand Rajghatta in Times of India

WASHINGTON: Indian diplomats and officials serving abroad may lose the privilege of taking domestic help from India as a result of the Khobra-gate episode in New York where a mid-level Indian diplomat is in the dock for allegedly misrepresenting and underpaying her housekeeper.

The Indian government has vehemently challenged the US interpretation that led to the charges against Devyani Khobragade, but considering the number of such episodes in recent years and the financial implications (both in terms of legal fees to fight the cases and the restitution awarded to the complainants in some cases), the thinking is that the issue of taking domestic help abroad needs to be reexamined.

Even before the latest incident, the matter had been discussed at a Heads of Mission conference in New Delhi last year where various such cases were deliberated on. The ministry of external affairs is said to be looking for a long-term solution, including withdrawing the provision enabling taking housekeepers abroad, and instead compensating diplomats for employing local personnel.

This is easier said than done, according to some officials. Not only are there security sensitivities involved in going down this route (In case of the .S, there are also heightened intelligence issues considering recent developments,) but the costs will also be enormous given that diplomats often entertain late and travel at short notice.

Officials joked sourly that at $ 9.75 an hour in New York ($ 8.25 in Washington DC) plus overtime, any local labor they employ will earn more than the diplomats considered the hours they will be needed, while contesting the general impression that foreign postings are lavishly paid. The salaries are modest, they insist, and in fact it is the perks such as taking domestic help abroad that makes such postings tolerable they say.

In fact, federal minimum wages in the US, which is stuck at $ 7.25 since 2009, is poised to go up to $ 10 soon (some states like NY will mandate more in keeping with higher costs)

''Which Indian would pay a help Rs 6500 ($ 100) a day?'' asked Shakti Sinha, a former principal secretary in the government of India who did various stints abroad, including at the World Bank and various UN agencies, assuming eight normal working hours. Nevertheless, Sinha is for withdrawing the privilege of taking Indian help abroad while complying with local laws. At the same time, he says, New Delhi should also not ''spare any US diplomat who is even close to breaking any Indian domestic law.'' The suggestion here is that New Delhi does not similarly enforce its domestic laws strictly against foreign diplomats and officials.

Indeed, Indian officials say foreign diplomats in India, including US officials, will be on weak ground if New Delhi took their various infractions seriously but the Indian view is that diplomatic niceties need to be observed. They are incensed that in the case of Khobragade, the young mother of two was jumped on and handcuffed by US authorities when she was dropping her daughters to school. ''It was not as if she is a terrorist or proven criminal and was about to flee or was endangering lives,'' one official fumed. ''It could have been handled better.''

On Friday, Taranjit Sandhu, the charge d'affaires at the Indian Embassy in Washington once again conveyed New Delhi' displeasure at the incident, and according to an Embassy statement, ''reiterated Foreign Secretary of India's strong demarche to the US Ambassador in New Delhi regarding the treatment meted out to Dr Khobragade.''

''It was emphasised that Dr. Khobragade is a diplomat, who is in the U.S. in pursuance of her duties and hence is entitled to the courtesy due to a diplomat in the country of her work. She is also a young mother of two small children. Government of India is shocked and appalled at the manner in which she has been humiliated by the U.S. authorities. It was also conveyed in no uncertain terms that this kind of treatment to one of our diplomats is absolutely unacceptable,'' the statement said calling on the U.S. State Department ''to resolve the matter at the earliest''

But US officials were largely unrelenting in the matter. ''We are handling this incident through law enforcement channels. We have a long-standing partnership with India, and we expect that partnership will continue,'' a state department spokesperson told wire services.

Meanwhile, it turns out that the Indian diplomat who is at the center of a flaming row between New Delhi and Washington is also a Dalit women's rights champion.

Devyani Khobragade, the deputy consul-general of the Indian mission in New York, spoke in April this year on ''Women's Rights and the Influence of Demographics in India'' at the Australian Consulate in Manhattan. ''The continued entrenchment of women's rights through affirmative action, such as reservations for women in parliament, a holistic approach to education and gender sensitisation were also discussed by Dr Khobragade and the round-table participants,'' according to the Australian consulate, which identified her as a ''woman of the Dalit caste.''

