January 02, 2005

Among those rewarded for services to “gender issues” and “diversity” — as well as hairdressing, cleaning, typing and even ping pong — in the new year honours list is an intriguing cove who has not received the attention he so richly deserves: please meet Syed Abdul-Aziz Pasha OBE, as he now is.

The founder of the Union of Muslim Organisations has been rewarded “for services to race relations”. Hmm. He led a campaign to ban The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Even by Labour’s dexterous reasoning, it is a tad unclear how this service enhanced “race relations”.

“The Muslim community,” he wrote in 1988 to prime minister Margaret Thatcher, “is shocked and seething with indignation.” He demanded she prosecute Rushdie — despite not having read the novel.

I’m no Tory, yet I applaud her response: “It is an essential part of our democratic system that people who act within the law should be free to express their opinions.”

But Pasha ignored her logic. “People are looking at this through Christian eyes,” he cried. “You must look at it through Muslim eyes.” Why, he didn’t say. Instead he smouldered: “We are very deeply angry that nothing is being done to ban this book.”

Whatever sense he may have talked recently, back then he rejected values we hold dear, and now we honour him at a time when laws banning “religious hatred” may soon leave books such as Rushdie’s in legal purgatory.

Ministers appear keen to do not what is right, but what is right for Labour’s inner-city prospects in the coming general election. Hence their muted response when extremist Sikhs hurl bricks through windows and get a play banned.

This just highlights how absurd the honours list now is. This year’s awards are comical: why does a tractor driver on the Sandringham estate deserve an honour more than another tractor driver? Or the buffer in the Army Legal Services Branch warrant his CBE more than the sapper in Falluja? And what of the knighted John Gieve, who apparently forgot evidence against David Blunkett? After Harold Wilson’s “lavender list” is this the “amnesia list”?

It is the award to “Dame” Kelly Holmes that sounds most affected; is she in panto? Surely the fan who tattooed Kelly’s name — misspelt — on her back did more to show Britain’s admiration than a dated gong from a dodgy government.

Bill Clinton’s idea to twin impoverished and rich nations is a genuinely inspired response to the catastrophe in the Indian Ocean. It is rather like a national version of schemes by western charities to get donors to help educate a child in the Third World. We send money and they in return write us a sweet letter with a smiling photograph once a year, full of uplifting news. A national version would obviously fund infrastructure projects and health programmes. In return the recipient country would write an annual report or audit, showing how the money was spent.
But let’s hope our gifts don’t ape the Christmas variety of home (ie, be bloody useless). Otherwise an African leader would write to Tony Blair: “Thank you so much for the herd of mountain goats. I appreciate they are must-have accessories in Islington this Christmas, but what precisely should we do with them? They are eating all the grain you gave us last year. Can’t you send over a new surface-to-air missile like the French gave to next door? Please thank Cherie for the gold-plated picture frame off eBay. PS: your latest parcel also contained Sinclair C5 scooters, some chavvy Burberry handbags and a deputy prime minister who does not work. What did we do to deserve this?”

Our hot pursuit of Paris Hilton

Paris Hilton and Jordan are the subject of more searches on MSN than almost anyone else. On the information superhighway, what possible info do we seek about such exquisitely uncomplicated figures? And are our queries getting satisfaction? If my trawl is indicative, net cruisers must grow mighty frustrated. Type “Paris Hilton” and the first thing you are offered is a bargain break at a Hilton hotel in Paris (no energetic blonde thrown in).

Jordan is even more of a tease. There is “birding in Jordan” and “flora of Jordan”, but both prove sadly innocent. There is a biography of a Camille Jordan (1838-1922), but she just doesn’t have the breasts. “Jordan considers resting players” sounds promising, but this does not mean the lads have let down the insatiable model; it refers to squad rotation techniques of the less lovely Joe Jordan, coach of Portsmouth FC.

More alarming than all this is that Jonathan Cainer, an astrologer, is the man most hunted on MSN. So much for the age of reason.

It’s greedy but I want the kids to inherit

No surprise Shaun Woodward calls for a cut in inheritance tax. As one of the few MPs in the people’s party who lives in a stonking great manor house, after he happily married into Sainsbury money, he may be wondering how “the kids” will afford the butler.

His old, and more natural party, the Tories, are showing unusual savvy by saying they might scrap inheritance tax entirely. The logic is clear, when a bog standard hole in Gerrards Cross costs £627,000. There are few houses in many areas of the southeast for £263,000, the level at which the tax kicks in.

But, though I admit I will stretch every Inland Revenue sub-clause to leave as much as possible to my own children, should I be allowed to pass on further privilege? For being born middle-class is already a huge head start. Inheritances tend to go to tidily stashed middle-aged sorts. If there is dosh sloshing around the Treasury, wouldn’t it be better spent on tax cuts for all the young folk struggling in poorly paid jobs, unable to buy a home?

A week back we might have thought tsunami an Italian pudding; if spoken, we would have been even more puzzled. But with the numbers of dead rising faster than digits at a petrol pump we have started the blame game: America, local politicians who vetoed a costly warning system, the Foreign Office, God, atheists, even the Swedes have been on the receiving end of quaking sermons.

This is just frustration that no one can really be blamed: horrible though it is, Donald Rumsfeld’s phrase “stuff happens” for once is painfully true.

We think we have mastered the universe. We haven’t, and never will. Not a single death was caused by man. This was all nature’s work — a reminder that not all evil is the work of fallen humanity.