David Richardson

The (at least tactical) victory Bush and Blair gave bin Laden was in making a reasoned response from Muslim nations impossible. Individual Muslims around the world surely are sickened by the confrontational climate that now exists, but they aren't the people bin Laden was aiming at. Bin Laden was aiming firstly at Muslim nations (like his own, Saudi Arabia) to make sure that the cost of alliance with the US was too high for them to bear, and secondly at potential Muslim activists, to give them reasons for doing things like driving Jeeps full of inflammables into airports in the UK. Bush and Blair have made sure that no-one's going to be on the side they're supporting (which leaves only passivity or bin Laden's team). There used to be a third way, secular Arab nationalism, which bin Laden's crew hated worse than they hated the West, but Bush saw to it that that option was more or less eradicated. As we know now, Bush and his team had decided to target Saddam Hussein a long time before 9/11, which is why it didn't really matter that al-Qaeda and Hussein were sworn enemies - 9/11 was just a welcome pretext for something they were going to do anyway. Let's imagine that Bush's team hadn't had that prior agenda. Bin Laden would have attacked anyway, since the World Trade Center had been a target of choice for nearly a decade. The US government, however, needn't have launched two wars, both of which it's currently losing. As subsequent investigations have shown, there was plenty that was wrong with US law enforcement in the run-up to 9/11 that needed putting right (and still hasn't been). Most of the necessary measures are procedural and boring … but effective, rather than 'tough' and sexy, but rather ineffective. Look at the strategic picture from bin Laden's side: the main US strength is in conventional weapons, so he has to turn that into a weakness. The way you do that is by getting the US to actually commit its forces, so that they can be tied down somewhere by asymmetrical forces (like the Taleban in Afghanistan and the various militias and resistance forces in Iraq). Bin Laden was also helped by the fact that asymmetrical warfare was also Hussein's resistance strategy (ever wonder why the tyrant distributed weapons by the thousand to his population in the weeks before the US invasion?). Asymmetrical warfare had never died down in Afghanistan, so it didn't need to be revived. Bin Laden had few strengths … but what he had was the force of an idea, an idea which Bush managed to strengthen beyond bin Laden's wildest dreams. Way to go, Bushie! But it was an astute piece of reasoning from bin Laden's side. He was, in my opinion, well aware of the delusional nature of many Americans (nuke Makkah!) and the lack of even the basic knowledge of what they were getting themselves into. One of the first Arab proverbs I came across goes like this: "me against my brother; my brother and I against my cousin; me, my brother and my cousin against the world". People who feel this way aren't likely to be impressed by a bit of the kind of military grandstanding the Bushies do (like invading Iraq!) - in fact, they're likely to welcome it, since it puts a bit of backbone into their own side.

Craig, there's plenty of historical evidence that a more reasoned response than the one Bush orchestrated would have worked much better. Take the 'Anarchist' terrorist attacks in the first decade of the 20th century. When they actually happened, the various police forces of Europe were well equipped to deal with the actual attacks. It was only when idiots of the Bush calibre (in this case the Austro-Hungarians) got going that disproportionate responses led to catastrophe. Bin Laden certainly knew his US psychology: he knew that a very cheap operation would result in the US giving him the kind of over-the-top response he needed to galvanise his Muslim constituents. It's a sign of how protected the US has actually been from what's been going on all over the world for centuries. It's just a shame that Blair got involved with such naive and delusional people. It's always been very tempting to think that you can screw other people around from afar without suffering any consequences at all, but it just doesn't accord with reality. Tim, 'nuke Hanoi'! Do me a favour! The US weren't the only people with nuclear weapons at the time, you know. And the population of Vietnam at the time was around 50 million, if I remember correctly. And that was 50 million people who'd been living under war conditions since the early 1940s. Another of the US delusions, I'm afraid, to think that that was a viable policy.

