Sex with more than 20 women reduces risk of prostate cancer, according to study

Antonia Molloy in The Independent

There’s good news for the Casanovas of the world – sleeping with numerous women could help to protect men from prostate cancer, according to a new study.

Researchers at the University of Montreal and INRS-Institut Armand-Frappier found that men who had slept with more than 20 women during their lifetime were 28 per cent less likely to develop the disease.

They were also 19 per cent less likely to develop an aggressive type of cancer, compared to those who had had only one female sexual partner.

However, the same did not apply to gay men, according to the Canadian scientists. They found that having more than 20 male partners doubled the risk of prostate cancer and made an aggressive cancer five times more likely. Sleeping with one male partner did not affect the risk.

Meanwhile, men who were virgins were almost twice as likely to be diagnosed with prostate cancer as those who were sexually experienced.

The findings are from the Prostate Cancer & Environment Study in which 3,208 men answered questions about their lifestyle and sex lives.

Of these men, 1,590 were diagnosed with prostate cancer between September 2005 and August 2009, while 1,618 men were part of the control group.

Overall, men with prostate cancer were twice as likely as others to have a relative with cancer, but the study also found a possible link with their number of sexual partners.

Lead researcher Professor Marie-Elise Parent, from the University of Montreal, said: "It is possible that having many female sexual partners results in a higher frequency of ejaculations, whose protective effect against prostate cancer has been previously observed in cohort studies."

According to one theory, large numbers of ejaculations may reduce the concentration of cancer-causing substances in prostatic fluid, a constituent of semen.

They may also lead to fewer crystal-like structures in the prostate that have been associated with prostate cancer.

Suggesting why the same did not apply to male partners Professor Parent admitted she could only provide "highly speculative" explanations.

One explanation she said "could be that anal intercourse produces a physical trauma to the prostate".

The age at which men first had sexual intercourse, and the number of times they had been infected by a sexually transmitted disease, had no bearing on prostate cancer risk.

A total of 12 per cent of the group reported having had at least one sexually transmitted infection (STI) in their lifetime.

Professor Parent added: "We were fortunate to have participants from Montreal who were comfortable talking about their sexuality, no matter what sexual experiences they have had, and this openness would probably not have been the same 20 or 30 years ago.

"Indeed, thanks to them, we now know that the number and type of partners must be taken into account to better understand the causes of prostate cancer."

On the question of whether promiscuity might now be recommended in health advice to men, she said: "We're not there yet."

The research is published in the journal Cancer Epidemiology.

Humanity's 'inexorable' population growth is so rapid that even a global catastrophe wouldn't stop it

Steve Conor in The Independent

The global human population is “locked in” to an inexorable rise this century and will not be easily shifted, even by apocalyptic events such as a third world war or lethal pandemic, a study has found.

There is no “quick fix” to the population time-bomb, because there are now so many people even unimaginable global disasters won't stop growth, scientists have concluded.

Although measures designed to reduce human fertility in the parts of the world where the population growth is fastest will eventually have a long-term impact on numbers, this has to go hand-in-hand with policies aimed at reducing the consumption of natural resources, they said.

Two prominent ecologists, who normally study animal populations in the wild, have concluded that the number of people in the world today will present one of the most daunting problems for sustainable living on the planet in the coming century – even if every country adopts a draconian “one child” policy.

“The inexorable demographic momentum of the global human population is rapidly eroding Earth’s life-support system,” say Professor Corey Bradshaw of the University of Adelaide and Professor Barry Brook of the University of Tasmania in their study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Assuming a continuation of current trends in mortality reduction, even a rapid transition to a worldwide one-child policy leads to a population similar to today’s by 2100,” they say.

“Even a catastrophic mass mortality event of 2bn deaths over a hypothetical window in the mid-21st century would still yield around 8.5bn people by 2100,” they add.

There are currently about 7.1bn people on Earth, and demographers estimate that this number could rise to about 9bn by 2050 - and as many as 25bn by 2100, although this is based on current fertility rates, which are expected to fall over the coming decades.