On the social media though, there was little sympathy for the diplomat, with some readers pointing to her involvement in the Adarsh housing issue, where she is reportedly a member. Her father Uttam Khobragade, is a retired Maharashtra government bureaucrat and former head of Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA).

Others recalled several notorious cases of Indian families mistreating their domestic help and using them as slave labor, although the U.S charges against Khobragade mainly pertained to fraud and misrepresentation, not abuse.

In one of the most egregious cases the wife-husband team of Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, NRIs who owned a multi-million dollar perfume business in New York, were sentenced in 2007 to 11 and 3 years respectively for abusing their Indonesian housekeepers. Their callousness and brutality provoked such revulsion that New York tabloids dubbed Varsha Sabhnani as ''Cruella De Evil.'' The couple was also ordered to pay restitution of more than a million dollars to the women they enslaved.

While that episode brought to light what the judge hearing case called modern day slave labor practice, Bharara has signaled that the U.S will not tolerate exploitation of foreign workers even by diplomats.

''Foreign nationals brought to the United States to serve as domestic workers are entitled to the same protections against exploitation as those afforded to United States citizens. The false statements and fraud alleged to have occurred here were designed to circumvent those protections so that a visa would issue for a domestic worker who was promised far less than a fair wage. This type of fraud on the United States and exploitation of an individual will not be tolerated,'' he said in a statement.

But Indian officials insist there was no intended fraud or misrepresentation. They point out that the domestic help in this case, Sangeeta Richard, was flown to the U.S at government expense, and she had no problems with her wages, which were split between paying her in New York and her family in India, in the eight months she worked in the Khobragade household. Things only got complicated when she wanted to seek permanent residency in the US.

Officials explained that because diplomats typically take care of all the other needs of the domestic help brought from India, such as housing, food, medical treatment, and trips back home, their written commitment to mandated local wage in western countries ( $ 9.95 per hour of $ 4500 per month in the Khobragade case) is only of a ''technical nature.'' The real cost does work out approximately to that, they maintain, adding that the situation has become complicated because in several cases, the domestic help from India have figured out they can make a killing and gain permanent residence by ''going legal.''

But the flip side is that this is the third such case involving the Indian consulate in New York. In June 2011, a former housekeeper, Santosh Bharadwaj, had sued India's then consul general in New York Prabhu Dayal, accusing him of intimidating her into forced labor and seeking sexual favors. The case is close to being settled out of court. In February 2012, a New York City Magistrate Judge ordered that Neena Malhotra, a diplomat at the Consulate, to pay nearly $1.5 million for forcing an under-aged Indian girl, Shanti Gurung, to work without pay and meting out ''barbaric treatment'' to her. The case is still being contested. There have also been such cases in Europe.

In most cases, Indian officials insist the complainants, helped by NGOs, exaggerate and conflate issues in an effort to seek permanent residency and restitution. ''The same complainants have had no problems working with the same officials in places such as Morocco or Cambodia. It is only when they come to US or Western Europe that all these issues crop up,'' one official fumed.

But much of the public and media perception in New York has been shaped by one egregious case of domestic abuse (not involving Indian diplomats) that occurred in 2007. The wife-husband team of Varsha and Mahender Sabhnani, NRIs who owned a multi-million dollar perfume business in New York, were sentenced to 11 and 3 years respectively for abusing their Indonesian housekeepers. Their callousness and brutality provoked such revulsion that New York tabloids dubbed Varsha Sabhnani as ''Cruella De Evil.'' The couple was also ordered to pay restitution of more than a million dollars to the women they enslaved.

For many, the case encapsulated the Indian practice of treating domestic help badly. It's a rap that even diplomats have had to bear in the line of duty.

Why Mitchell Johnson fails the hipster test

Ahmer Naqvi

 

Mitchell Johnson: not one to delight old-school fans  © Getty Images

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Over the past few weeks, the cricketing world has been agog at the achievements of Mitchell Johnson in the Ashes. There has already been talk that his performance in two matches merits him being rated the world's best bowler.

