"and those who were seen dancing were thought crazy by those who could not hear the music." Friedrich Nietzche.

Apologists for the worst reactionary horrors of religion always like to claim that such excesses are nothing to do with the various faiths but are "cultural" - as if religion could be anything other than cultural. No doubt the same old culture v religion stuff will be doing the rounds again in the wake of the latest Taliban outrage.  Religious conservatives tend not to like singing and merry making and rather think that standing up sex should be avoided lest it lead to dancing. There seems to be some deep seated fear of female sexuality at the heart of this primitive nonsense and arguing about culture/religion or hand wringing cultural relativism have no part to play in the project of consigning this last vestige of the medieval world to the dustbin of history.

Court Circular.

There can be few more resilient dynasties than the House Of Sax-Coburg. Whenever it looks as though the oncoming express train of history will be the death of them they neatly step to one side and re-invent themselves. For a family who have produced so many inbred half-wits they seem to have developed some incredible survival skills. No doubt the emergence of third in line for the top job as a gormless, ginger-pubed gay pin up will be like water off a duck's back to those lovable Sax-Coburgs.
In the past the inbreeding problem has been addressed by the introduction of a brood-mare but this has produced problems of it's own. Perhaps the Royals should remember the motto of the old time stock breeders, "Breed close-and cull hard".

Old Father Thames has never seen the like.

The Thames has been a prime location for top end of the market residential development for many years now.  What was once a bustling waterway is now nothing more than a sterile backdrop, a view from the balcony, a conversation piece for the chattering classes who infest the riverside apartments. The river is now little more than a flood relief channel at the bottom of a brick and glass canyon. Don't suppose that this transformation is complete either. The next phase, prompted in part by the desire of the   European bourgeoisie to find a safe haven for their wealth, is only just beginning. A few news items have recently offered clues as to what is afoot.  There are big changes to the Southbank in the offing. All that public space is a waste of retail potential it seems. The skateboarders, the people just strolling about, where's the profit in that? Further upriver at Nine Elms is the site of one of the biggest developments since the transformation of Isle Of Dogs. Who knows what will happen to the ordinary folk who live in the triangle of land between Vauxhall and Queenstown Road but a clue might be found in the recent report from the think tank Policy Exchange. With the new American Embassy as the jewel in the crown  Nine Elms is set to be the Mayfair of the south. None of this will go unnoticed by the international business elite who will be falling over themselves to get a piece of the action. Most will be only vaguely aware that that water they can see from the balcony is actually a river. Fewer still will contemplate the fact that the Thames will continue to make it's way from the Cotswolds to the North Sea long after they and their kind are as extinct as the dinosaurs.

Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica.

I believe that there was a good crowd at Lords today to see South Africa beat England by 51 runs winning the series and taking the number one spot at the same time. It looks to have been a great days cricket and I don't begrudge anyone involved a moment of it. Meanwhile, over at the South African Embassy a handful of anarchists and a couple of dozen Black Nationalists attempted to mount a protest against what is coming to be known as the Marikana Massacre. So South Africa won by about the same number of runs as people who could be bothered to just turn up in Trafalgar Square for a simple act of solidarity with some of the most oppressed workers in the world.

The myth of the "Good Prince".

Thursday's  brutal killing of thirty four South African miners echoes the worst days of the apartheid regime and is a lesson to all about the true class nature of ANC rule; but already apologists are saying that Mandela would never have allowed this tragedy to happen on his watch. It's a lament as old as history. If only good King Richard had known what was going on Prince John and the Sheriff Of Nottingham would never have been able to force Robin Hood into fleeing to the greenwood. You can still find people who looking in dismay at today's East End declare that, "The Twins would never have allowed this". Why there are even those who maintain that the horrors of Stalinism had nothing much to do with Uncle Joe but were all the work of those scheming apparatchiks. Others might try to convince us that Hitler was far too busy defending the fatherland to realise what was happening in the camps. This is not to say that history does not throw up good men and women; clearly it does. Nor am I suggesting that Nelson Mandela is not one of those good men but simply that our fate can never be left to powerful individuals no matter how well intentioned they might be. By the same token the redistribution of wealth and the emancipation of the working class is not something that can be postponed until some historically correct moment in the distant future. The Good Prince will not step in to save us - he never has and never will.

Pussy Riot. On the side of the angels.

Tomorrow is the final day of the Pussy Riot trial and what passes for justice in Putin's Russia will be seen to be done. We can but hope for the best but a guilty verdict seems inevitable. The closing statement of band member Yekaterina Samatsevich is here.  Brave girls. I honestly don't know what else to say.

In geeks we trust?

The group of 14 walkers who got lost in the Cairngorms while relying on smart phone apps to navigate probably don't realise how lucky they were to come of the hill alive. SatNav is a fantastic aid to navigation but, unless you're thinking of mounting an expedition to Mars, it is just that, an aid. The trouble is that satellite navigation takes all the brain work out of navigation and can leave people deskilled and unable to cope if the system goes down. Navigation is basically answering two question, "where am I?" and "in what direction do I go from here?"   SatNav is fantastic at answering the first question but to use it to answer the second without any form of more traditional back up is to put all your trust in one vulnerable little box of tricks. As a position fixing system SatNav takes some beating but knowing which direction to head off in should be your decision based on skill and experience. It always amazes me how many people are quite incapable of the simplest map reading task and are happy to place their safety in the hands of of a piece of electronic gadgetry and hope for the best.