The number of people in the world today will present one of the most daunting problems for sustainable living on the planet in the coming century (Getty)

Professor Bradshaw told The Independent that the study was designed to look at human numbers with the insight of an ecologist studying natural impacts on animals to determine whether factors such pandemics and world wars could dramatically influence the population projections.

“We basically found that the human population size is so large that it has its own momentum. It’s like a speeding car travelling at 150mph. You can slam on the brakes but it still takes time to stop,” Professor Bradshaw said.

“Global population has risen so fast over the past century that roughly 14 per cent of all the human beings that have ever lived are still alive today – that’s a sobering statistic,” he said.

“We examined various scenarios for global human population change to the year 2100 by adjusting fertility and mortality rates to determine the plausible range of population sizes at the end of the century.

“Even a worldwide one-child policy like China’s, implemented over the coming century, or catastrophic mortality events like global conflict or a disease pandemic, would still likely result in 5bn to 10bn people in 2100,” he added.

The researchers devised nine different scenarios that could influence human numbers this century, ranging from “business as usual” with existing fertility rates, to an unlikely one-child-per-family policy throughout the world, to broad-scale global catastrophes in which billions die.

“We were surprised that a five-year WWIII scenario mimicking the same proportion of people killed in the First World War and Second World War combined, barely registered a blip on the human population trajectory this century,” said Professor Brook.

Measures to control fertility through family planning policies will eventually have an impact on reducing the pressure on limited resources, but not immediately, he said.

“Our great-great-great-great-grandchildren might ultimately benefit from such planning, but people alive today will not,” Professor Brook said.

Simon Ross, the chief executive of the charity Population Matters, said that introducing modern family planning to the developing world would cost less than $4bn – about one third of the UK’s annual aid budget.

“So, while fertility reduction is not a quick fix, it is relatively cheap, reliable, and popular with most, with generally positive side effects. We welcome the recognition of the potential of family planning and reproductive education to alleviate resource availability in the longer term,” Mr Ross said.

The remarkable story behind Rudyard Kipling's 'If'

Geoffrey Wansell in The Daily Mail in 2009

A while ago, Rudyard Kipling's If, that epic evocation of the British virtues of a 'stiff upper lip' and stoicism in the face of adversity, will once again be named as the nation's favourite poem.

The choice will certainly reignite the debate about whether it is, in fact, a great poem - which T. S. Eliot insisted it was not, describing it instead as 'great verse' - or a 'good bad' poem, as Orwell called it.

-----Also Read

On Walking - Advice for a Fifteen Year Old

----- 

Indeed, when it was last acclaimed as our favourite 14 years ago, one newspaper dismissed it as 'jingoistic nonsense', while another praised it as 'unforgettable'.

What is not in doubt is that Kipling's four eight-line stanzas of advice to his son, written in 1909, have inspired the nation for a century.

Empire-building: Kipling was inspired by a failed British raid against the Boers in 1895

Two of its most resonant lines, 'If you can meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same', stand above the players' entrance to the Centre Court at Wimbledon.

My own father gave a copy to me when I was ten and I carried it around in my wallet for the next 15 years. He felt it was the perfect advice for a son born at the end of the last world war, who could not know what triumphs and disasters lay ahead.

But few of the thousands who have voted for If as their favourite poem (in a poll for radio station Classic FM) know the remarkable story that lies behind the lines published in Kipling's collection of short stories and poems, Rewards And Fairies, in 1910.

For the unlikely truth is that they were composed by the Indian-born Kipling to celebrate the achievements of a man betrayed and imprisoned by the British Government - the Scots-born colonial adventurer Dr Leander Starr Jameson.

Although it may not seem so to the millions who can recite its famous first line ('If you can keep your head when all about you'), If is also a bitter condemnation of the British Government led by Lord Salisbury, and the duplicity of its Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, for covertly supporting Dr Jameson's raid against the Boers in South Africa's Transvaal in 1896, only to condemn him when the raid failed.