I'm not quite sure what your point is, Craig, but let me have a go. I was on Öland (the long, thin island off the southern coast of Sweden) at a meeting on 9/11, and the first reaction of all of us when we saw the TV footage was that this was an accident. Then we saw the second plane … but it still looked like an accident! The immediate reaction should have concentrated on the actual events, tragic though they were. A major landmark in New York was destroyed (at the second attempt, after the first one in 1993), and just over 3,000 people were killed. A mature world leader would have swallowed hard, bitten the bullet and, strangely enough, thanked his lucky stars that the butcher's bill wasn't greater. When the IRA were bombing England in the 1970s it was fate alone which prevented similar losses - not any intention on the part of the people that planned those bombings. As an IRA leader said, after having attempted to assassinate the Prime Minister with the Brighton bombs, "Mrs Thatcher has to be lucky every time, but we only have to be lucky once". If we'd had leaders in both countries at the time who *didn't* have a hidden agenda, then the reaction should have been calm and considered. Some heads needed to roll in the respective intelligence services, and a serious investigation needed to be carried out into *why* the clues had been missed and the messages hadn't got through. Unfortunately, both in the 1970s and after 9/11 that wasn't the case. The leaders involved *did* have a hidden agenda, and they proceeded to take the courses of action they had originally intended to take - the actual acts of terrorism were just an excuse. The net result is a situation where the terrorists won. They managed to provoke the disproportionate response they were after. The British have just about managed to extricate themselves from the mess in Ireland, although the anti-democratic and draconian laws which were passed in the 1970s (by a government which was *nominally* liberal) are still on the statute books. The US stirred up a much bigger and more dangerous hornets' nest, though, by attacking Iraq, when their real enemy was in Afghanistan. Even at the time, in the 1970s, the British government knew that they'd have to come to some sort of accord with the IRA sooner or later. The US are still in denial, though, in my opinion, so reckon on centuries before the Iraq mess is cleared up … and those will be centuries when the mere mention of the "shining city on the hill" will just evoke cynical laughter outside US territorial waters. The Crusaders have been gone from the Holy Land since Acre fell in 1291, but the memory is still very fresh, so reckon on around 8 more centuries before the US is let off the hook for the imbecilities it's perpetrated in the last 7 years.

… and for the average Russian, Chinese, Brit, Frenchman or woman, etc. Looks like we could do with a bit of George Orwell here: "By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly -- and this is much more important -- I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism. Both words are normally used in so vague a way that any definition is liable to be challenged, but one must draw a distinction between them, since two different and even opposing ideas are involved. By "patriotism" I mean devotion to a particular place and a particular way of life, which one believes to be the best in the world but has no wish to force on other people. Patriotism is of its nature defensive, both militarily and culturally. Nationalism, on the other hand, is inseparable from the desire for power. The abiding purpose of every nationalist is to secure more power and more prestige, not for himself but for the nation or other unit in which he has chosen to sink his own individuality." (From Notes on Nationalism. The full essay is just as worth reading now as it was in May 1945 when it was written. There's a good, clean version of the text here: http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/nation.../english/e_nat). There are lots of very positive features of the United States, as I have to tell my students every time they start a US Culture and Society course. When the Social Democrats in Sweden embarked on their mission to fundamentally change the rigid, hierarchical - and essentially Prussian - Swedish society that had just lost a quarter of its population to emigration in a quarter of a century, it was the United States they took as their model. The United States, that is, that's embodied in the opening words of the US Constitution: "We hold these truths to be self-evident …" However, if you think that that's all there is to say about the US, then you have to close your eyes to several important slices of reality. George Mikes wrote a really funny book about the French (Little Cabbages), which wasn't as successful as How to Be an Alien (his look at the British) in which he touched on the relationship between the French and the Americans. As close as I can remember, it goes like this: "For the French the Americans are like a benevolent, but heavily overweight, man who's standing on your corns. He professes his love and admiration for you, but you're just aware of his weight" (… and that was about a half century before 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys'!). Talk to an Iranian about Mossadeq, or a Palestinian about their family home in Jaffa they're not allowed even to see, or a Latin American about the School of the Americas (whose lessons on torture were quickly spread around the world from Guatemala to Indonesia), or to Indonesians about the million people who were slaughtered by the pro-American incoming regime of Suharto, or the Cambodians whose families were being wiped out by the Pol Pot regime, which was, at the same time, being rigorously backed up by the Reagan Administration, and you'll get a different picture of the United States out in the world. The Swedes admitted nearly 9,000 Iraqi refugees in 2006 … the United States admitted 63. Denmark is about to become part of the coalition of the unwilling and will withdraw its troops from Iraq soon. The evacuation flights for Iraqis who've worked with the Danes in any capacity at all, together with their families, have just finished leaving Basra. It's a bit telling, isn't it, that Denmark, quite rightly, sees that she has a responsibility for people who've helped the Danes … and that leaving them under the 'protection' of the US-backed Iraqi authorities is tantamount to a death sentence. In other words, the US, seen from within the US, is the best, most just, most benevolent and most enlightened country in the world. About the only country I've visited or lived and worked in that *doesn't* say that about itself is Kuwait (so far). The US, seen from the outside, has its good aspects and its bad. One record Americans hold (for me, anyway) is in self-delusion (perhaps jointly with Italy!). One of the delusions is that the US is actually working for the good of people in other countries. Individual Americans might be doing that (as individual Russians, Chinese, Swedes, Brits, etc are), but it'd be hard to maintain the claim that the US, as a country, is.