In digesting and reacting to this news, I realised that I was a fast-bowling hipster. 

At its heart, the whole point of hipsters is not about being counter-culture, but rather laying claim to authenticity. You can't be a hipster if you jumped on a bandwagon or showed up without appreciating what you were there for. A hipster is authentic because an authentic experience means being there before it was cool and marketed. Consequently, while the rest of the world treats fast bowling as a seasonal fad, for Pakistanis it is more like l'bowling rapide pour l'bowling rapide.

As soon as I decided that I belonged to this ridiculous category, I realised I would need some codes to define what kinds of things fast-bowling hipsters, at least the ones from the Pakistani school of thought, would look for. The first person I turned to for inspiration was Osman Samiuddin, the high priest of the Pakistani fast-bowling cult. I remembered how he once related Shoaib Akhtar's reaction to Irfan Pathan: "Kaun Irfan? Saala spinner! Dekho ek cheez, paceispaceyaar. Can't beat it. [Irfan who? Damned spinner! Look here, paceispaceyaar. Can't beat it."]

Osman insists that in its true spirit, "paceispaceyaar" is one word, and so it is no surprise that pace - and an abundance of it - is the first sacrament of the fast-bowling hipster. Undoubtedly pace is at the heart of Johnson's prowess, and he manages to maintain his 90-plus speeds while bowling short. This means that he brings in the desire for mortal self-preservation into play in the batsman's psyche. This is a bowling tool so powerful that cricket has changed its laws to mitigate it.

Yet pace by itself means nothing - just take a look at Mohammad Sami, Fidel Edwards and a few others. A true fast bowler needs to develop all his skills with pace only as the foundation upon which they rest. Shoaib's point above is not about what Irfan can do with the ball, but rather that unless he is doing it at pace, he can't really be called fast. After all, paceispaceyaar.

The second major facet of this proposed manifesto is the bowling action and its aesthetic effect. I must qualify here that the aim is not to extol the virtues of textbook actions, since hipsters are not puritans. What the hipster looks for is a sense of uniqueness to the action. The sight of a bowler in full flight must be an intensely evocative experience, replete with a sort of hypnotic seduction and the ability to display vastly different facets of the action when watched at various speeds.

Take a look at the actions of Pakistan's great pantheon. Waqar Younis felt like a plastic footruler, bent outwards to its extremes before lithely snapping back. Wasim felt more like a snake that coiled up suddenly and narrowed its gaze before lashing out with a swift, fatal stab. The most majestic was Imran, who seemed to float like a bird of prey for several delicious moments, almost willing time to slow down before accelerating instantaneously.

Mitchell, though, is a slinger, from a breed of pacers who sometimes lack a sense of rhythm as well as lacchak (sway) that other actions provide. My favourite slinger was Shaiby (Shoaib Akhtar) , but a lot of his appeal had to do with his hyper-flexing elbows and the spectacle of his run-up. But the slinger ideal for hipsters would probably be Jeff Thomson, whose run-up was a bit bustly, but whose delivery stride and action were an absolute wonder to watch. Mitchell's run-up, in contrast, is quite stodgy, and he uses his bowling arm almost like an appendage that he hurls with rather than as an extension of a greater process.

This idea of synergy between the various facets is imperative, because it suggests both coherence and honesty. Many people have talked about Mitchell's new-found attitude and aggression, but it's not something I buy at all. Mitchell's wickets came while he was sporting a charity moustache during a particularly desperate and shrill search for redemption amongst the Australian media. In order to create a simple narrative, Mitchell was suddenly made out to be a bloodthirsty brute.

Mitchell's wickets came while he was sporting a charity moustache during a particularly desperate and shrill search for redemption amongst the Australian media. In order to create a simple narrative, Mitchell was suddenly made out to be a bloodthirsty brute

To me, this new perception of him is the latest example of cricket's habit of enforcing macho ideals on fast bowlers. For a long time, those in charge of cricket's narrative have tried to stereotype fast bowlers as a violent, angry, primitive lot. The appropriation of the shy Harold Larwood is the oldest example I can think of, but this has been repeated over time, and is patently unfair.