Kipling was a friend of Jameson and was introduced to him, so scholars believe, by another colonial friend and adventurer: Cecil Rhodes, the financier and statesman who extracted a vast fortune from Britain's burgeoning African empire by taking substantial stakes in both diamond and gold mines in southern Africa.

In Kipling's autobiography, Something Of Myself, published in 1937, the year after his death at the age of 70, he acknowledges the inspiration for If in a single reference: 'Among the verses in Rewards was one set called If - they were drawn from Jameson's character, and contained counsels of perfection most easy to give.'

Enlarge  

But to explain the nature of Kipling's admiration for Jameson, we need to return to the veldt of southern Africa in the last years of the 19th century.

What was to become South Africa was divided into two British colonies (the Cape Colony and Natal) and two Boer republics (the Orange Free State and Transvaal). Transvaal contained 30,000 white male voters, of Dutch descent, and 60,000 white male 'Uitlanders', primarily British expatriates, whom the Boers had disenfranchised from voting.

Rhodes, then Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, wanted to encourage the disgruntled Uitlanders to rebel against the Transvaal government. He believed that if he sent a force of armed men to overrun Johannesburg, an uprising would follow. By Christmas 1895, the force of 600 armed men was placed under the command of Rhodes's old friend, Dr Jameson.

Back in Britain, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, father of future Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, had encouraged Rhodes's plan.

But when he heard the raid was to be launched, he panicked and changed his mind, remarking: 'If this succeeds, it will ruin me. I'm going up to London to crush it.'

Chamberlain ordered the Governor General of the Cape Colony to condemn the 'Jameson Raid' and Rhodes for planning it. He also instructed every British worker in Transvaal not to support it.

That was behind the scenes. On the Transvaal border, the impetuous Jameson was growing frustrated by the politicking between London and Cape Town, and decided to go ahead regardless.

On December 29, 1895, he led his men across the Transvaal border, planning to race to Johannesburg in three days - but the raid failed, miserably.

The Boer government's troops tracked Jameson's force from the moment it crossed the border and attacked it in a series of minor skirmishes that cost the raiders vital supplies, horses and indeed the lives of a handful of men, until on the morning of January 2, Jameson was confronted by a major Boer force.

After seeing the Boers kill 30 of his men, Jameson surrendered, and he and the surviving raiders were taken to jail in Pretoria. The raiders never reached Johannesburg and there was no uprising among the Uitlanders.

Cecil Rhodes, left, in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1896

The Boer government handed the prisoners, including Jameson, over to the London government for trial. A few days after the raid, the German Kaiser sent a telegram congratulating President Kruger's Transvaal government on its success in suppressing the uprising.

When this was disclosed in the British Press, a storm of anti-German feeling was stirred and Jameson found himself lionised by London society. Fierce anti-Boer and anti-German feelings were inflamed, which soon became known as 'jingoism'.

Jameson was sentenced to 15 months for leading the raid, and the Transvaal government was paid almost £1million in compensation by the British South Africa Company. Cecil Rhodes was forced to step down as Prime Minister of the Cape Colony.

Jameson never revealed the extent of the British Government's support for the raid. This has led a string of Kipling scholars to point out that the poem's lines 'If you can keep your head when all about you / Are losing theirs and blaming it on you' were designed specifically to pay tribute to the courage and dignity of Jameson's silence.

Typical of his spirit, Jameson was not broken by his imprisonment. He decided to return to South Africa after his release and rose to become Prime Minister of the Cape Colony in 1904, leaving office before the creation of the Union of South Africa in 1910.

His stoicism in the face of adversity and his determination not to be deterred from his task are reflected in the lines: 'If you can make a heap of all your winnings / And risk it at one turn of pitch and toss / And lose, and start again from your beginnings / And never breathe a word about your loss . . .'

As Kipling's biographer, Andrew Lycett, puts it: 'In a sense, the poem is a valedictory to Jameson, the politician.'