Terry, thanks for posting - I sympathise greatly with your situation. At the risk of having you feel even worse, let me tell you and other readers/posters what the situation is here in Sweden. I pay 32% of my gross salary in tax - and that covers both national and local taxes. My employer pays another slice in payroll taxes and social welfare taxes. Living costs, like rent, typically amount 30% of your after-tax salary. If you are ill, you have to pay a fee of about $20 (the exact sum varies from county to county) as a one-off registration fee, and after that basic treatment is without charge. If you are referred to a specialist you'll have to pay another fee (about $30 in the place I live) the first time you go to see her or him. After that all treatment is without charge. If you are often ill, or have a chronic condition, you'll find that there's a cap of about $250 per annum on these one-off fees. Once you've paid that amount, all further visits are without charge that year. (I'm trying to avoid the word 'free' scrupulously, because of course we're paying, it's just that we pay collectively, rather than individually). The same applies to medicines: once you've paid about $250 in any one year, you don't pay any more. My wife's undergoing desensitisation treatment for her allergies, which involves a series of injections over a three-year period, and $500 per year is the most we'll ever have to pay for it. There's a guarantee system in place too. You have the right to see a general doctor at the local clinic the same day you report that you're ill (there's a phone in system which involves you talking first to a nurse, and that nurse might refer you to a district nurse before you see a doctor). You have the right to a referral to a specialist within one month, and treatment must start within three months. If your county can't meet this guarantee, you have the right to find one that can, or even to seek treatment abroad - at the state's expense. It goes without saying that calling an ambulance is without charge, and they'll never ask you for a credit card, or anything like that! Some places have air ambulances, but our county prefers well-equipped road vehicles (apparently helicopters can't take the kind of heart resuscitation equipment ambulances can, and they often can't fly in weather conditions which allow ordinary ambulances to travel in). There are also some other neat collective practices, such as the Lex Maria (a law which obliges medical practitioners to report cases of mistreatment) and Lex Sara (which obliges convalescence centres, etc to report bad conditions, ill-treatment, etc). These are seen as very useful laws, since they take away some of the blame, and enable the system to concentrate on putting things right. Another interesting law is the one which requires the state monopoly pharmacies to automatically substitute a cheaper generic drug, whenever a doctor prescribes a more expensive brand-name (assuming that the generic does the same job). You can visit a web site (http://www.fass.se - if you understand Swedish!) which explains what the active ingredients of any medicine you're prescribed are, what side effects they have, etc. I remember once in Turkey being given something for a runny nose … and finding out from FASS that it was actually a preparation to arrest potentially fatal allergic reactions - it'd certainly stop the snot! Our new conservative government would love to screw this system up … but it'd be political suicide! What they are doing is relaxing the controls on immigration for people who want to come to work here. You used to have to have a job offer before you could get a work permit (if you weren't an EU citizen). The new system allows people from outside the EU to come here to look for work. If Terry could get a job here, she'd be eligible for the benefits too (Sweden doesn't make any distinction between nationals and people like me with work permits)! You'd be OK as an EU citizen too …