Mitchell himself has often been a victim of this desire to project alpha-male fantasies on pacers. For example, Michael Atherton once described listening to Johnson explaining his tattoos as similar to "listening to a warrior talk us through his flower arrangements before battle".

Despite my fondness for Atherton's writing, this opinion rankled, because I felt players like Johnson were needlessly criticised based on their personal choices. Who said that the leader of the attack needed to be some sort of medieval warrior? However, it now seems that Johnson has stopped trying to get people to understand that he is a soft-spoken, easy-smiling Australian who bowls fast, and is instead trying to look and act like a surfer masquerading as Merv Hughes.

Such charades are an affront to the hipster, since the persona of fast bowlers must be an organic part of their psyche. It is true that this translates into many pumped-up macho figures, but those are not the only kinds of demons a fast bowler has to deal with. In either case, for hipster appreciation eligibility, a fast bowler should never conform to what society deems desirable, but rather must force society to accept him on his own terms.

The third sacrament for the hipster is a cricket brain. This might well be the most important factor of them all, because it is the one thing that cannot be compensated for. For example, Glenn McGrath might have had a lot of vertical velocity and funny one-liners, but when he bowled, he looked like a grimacing elderly man trying very hard not to snap one of the metal pins in his replacement hip. Yet he remains one of the quintessential hipster choices, simply because of the suspense novels he wrote with his spells. Few other bowlers had his ability to not only predict what the batsman would do but also force him to willingly fall into the traps he had laid for him.

Mitchell Johnson's involvement with the psyche is so far limited to creating panic and fear. Now, that is not to be scoffed at, but as a Pakistani I have plenty of experience of watching panicked collapses, and like with Mitchell's wickets, these often come off poor deliveries. Take a look at his pitch maps from the two Tests and you see few deliveries pitched up, which means that there was little attempt at lulling players into false strokes or bamboozling them with movement.

Mitchell could claim that he didn't have to do anything more to pick off the English, and while he would be correct, the hipster cares not for such excuses. The hipster needs variety, needs elaborate plans, needs to see batsmen fail despite having tried their absolute best.

These three sacraments, or pillars, of the hipster faith can be represented as a set of stumps, and that brings us to the final point.

The Pakistani school of thought regarding fast bowling is inextricably linked to wickets, or more precisely, to flying, walking, cartwheeling wickets. Think of Waqar reversing the ball so rapidly and so late that you felt there had been a tear in space-time. Think of Wasim bowling round the wicket and taking the ball away to knock back off stump. It is the ultimate humiliation for the batsman, and a singular achievement for the bowler, who didn't need fielders to complete the job for him. In contrast, a catch at fine leg doesn't give the same sense of drama or spectacle.

Moreover, being able to bowl short is a luxury few teams afford their bowlers. For the hipster, then, being able to bowl short and fast isn't so impressive if all you have known growing up are fast and bouncy wickets. Bowling fast and full in a country and climate where there is no rational reason for doing so is what the hipster looks for, and that is why the Pakistani fast bowler has such a sense of romanticism attached to him.

So please don't offer me gentle souls dolled up in hairy costumes and tell me they are the real deal. Please don't insult cricket's answer to Keanu Reeves by pretending he's Sylvester Stallone. And please, please, please make sure to consult hipsters when jumping on your next bandwagon, so we can immediately tell you how wrong you are.

Why the SC’s 377 verdict is actually a boon for the gay community

Jai Anant Dehadrai in the Times of India

Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code that criminalises homosexual behaviour is an archaic and cruel remnant of our colonial past, which ought to have been struck off from the penal-code decades ago. There are no two views about this.

But the question is, struck off by whom? Let us step back and assess the facts.

The Supreme Court’s verdict has left the LGBT community agitated and deeply hurt. Their expectation was that the Court would uphold the Delhi High Court’s verdict, which held Section 377 to be unconstitutional. To their dismay, this unfortunately did not happen.