All in all, an impressive hero for Kipling's son, John. 'If you can fill the unforgiving minute/ With sixty seconds' worth of distance run/ Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it/ And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!'

But Kipling's anger at Jameson's treatment by the British establishment never abated.

Even though the poet had become the first English-speaking recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, he refused a knighthood and the Order of Merit from the British Government and the King, just as he refused the posts of Poet Laureate and Companion of Honour.

The tragedy was that Kipling's only son, Lieutenant John Kipling, was to die in World War I at the Battle of Loos in 1915, only a handful of years after his father's most famous poem first appeared. His body was never found.

It was a shock from which Kipling never fully recovered. But his son's spirit, as well as that of Leander Starr Jameson, lives on in the lines of the poem that continues to inspire millions.

As Andrew Lycett told the Daily Mail: 'In these straitened times, the old-fashioned virtues of fortitude, responsibilities and resolution, as articulated in If, become ever more important.'

Long may they remain so. 

-----

If—

BY RUDYARD KIPLING

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;   

    If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim;   

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

    And treat those two impostors just the same;   

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

    Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

    And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

    And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

    And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

    To serve your turn long after they are gone,   

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

    Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,   

    Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

    If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

    With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,   

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,   

    And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

On Batting - Why the perfect technique is the one that disappears

The various acts that are involved in playing cricket well happen best intuitively, when we aren't consciously perfection in them

Ed Smith in Cricinfo

October 27, 2014

 

The key to batting could be described as being not so much about watching the ball as getting in sync with it, matching the rhythm of the shot with the arrival of the ball © AFP

Last weekend I was chopping firewood with an axe in my garden. The trick, obviously, is to land the blade of the axe in roughly the same part of the trunk every time. Each accurately aimed blow widens a V-shaped wedge, until, eventually, you cut through the whole tree. If you're inaccurate, you end up stabbing the trunk and messily scarring the firewood.

I was surprised by what I noticed. When I concentrated intently on the spot I was aiming for, when I tried to be precise and particular, I was in fact quite clumsy. But when I merely casually noted the target and focused more on the rhythm of the swing and the naturalness of the motion, I found that the axe landed in exactly the right spot. In fact, every single "good swing" - by which I mean something lazy, fluid, languid, with the weight of the blade being first unweighted then dropping almost casually - ended in hitting the target.

Accuracy was best served not by trying to be accurate, but by a sense of rhythm. Precision was achieved not by seeking it but by absorption in free, uninhibited (but not wild or uncontrolled) movement. When I tried to force the axe to go exactly where I wanted, it rarely did. When I allowed myself to work with the axe, it cooperated.

Eventually I realised this is exactly like batting.

We talk too much about "watching the ball", as though straining to identify the target is always the answer. (This is my second article challenging central tenets of the coaching manual - the first took issue with the "head still" theory.) In fact, a batsman can watch the ball too anxiously, to the point that the process inhibits his response to the ball. Instead, we have to be alert to the ball, to get in sync with it, to match the rhythm of the shot with the arrival of the ball. And these things happen best intuitively, when we aren't consciously pursuing them.

This is not a new idea. It was articulated by the golfer James Baird in 1914. He criticised players who fixate with desperate intensity on the point of impact. Instead, in a good swing, "The dispatching of the ball from the tee by the driver in the downward swing is merely an incident of the whole business [my italics]." A few years ago, I chatted about golf with Colin Montgomerie at Gleneagles. He took a few swings exactly as Baird suggested: the ball was almost incidental, a momentary obstacle in the natural movement of the club. The swing happened, the ball just got in the way.

That is not always easy, especially in cricket, when the ball is moving. I've never liked the cliché that cricket is "a simple game". All taken together, the art of batsmanship is very complex - the tension between attack and defence; the balance between protecting against lbws and yet not opening up the edge to the slips; the ability to transfer weight decisively forward and back; sustaining concentration, switching on and off.