Terry, thanks for posting - I sympathise greatly with your situation. At the risk of having you feel even worse, let me tell you and other readers/posters what the situation is here in Sweden. I pay 32% of my gross salary in tax - and that covers both national and local taxes. My employer pays another slice in payroll taxes and social welfare taxes. Living costs, like rent, typically amount 30% of your after-tax salary. If you are ill, you have to pay a fee of about $20 (the exact sum varies from county to county) as a one-off registration fee, and after that basic treatment is without charge. If you are referred to a specialist you'll have to pay another fee (about $30 in the place I live) the first time you go to see her or him. After that all treatment is without charge. If you are often ill, or have a chronic condition, you'll find that there's a cap of about $250 per annum on these one-off fees. Once you've paid that amount, all further visits are without charge that year. (I'm trying to avoid the word 'free' scrupulously, because of course we're paying, it's just that we pay collectively, rather than individually). The same applies to medicines: once you've paid about $250 in any one year, you don't pay any more. My wife's undergoing desensitisation treatment for her allergies, which involves a series of injections over a three-year period, and $500 per year is the most we'll ever have to pay for it. There's a guarantee system in place too. You have the right to see a general doctor at the local clinic the same day you report that you're ill (there's a phone in system which involves you talking first to a nurse, and that nurse might refer you to a district nurse before you see a doctor). You have the right to a referral to a specialist within one month, and treatment must start within three months. If your county can't meet this guarantee, you have the right to find one that can, or even to seek treatment abroad - at the state's expense. It goes without saying that calling an ambulance is without charge, and they'll never ask you for a credit card, or anything like that! Some places have air ambulances, but our county prefers well-equipped road vehicles (apparently helicopters can't take the kind of heart resuscitation equipment ambulances can, and they often can't fly in weather conditions which allow ordinary ambulances to travel in). There are also some other neat collective practices, such as the Lex Maria (a law which obliges medical practitioners to report cases of mistreatment) and Lex Sara (which obliges convalescence centres, etc to report bad conditions, ill-treatment, etc). These are seen as very useful laws, since they take away some of the blame, and enable the system to concentrate on putting things right. Another interesting law is the one which requires the state monopoly pharmacies to automatically substitute a cheaper generic drug, whenever a doctor prescribes a more expensive brand-name (assuming that the generic does the same job). You can visit a web site (http://www.fass.se - if you understand Swedish!) which explains what the active ingredients of any medicine you're prescribed are, what side effects they have, etc. I remember once in Turkey being given something for a runny nose … and finding out from FASS that it was actually a preparation to arrest potentially fatal allergic reactions - it'd certainly stop the snot! Our new conservative government would love to screw this system up … but it'd be political suicide! What they are doing is relaxing the controls on immigration for people who want to come to work here. You used to have to have a job offer before you could get a work permit (if you weren't an EU citizen). The new system allows people from outside the EU to come here to look for work. If Terry could get a job here, she'd be eligible for the benefits too (Sweden doesn't make any distinction between nationals and people like me with work permits)! You'd be OK as an EU citizen too …