The community has waged a painfully long battle against the extreme prejudice and cruelty they face in our society. Quite admirably, this fight for respect and equal rights has always been peaceful and dignified – never marred by the mindless violence that accompanies most ‘protests’ in India. No lives were lost. No buses were burnt. No riots were reported. Even post the verdict, the community assembled peacefully at Jantar Mantar, wearing black clothes as a mark of their disappointment.

In the immediate aftermath of the judgment, social activists and civil-rights lawyers have come out in unison criticising the Supreme Court. They are of the view that this verdict has stunted their efforts to bring equal rights for the Gay community. Some have even gone on to say that this decision, in one sweeping stroke, “has taken back the fight 100 years.” Senior lawyers, who shall not be named here, have also openly questioned why the Court “missed a crucial opportunity for reforming a societal prejudice.”

But the underlying message in Justice Singhvi’s 25 page judgment appears to have been lost in the din of voices competing to denounce the verdict. Some have termed it medieval and even immoral. But absolutely no one has challenged its legality. It is absolutely crucial that we uncover this subtle truth that we’re all missing.

For a truly lasting and meaningful change, the gay and lesbian community must realise that their means must justify the righteous end they seek. Had the Supreme Court struck down the offending Section of law and played to the galleries, the victory would merely have been a pyrrhic one. The community would have lost the ethical high-ground in their quest for respect and equality.

Here is why.

Simply put, the judiciary has no business to enter into the realm of law-making or policy formulation. It is only because our elected parliamentarians have been so busy doing everything else apart from their jobs, that the Supreme Court is forced to interfere and protect the common citizen. This sad trend has become so pervasive, that now we’ve come to expect it as the norm. This is absolutely unconstitutional and against everything Ambedkar – the original champion of civil liberties, stood for and fought for. Justice Singhvi’s judgment is a loud wake-up call for the entire country – reminding us that elected representatives sitting in Parliament on tax-payers money are tasked with the responsibility and authority to make or amend laws. Relying on the Supreme Court to decide these legislative and policy matters is akin to us giving a free pass to our politicians who would rather shirk their responsibilities than take hard decisions. 

The Supreme Court via this judgment has correctly shifted the spotlight onto our legislators and their shameful lethargy to evolve our legal systems. IPC 377 must certainly go – but it is the Union Executive which must rise to the occasion and effectuate this change. It is indeed shocking to hear national politicians like Rahul Gandhi  criticise the Court’s order – when it is in fact the job of his government to take the initiative and scrap the law. I am surprised that we’ve blinded ourselves to this obvious political hypocrisy.

We, as Indians ought to be grateful for a judge like Justice Singhvi, who displayed staunch moral courage in the face of contrarian public sentiment to do the right thing. His reasoning does not comment on the merits of the case – which is clear as day that the law ought to be changed by legislators. The judgment of the Delhi High Court completely ignored the doctrine of separation of powers between the organs of government, which frowns upon unnecessary judicial activism by over-eager judges.

Parliament must take into account the genuine grievances of the LGBT community and not only repeal this draconic penal provision but also put into place a policy framework to protect the rights and dignity of this crucial component of our society. 

Like Gandhiji said, ‘the means must justify the ends.’

The easiest way to get rich quick is to work for the banks

MARK STEEL 

Thursday 12 December 2013

The easiest way to get rich quick is to work for the banks and badger the vulnerable to buy insurance

Once you’ve accepted the rules – all that matters is selling a policy – there are no moral barriers

Who’d have guessed this? Lloyds has been fined £28m, for encouraging staff to sell policies to people who neither needed nor wanted them. Those who sold the most won cases of champagne, and those that didn’t could have their salary halved.

This proves that the banks take regulations seriously, as they’re adamant that members of staff who don’t break the regulations will be dealt with severely, and only those who break them all day long will be given any rewards.

This illustrates one of the many changes in the 50 years since the Great Train Robbery, as now Ronnie Biggs would make more money and satisfy his urge to rob much more, if he got a job WITH the bank.