And yet most batsmen would agree that when they're doing it well, batting feels simple and natural, sometimes even easy. Bowling is the same. Every fast bowler I've known, when asked why he was able to bowl so fast and well on a particular day, tends to answer, "Because I had good rhythm." I've not heard one bowler yet reply, "Because I tried harder and thought more intently."

The best coach I worked with would sometimes stand behind the nets with his eyes closed. He'd listen to the bowler's steps arriving at the crease, the noise of the batsman's footwork, the thud of the ball on the turf, and finally the crack of leather on willow. "That was good," he'd say, "you had rhythm." Or sometimes, "No, you had no touch, no finesse." All with his eyes closed, or with his body turned away from the net. And he'd be right, every time. The coach was able to distinguish between the right process (an open and uninhibited mindset, a lack of predetermination, a natural swing of the bat) and the outcome of the shot in narrow terms. He knew that if you play a high enough proportion of good shots, the runs will inevitably follow.

	Because the important things are hard to coach, it is tempting to take refuge in the small, irrelevant things because they are easy

There is a mystical element here. By crudely reducing things in the hope of "explaining them", we often simply distort them. Batting is not like rummaging around in a bag of machinery, looking for a pre-moulded tool. Instead, it is the ability to answer a question posed by a particular ball - batting as a form of conversation. As every ball is slightly different, so is every good shot. As Roger Federer put it brilliantly, "I need a different point every time."

In elite sport we overstate the importance of trying hard. After all, players are highly incentivised to do well (money, glory, fame - need we go on?). Conversely we hugely underestimate the value of achieving that sense of lightness and freedom - the feeling I had swinging the axe, and, sometimes, when I was swinging a cricket bat. There is truth in the cliché: "You learn about batting when you've already scored a hundred." What you learn is how good you could be if you learned always to trust yourself, to play free from restraints and anxiety, without the suffocating influence of what Arsene Wenger calls "handbrake-age".

The question follows, obvious but very rarely addressed: how can we make batting and bowling feel easy more often, given that is the feeling we get when we are doing them well?

First, we misunderstand technique. Technique is not a thing, an object that can be owned. It is a means. The goal is not technique but to hit the ball sweetly. Technique allows us to do it better, to achieve that goal more often and completely. For that reason, the perfect technique is the technique that disappears: it is no longer in the way. We are not conscious of it at all. We track the ball, swing the bat in rhythm, and everything else organises itself intuitively.

Secondly, we overstate the value of rational intelligence and analysis. I am not sure that the subject of this article can be "coached" in the conventional sense of the word. Coaches can help you to understand the process, perhaps even help you get there more quickly. But, at best, the coach can only support and enable a journey that the player must undertake on his own.

Because the important things are hard to coach, it is tempting to take refuge in the small, irrelevant things because they are easy. Too much bottom hand, getting squared up, playing too early, closing the face of the bat? All symptoms, but unlikely to be the ultimate cause. That is probably much simpler and yet harder to put right: the bat isn't working as part of your body but in opposition to it.

As the literary critic Steven Connor wrote about tennis: "If I wish the racket to become me, I must first become it, or become the kind of me that it requires and will most readily respond to."

-----Rahul Dravid on playing spin as quoted by Bryon Coverdale from Pietersen's book

One of the most fascinating passages in Kevin Pietersen's recent autobiography relates not to which team-mates he dislikes or how badly he was treated, but to advice given to him by Rahul Dravid on how to play spin. It is worth seeking out the book just to read the email Dravid sent. Australia's batsmen should certainly read it.

Dravid advises soft hands, be prepared to come forward but do not overcommit, let the ball come to you, recognise there are scoring opportunities off the back foot too. He suggests a novel training method, telling Pietersen he should face Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar in the nets while not wearing pads.

"When you have no pads it will force you, sometimes painfully, to get the bat forward of the pads and will force you to watch the ball," Dravid writes. "Also the leg will be less keen to push out without any protection. My coach would tell me you should never need pads to play spin!!"