We've now taken possession of our two islands in Second Life (as of Friday). They're called Kamimo Islands (after Kalmar-Missouri-Molde). One of them is going to be under Kalmar's general management and the other will be Virtual Montmartre, a copy of the Montmartre area of Paris at the beginning of the Jazz Age in Europe (around 1920 - Josephine Baker and all that). Right now there isn't much to see, but we'll get going for real in September. The first course we run from Kalmar will probably be Social English for Doctoral Students. The basic idea is that Scandinavians and Balts tend to be a little shy when expressing themselves in English, and so often fail to 'push themselves forward' at international conferences and the like. The result is that people in the international research community tend not to rate them so highly, invite them on to research teams, etc. The idea is to expose some doctoral students to the kind of social situations in English that they might have to cope with at an international conference, such as rivals wanting to take over the question session after a presentation, introducing your research briefly and in everyday language to someone around a coffee table, etc. The students will then receive instant feedback from teachers. We've got three Swedes (two specialists in Pedagogics and a Physicist), two Norwegians and a Chinese (the last three all into Logistics) at the moment. We'll probably be joined by a couple of Estonian engineering students. Around 8 participants is about right for a pilot course. The teaching resources will come from Missouri, Kalmar and the north of Sweden, with the research and evaluation being carried out by our colleagues in Norway. To me, as course coordinator and principal teacher on the course, it looks like a good mix! We're starting on September 19th with a Marratech meeting, and then going on with four SL sessions, each with a different theme. The course will round off with another Marratech meeting. I'll keep you all posted about how it goes.

Just a small addition to Mark Stapleton's point about the nuances of the anti-apartheid movement … The name of the UNITA movement in Angola means 'the union for the total independence of Angola', which sounds like a very creditable aim. UNITA was, however, strongly supported by the Portuguese colonial authorities, the white South Africans and the Reagan administration as a counter-weight to the MPLA (who were and are in power in Angola). However, what 'total' meant for UNITA was 'no whites', since the MPLA had been quite successful in persuading some skilled 'ex-Portuguese' people to remain in Angola and take up Angolan citizenship. One of the rather surreal experiences I had when I was on the way to Luanda was seeing a party of white nuns going through the 'Angolan passports' gate in the Arrival hall at Luanda airport. Angola's population is largely split between two large language groups, and the strategy of the colonial authorities and the South Africans was to encourage friction between the two groups. Rather, I think, like the way that Israel encourages friction between groups of people who oppose its policies. When it comes to a boycott, the EU doesn't even have to go that far. A simple enforcement of the current terms of the trade agreement between the EU and Israel, for example, to ensure that goods from the occupied areas aren't given the same favourable customs tariffs as goods from Israel 'proper' would put an enormous amount of pressure on the Israeli economy. In other words, start applying the rules, rulings and agreements that are already there … there are one or two UN resolutions which have yet to be complied with, I believe.

My sisters were going to a comprehensive school in Harrow at the same time as I was teaching in a Technical High School (the 'middle' of the tripartite system). They were able to choose between an additional 25 subjects over and above the ones on offer at the school I worked at. Some of these were like Photography, but most of them were things like Advanced Statistics for everyone studying A Level Maths. If you look at selective schools as places where pupils are educated, then they do a pretty poor job, given the resources showered on them. If, on the other hand, you see them as a way of providing a narrow section of the population with social contacts useful later in life, then they're doing their job. The problem is that most sensible societies want the former from their school system, rather than the latter … which is why we're choosing to put our children through the Swedish, rather than the British educational system.

I have to agree with Vladimir … I'm just preparing the autumn round of ICT-based distance courses, and it's amazing what we now take for granted that was once technologically very advanced. Nowadays, for example, students take to desktop video like ducks to water, and podcasting is something they just take for granted. It's meant a big change in my way of working - I have to get much more involved with the students as people these days. Just goes to show that ICT isn't *all* bad!