One member of Lloyds staff was so terrified at not reaching his quota, that he sold a policy to his own wife. It’s just as well they’ve been caught or he’d start on his kids next, saying: “You don’t want an ice cream like your stupid friends. Instead I’ve sold you a Lloyds Super Value Triple Interest Bonanza scheme. You might cry now, but you’ll thank me for it in 10 years when it’s worth sod all.”

They must have been desperate to sell these packages, pleading with the elderly that: “You’ve got to put your savings into a Lloyds Advanced Finance Protection Account dear, otherwise with interest rates the way they are, you’ll have to sell your grandchildren to an Albanian child trafficking gang and that could be quite nasty. Don’t worry about the form, I’ll fill in the details.”

This wasn’t the result of a few maverick uber-salesmen. It was the bank’s policy to create a culture of sell sell sell with no excuses for failure. They were probably sent on motivational courses, with a team leader explaining: “If a customer is hesitant about whether to sign, give them a nudge, by dragging them into a basement and getting a colleague to make a film as you stand by him with a sword, preaching there’s no place on Earth for those who don’t believe in the almighty Lloyds Bonus 5-Year Investment Fiscal Funtime Account. That should close the deal.”

One policy they were offering was a “critical illness” insurance, one of these schemes they sell by looking earnest and saying: “We all hope it doesn’t happen, but if, God forbid, you DO get pecked to death by a pterodactyl, normal policies won’t cover you and then your loved ones will face a life of destitution and heroin abuse, so it’s worth it for peace of mind and it works out at only £8 a minute’.

Once you’ve accepted the rules of this game – that all that matters is selling another policy – there are no moral barriers. If you got up at a team talk and announced you’d sold a policy to someone with Alzheimer’s, then went back the next day and sold them another one as they’d forgotten they’d bought one already, there’d be high fives and your name would be written on a “dude of the day” board. But a Lloyds spokesman said: “The group recognises its oversights during the period in question and apologises.” Oversight? How could mis-selling billions of pounds worth of twaddle be an oversight?

Does it need to be on a “to-do” list, that goes: “Clear boot of car – water plant – don’t bark at thousands of staff that they’re pathetic maggots if they don’t sell lorry loads of scuzzy investment plans – buy Sugar Puffs”.

Those train robbers must wish they’d thought of that. “Your honour, we recognise that taking up our positions by the railway line, assaulting the crew, running off with sacks of cash and planning to spend it on a life of debauchery was an oversight. Only we’ve been very busy lately, so it slipped our mind, but we do apologise.”

Where you have to give the banks credit, is this took place after the crash, after they’d been told they really should try harder next time to not bring down the world economy. It was after the £80bn bailout, after the world gasped: “How did we let it happen”, and they’ve carried on exactly the same.

But who can blame them? Unlike the crash in the 1930s, no new regulations followed to stop them behaving like this. The banks could be caught squirting uranium into the eyes of kittens, it could turn out that the deaf signer on the podium in Soweto is a chief executive of Royal Bank of Scotland who’s been awarded a bonus of £40m, and that the England cricket team was injected with ketamine by the board of Northern Rock. And they’d apologise for the oversight and the Government would announce an enquiry to report in the year 5000.

And this is the business method we’re informed is essential to make anything work properly. So now it must apply to everything else as well. The Royal Mail, for example, was too sluggish without private investment and initiative, so hopefully that will now be free to go the same way. You’ll pop into the Post Office for a stamp and be told: “You know it really would be sensible to post a parcel as well. I’d suggest you should send one to Brazil, and to be really secure, fill it up with rubble first. There we are, that will be £700.”

Because they only need three like that a day to win a weekend break in Dorset. 

Heroic Uruguay deserves a Nobel peace prize for legalising cannabis

The war on the war on drugs is the only war that matters. Uruguay's stance puts the UN and the US to shame

• 
• • Simon Jenkins
  • The Guardian, Thursday 12 December 2013 20.35 GMT

'Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale.' Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

I used to think the United Nations was a harmless talking shop, with tax-free jobs for otherwise unemployed bureaucrats. I now realise it is a force for evil. Its response to a truly significant attempt to combat a global menace – Uruguay's new drug regime – has been to declare that it "violates international law".