Tony Benn – the new face of the Tories

No wonder our Thatcherite prime minister can’t win over much of his party on the European Union. They’re closet Bennites

• 
• • Steve Richards
  • The Guardian, Sunday 26 October 2014 18.22 GMT

‘Tony Benn supported the right of local parties to de-select MPs – the unrelenting mission of some Tory MPs today.’ Photomontage: Photonews Scotland/Rex

‘Cameron won’t pay new EU bill!” “Cameron might threaten to pull out of the EU!” The exclamations erupt once more, but while the focus is on David Cameron’s latest position, a remarkable transformation has been taking place below him in the Conservative party, which explains his contortions and also makes them irrelevant.

A significant section of the Conservative party has become Bennite: ardent followers of the views espoused by the leftwinger Tony Benn, who died earlier this year. The rightwing Bennites do not look to their leadership for guidance. Like Benn used to do, they follow other lines of democratic accountability. Due to a matter of deeply held principle, the leader can never count on their support, even when he seeks to appease them.

I cannot quite believe I have written the previous paragraph. As a student in the early 1980s I was a Bennite and remember how much the right loathed him. Indeed, I suspect that one of the reasons I was a youthful devotee arose from my admiration of Benn’s polite dignity in the face of ferocious vilification. For a time the Conservative party projected him as the most dangerous man in Britain. Now parts of the right pay homage. The role reversal is the strangest and most significant in British politics for many decades.

Of course, there are big differences between Benn’s overall beliefs and the Tory Bennites. He was a socialist and they most emphatically are not. Benn regarded the state as a benevolent force, and sought wider state ownership, while a lot of the Tory Bennites want government to play a much smaller role. But in the importance they attach to democracy, and in their interpretation of what form democratic politics should take, they have much in common. I also sense that Benn regarded his views on democracy as of overriding importance. So do the Tory Bennites.

The former Tory MP and Ukip defector, Douglas Carswell, was typical in praising Benn in his Guardian interview last week: “Benn said the key questions were: who has power, who gave it to them, on whose behalf do they wield it, and are they accountable? I remember thinking this guy is spot on.” Separately, the founder of the ConservativeHome website, Tim Montgomerie, told me at a public event that he was a “Bennite on Europe”. He would advocate withdrawal whatever Cameron says or does, on the grounds that the EU can never be accountable to voters here or elsewhere. On another front, Benn started a campaign after the 1979 election to make Labour’s leadership and MPs more accountable to party members, supporting the right of local parties to deselect MPs. Benn’s crusade then has become, in a different form, the unrelenting mission of some Tory MPs now, or former Tory MPs. Carswell defected above all over the right of constituents to remove errant MPs – the project led by his former Conservative colleague, Zac Goldsmith. The Tory Bennites’ proposal, the right of recall, is a different measure to Benn’s, but the principle is similar. Constituents should hold MPs to account and not the national leadership.

In the last parliament David Davis pointed the way when he resigned as shadow home secretary to fight a local byelection in his constituency over his support for civil liberties – a move with Bennite rhythms, as local members and voters marched as one to put pressure on the national leadership. Benn was a strong supporter of Davis’s move. When Benn died, Davis presented a glowing tribute on Radio 4. In its counter-intuitive verve, it is the best political programme broadcast this year.

The younger generation is even more emphatic in its focus on the local over loyalty to national leadership. One of the most engaging and smartest of the 2010 intake, Dominic Raab, speaks openly of his commitment to the local party and constituents rather than following an expedient route to ministerial office. Selected by an open primary, Sarah Wollaston has similar priorities, as does Andrew Percy, a regular rebel. Benn would approve.

Listen carefully to the arguments of Tory dissenters on several matters and they care about the mechanics of decision-making as much as the substance of the decisions. This applies to their current explosive opposition to the European arrest warrant and free movement of labour. They fume above all because neither they nor their constituents can decide on the issue, even if they can see merits in the policies being imposed on them.