To see the tide turn on drugs is like trying to detect a glacier move. But moving it is. Wednesday's statute was introduced by the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, "to free future generations from this plague". The plague was not drugs as such but the "war" on them, which leaves the world's youth at the mercy of criminal traffickers and random imprisonment. Mujica declares himself a reluctant legaliser but one determined "to take users away from clandestine business. We don't defend marijuana or any other addiction, but worse than any drug is trafficking."

Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale. Users must be over 18 and registered Uruguayans. While small quantities can be grown privately, firms will produce cannabis under state licence and prices will be set to undercut traffickers. The country does not have a problem on the scale of Colombia or Mexico – just 10% of adults admit to using cannabis – and stresses that the measure is experimental.

This measured approach is still way in advance even of American states such as Colorado and Washington, which have legalised recreational as well as medical cannabis consumption, but not production. While the Uruguayan law does not cover other drugs, by depriving traffickers of an estimated 90% of their market, the hope is both to undermine the bulk of the criminal market and to diminish the gateway effect of traffickers pushing harder drugs.

Mujica's courage should not be underrated. His is a gently old-fashioned country, and two-thirds of those polled oppose the move, though this is up from 3% a decade ago. In addition some pro-legalisation lobbies object to his de facto nationalisation. An open question is whether a state cartel will be as effective as a regulated free market. But the drugs chief, Julio Calzada, is blunt: "For 50 years, we have tried to tackle the drug problem with only one tool – penalisation – and that has failed. As a result, we now have more consumers, bigger criminal organisations, money laundering, arms trafficking and collateral damage."

The response of the UN's International Narcotics Control Board has been to incant futile bromides. The move, says its chief Raymond Yans, would "endanger young people and contribute to the earlier onset of addiction". It would also be in breach of a "universally agreed and internationally endorsed treaty". Yet the UN admits that half a century of attempted suppression has led to 162m cannabis users worldwide, or 4% of the total adult population .

The 78-year-old Mujica notes the irony that many of his South American contemporaries agree with him, but only after leaving office. They include Brazil's Fernando Cardoso, Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo and Colombia's César Gaviria, all of whom have now called for the decriminalisation of the drug market so that they can begin to regulate a trade whose feuding operators are killing thousands of people each year. Thevalue of the drugs trade is second only to the trade in arms. Yet the US resists decriminalisation so it can continue to fight cocaine and opium production in Latin America and Afghanistan, to avoid confronting the real enemy: a domestic consumption that is out of control.

For all this, the futility of suppression is leading to laws crumbling across the west.Twenty US states have legalised medical cannabis. California this year narrowly rejected taxing consumption (turning down an estimated $1.3bn in annual revenue) and may yet relent. Drug use is accepted across most of Latin America and, de facto, Europe. Even in Britain, where possession can be punished by five years in prison, just 0.2% of cases prosecuted result in such a sentence. The most intensive drug users are said to be in the state's own jails. The law has effectively collapsed.

The difficulty now is to resolve the inconsistency of enforcers "turning a blind eye" to consumption while leaving supply (and thus marketing) untaxed and unregulated in the hands of drug traffickers. This is little short of a state subsidy to organised crime. Indulgence may save the police and the courts from the cost of enforcement, but it leaves every high street open to massive cross-jeopardy, from cannabis to hard drug use.

Ending this inconsistency requires action from legislators. Yet they remain seized by a lethal mix of taboo, tribalism and fear of the media. British policy on all intoxicants and narcotics (from booze to benzodiazepines) is chaotic and dangerous. The government on Thursday admitted its inability to control "legal highs", new ones being invented every week. It is running round back-street laboratories waving bans and arrest warrants like the Keystone Cops.

The catastrophe of death and anarchy that failed drug suppression has brought to Mexico and to other narco-states makes the west's obsessive war on terror seem like a footling sideshow. The road out of this darkness is now being charted not in the old world but in the new, whose heroic legislators deserve to be awarded a Nobel peace prize. It is they who have taken on the challenge of fighting the one world war that really matters – the war on the war on drugs. It is significant that the bravest countries are also the smallest. Thank heavens for small states.