Benn went on to make a broader argument that the Labour government in the 1970s had failed to carry out the wishes of members. Similarly, a section of Tory MPs do not trust the leadership to deliver what their local members seek. They sought that guarantee of a referendum on Europe so that power was transferred from unreliable leaders to voters. It was Benn who originated the idea of a referendum on Europe when the Labour government held one in 1975.

There is a common characteristic between Benn and the Tory Bennites that goes beyond specifics. He was, and they are, animated by debate rather than tribal loyalties. In Benn’s diaries he was often at his most excited when reporting discussions with Tory ideologues. He describes at length a long, friendly conversation with the rightwing Keith Joseph when they met on a train. He speaks admiringly of Enoch Powell and Margaret Thatcher, on the basis that they were “teachers” of conviction. In his Guardian interview Carswell is highly complimentary of Labour MPs who are also gripped by issues relating to accountability. Davis enjoys good relations with left-of-centre commentators and some Labour tribalists, including Alastair Campbell.

From the younger generation, Raab is similarly excited by internal debate and ideas rather than the stifling control freakery perhaps understandably favoured by leaders. At a fringe meeting during the Conservative conference Raab noted that the current parliamentary party includes libertarians, patrician Tories, Eurosceptics who want out, Eurosceptics who want to stay in, pro-Europeans, those who above all seek ministerial office, and the growing number who have other priorities in politics. In his enthusiasm for such stimulating diversity, he reminded me of Benn, who once described Labour’s mighty internal ideological battles as a healing process.

The practical consequence of Bennism is that a party becomes impossible to lead – at least on the New Labour model adopted at first by Cameron and George Osborne, of a leader and close allies deciding policy and imposing it on a docile party. Today’s Tory party is not docile enough for the model to work. Cameron can appease or challenge the Tory Bennites – it does not matter very much. In some respects he becomes marginal to them. They are driven, as Benn was, by purer lines of accountability in which members and their constituents are agents of change. I have been curious for some time about why Cameron is loathed by some of his MPs when he has delivered a programme that in some respects is more Thatcherite than Margaret Thatcher. Now I know the answer. Some of his MPs on the right are not Thatcherite. They are Bennite.

Lessons from a bank robbery

Courtesy Rishi Singh

During a recent robbery, the bank robber shouted: "Don't move. The money is insured and ultimately belongs to the government, and Your life belongs to you."

Everyone in the bank laid down quietly.

This is called "Mind Changing Concept” or Paradigm Shift Changing the conventional way of thinking.

When a lady lay on the table provocatively, the robber shouted at her: "Please be civilised! This is a robbery and not a rape!"

This is called "Being Professional” Focus only on what you are trained to do!

When the bank robbers returned home, the younger robber (MBA trained) told the older robber (who has only completed Year 6 in primary school): "Big brother, let's count how much we got."

The older robber rebutted and said: "You are very stupid. There is so much money it will take us a long time to count. Tonight, the TV news will tell us how much we robbed from the bank!"

This is called "Experience” Often, experience is more important than paper qualifications!

After the robbers had left, the bank manager told the bank supervisor to call the police quickly. But the clever supervisor said to him: "Wait! Let us take out $10 million from the bank for ourselves and add it to the $70 million that we have previously embezzled from the bank”.

This is called "Swim with the tide” with experience and dishonesty. Converting an unfavorable situation to your advantage with resourcefulness and cunning!

The supervisor says: "It will be good if there is a robbery every other month."

This is called "Changing priority”. Personal Happiness is as or more important than your job”.

The next day, the TV news reported that $100 million was taken from the bank. The robbers counted and counted and counted, but they could only account for $20 million.

The robbers were very angry and complained: "We risked our lives and only took $20 million. The bank manager took $80 million with a snap of his fingers. It looks like it is better to be educated and in a position of power than to be a thief!"

This is called "Knowledge is worth as much as gold"! And one can reap riches with deftness, crookedness and dishonest inclination with guts"

From Siachen’s heights, NaMo made a cracker of a point on Diwali

Shoba De in the Times of India

As of now, the man can do no wrong. He is here, he is there, he is everywhere! After 10 years of putting up with a prime minister who was in permanent mute mode, and hardly moved out of the confines of his daftar, perhaps it is a good thing that we now have a guy who is garrulous and voluble, hyperactive and on the go. Critics are saying Narendra Modi is blindly aping American presidents who always made it a point to spend time with their troops over Thanksgiving and X’mas breaks. If that is the case, and our NaMo is indeed doing a `me too’, so be it.

There he was pumping hands with our soldiers stationed at Siachen, sharing homilies, bonhomie and mithai with lonely men stuck in an icy , hostile post, miles away from their loved ones. It was a gracious gesture, even if the idea was to create extra goodwill, milk the photo ops and generate more votes. That’s what smart politicians do! It is an inseparable part of their job description. As strategies go, this one was superbly timed, as was his visit (and a hefty Rs 750-crore relief package) to Srinagar. Leaders are picked for these very qualities. And even at the risk of sounding cynical, it must be said, a Modi-on-the-move is better than a Modi-sitting-tight. A while ago, I happened to be sitting next to a fauji wife on a plane. Here was a young, modern woman, bright as a button, well-informed, articulate, outspoken and feisty. She spoke about her life as an Army wife with incredible fervour and pride. The mehendi on her hands told me she had observed Karva Chauth. So had her dashing husband, she informed me! It was that kind of a marriage, she said with a twinkle in her eye. They did everything together — they always had. From the time they’d married 20-odd years ago, after a whirlwind romance. I asked about long separations, anxieties and uncertainties. How did she cope when he was away?

As it turns out, he had served in Siachen. And in J&K during the worst skirmishes. Being a Military Intelligence man, she never knew where he had been sent or for how long. By then, they had a young child, and any form of direct communication was out of the question when her husband was on a special mission. She had trained herself to wait… to pray… to never give up hope. Like thousands of young fauji wives who believe the Army is their extended family, no matter what happens.

Late one night, her husband came back from a secret assignment and knocked lightly on the bedroom window so as not to wake up the sleeping infant. He was wounded on his right arm and face.

He had taken a bad hit and could barely move or speak. For the next few weeks, he stayed home to recuperate — even though he was injured, she was just glad for their time together as she nursed him back to health. She talked about another incident when militants in the Valley attacked the home of another Army officer, who returned the fire but was grievously injured. As the militants closed in, two young daughters pleaded with their mother to kill them first, before the militants could get them.

Listening to her deeply stirring stories of valour and faith, I thought about our safe, protected city lives. This gutsy, proud woman’s narrative is just one of many. Today, she said emphatically, she has confidence in the new Prime Minister’s ability to motivate a tired and demoralized Army. For far too long, she insisted, our soldiers were made to heedlessly sacrifice their lives, because of political interference and an appalling level of corruption that had left the country vulnerable and weakened. She was glad Modi was taking a tough, aggressive stand.

She felt reassured and confident that a zero-tolerance position was being established against those using force against India. And then she told me something pretty chilling. “They were told to DUCK bullets and not fire back! Can you imagine any trained, self-respecting soldier ducking enemy bullets?” she said, her eyes were burning with outrage.

Was that the reason her own husband had finally quit the Army…in disgust? She denied it. But it left me wondering…. We treat our armed forces with scant respect. We have consistently ignored the demand for introducing the overdue OROP scheme (One Rank, One Pension). Fauji veterans have waited in vain for its implementation by the newly minted BJP-led government at the Centre, after previous administrations consistently ignored their appeals. It was a black Diwali for them this year. Hapless, frustrated veterans went so far as to return gallantry awards and medals to register their protest.Despite these setbacks, our men in uniform are stoically carrying on. Narendra Modi thanked our brave jawans on behalf of 125 crore Indian citizens, telling them we could sleep well at night only because it was they who were keeping us safe. It is true. It needed to be said.

Strange and sad nobody thought of saying it earlier.