We are all dangerously in thrall to the mirage of that perfect life which Nigella Lawson seemed to embody

Yasmin Alibhai Brown in The Independent

On Saturday morning I was on Dateline London, the BBC current affairs debate programme. We were about to go on air to talk about energy companies and Syria, but in the green room all talk was about Nigella Lawson and Charles Saatchi. One observation struck me: this was a story of carefully fashioned images and fantasies about perfection. Charles Saatchi got rich creating adverts, the religious icons of contemporary society; Nigella marketed herself as a goddess of luminous beauty, hearth and home, artfully mixing sensuality with joyful domesticity. She had suffered multiple tragedies and losses, seemed to crave affection, battled against the shape of her body and at times seemed to inhabit pleasure and pain in the same moment – think of her filming while her beloved first husband, John Diamond, who had terminal cancer, floated in the background.

We, who adored her, knew all that and still succumbed to the myth. Most Britons don’t believe in God but worship perfection. It is salvation, redemption, the most fervent prayer from the heart, the way to glory.

Lawson and Saatchi shattered this faith, their own statues and the temple wherein they dwelt. First came those terrible photographs of him with his hand around her throat while they sat outside at a restaurant table. Then the divorce, sharp and fast. She, our Isis, said nothing in public. He said too much.

Last week in court one of his emails to her was read out: “I’m sure it was all great fun and now everything is perfect – bravo, you have become a celebrity hostess on a global TV game show. And you got the pass you desired, free to heartily enjoy all the drugs you want, forever. Classy!” It’s not our business to intrude into their post-divorce grief and rage. But this bit illustrates superbly how perfection is but a dangerous illusion and one that is making us all paranoid, crazed, and some, especially young people, self-destructive...

Here comes the season of hedonism, false promises and hopeless pursuits. Sunday papers offered the “ultimate cookbooks”. My ascetically inclined husband (also a stickler when it comes to words and grammar) asked if that meant there would be no more cookbooks ever again? Of course not, dear, don’t be so out of touch. “Ultimate” now means the top, never bettered – until tomorrow when another TV chef will bring out a tome to help us cook the perfect Christmas dinner, the ultimate pudding and on and on, groan.

OK, so there’s nothing at all wrong with pictures and scenes showing wonderful food churned out by these kitchen wizards. It’s magic; we all love magic. But the surfeit of chefs selling superlative culinary skills and delights may be scaring and undermining people. How can we ever reach those heights? Bake a cake that looks as if fairies have spent all night on it, like those made by the finalists in The Great British Bake Off? There must be a connection between the consumption of frozen ready meals and fast grub and the explosion of ultimate, impossible cookery. One reason for that could be the despair of never being able to achieve the impossible.

Sex, like food, is an essential of animal life. In today’s Britain, this simple, natural activity has been turned into an Olympic game, and is so ubiquitously used for marketing, it seems to be losing vim and vigour. The substantive 10-year National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles, whose findings were announced last week, was revealing and disconcerting. We have the toys, the porn, Fifty Shades of Grey, come-hither clothes to make a whore blush, unprecedented sexual freedoms. But yet, one in 10 women says she has been forced into sex and 16- to 44-year-olds are having less sex than a decade ago. People have gone off sex, possibly because they cannot come near the super techniques, tireless couplings, fantastic orgasms – consummate consummation – they think they must achieve to be real men or women. Perfection has wrecked their sex lives.

Worse than all of the above is the impact of these stupidly unreachable standards on the young. British, European and American researchers into the impact of the web have found that social media can cause children, teenagers and young adults to become inconsolably dissatisfied with life, jealous, self-loathing and depressed, sometimes suicidal. Facebook connects up people brilliantly but those connections can undermine users and turn toxic. Too many users think others have idyllic lifestyles, bodies, relationships, out-of-this-world sex, the best of everything – that they are the losers.

The Lawson/Saatchi drama shows the futility and dangers of following the mirage of perfection. He sold it, she embodied it. Now they have had to wake up. Now they become true role models, exemplars of how not to live a sham, invented life. But how to get real.