The friction between De Gaulle and Churchill was well known. Take a look at this BBC report from 2000: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/591468.stm Gen. Henri Giraud was the general the Americans preferred as leader of the Free French.

This is the AC2 diary extract: From Don Macfie’s Diary August 25, 1942 – This evening an aircraft (Sunderland) from 228 Squadron RAF crashed into a Scottish hillside with the Duke of Kent on board. All were killed with the exception of rear gunner Flt/Sgt Andy Jack. P/O Saunders the Navigator was with us in Debert NS. That is eight Debert boys lost since we came over in June. August 27 – We flew over to Invergordon today, taking the CO of 288 over to see about the return of the bodies from the crash. We went up Caledonia Canal and by Inverness. We flew up the valley between the mountains. It was really the nicest scenery I had ever seen. Note: some weeks later at Oban I was standing at a bar and noticed Andy Jack beside me. He was jut out of hospital minus most of his nose. I asked him what had happened. He leaned over and whispered, “I think the Duke was flying.” BTW, I'm not a historian in any sense of the word, so I hope I'm not irritating the *real* historians by dredging up stuff like this!

… and here's another result of that search (from http://www.airmuseum.ca/mag/0412.html) Dear John and Doreene Moyles, I have studied your website with much interest and, in particular, the April 2004 Newsletter entitled SHORT BURSTS. There is a letter from 'AC2 Don Macfie', who was stationed at RAF Oban in 1942, in which he quotes extracts from his 1942 diary concerning the crash of Sunderland W4026 on 25 August that year. I have been interested in this tragic event ever since first reading Sarah Bradford's outstanding biography of George VI some ten years ago. I was intrigued by the sentence on page 456: 'The King, for some reason, was not told of his brother's death until dinner that night.' During dinner, the King, who was at Balmoral with other members of the Royal Family, was asked to take a phone call from the Air Minister, Sir Archibald Sinclair. The Duchess of Gloucester, who died a fortnight ago, was present and recorded the event in her diary, which Ms Bradford quotes. I have no professional interest in this matter: I am a retired solicitor; formerly I was a partner in major British law firm (now Addleshaw Goddard.) My father, James Gowans, served in the RAF during the War; he gained his wings at the No1 British Flying Training School at Terrell, Texas. He sailed from Liverpool on New Year's Eve 1944 for Halifax, Nova Scotia and travelled on to Texas via Montreal and Chicago. Coincidentally, his mother's family came from Wick in Caithness, just a short distance to the north of Eagle's Rock where the Duke's plane crashed. My father now lives in Cyprus and is a regular visitor at RAF Akrotiri. My nephew, Neill Gowans, is a Flight Lieutenant currently based at RAF Brize Norton. I was brought up in Wales, and as a child in the early Sixties I vividly remember going on board one of the last Sunderlands - then a floating museum - at Pembroke Dock. Ever since, flying boats have fascinated me. Accordingly, when I came across Mr Macfie's letter on your website, I was amazed to read his diary entries for 25 and 27 August 1942 and his note of a meeting a short while later with the sole survivor of the crash, Andrew Jack. In all probability, Mr Macfie is one of the few people still alive who has any direct knowledge of the crash. For many years I have been trying to piece together the events surrounding the tragedy, and although I am convinced that human error was to blame - and not sabotage - and that the bizarre allegations that Rudolf Hess was on board are nonsense, I remain puzzled by the number of bodies recovered: the authorities stated that fifteen people were on the plane, and, before it was discovered on 26 August that Andrew Jack had survived, statements had been issued confirming that fifteen bodies had indeed been recovered at Eagle's Rock. Moreover, as stated in recent press reports, according to Jack's niece, Margaret Harris, Jack told his brother that there was an unauthorised person on the flight. I should greatly welcome the opportunity to put a few queries to Mr Macfie. Would it be possible for you to contact him and obtain his permission to give me his address, fax or e-mail details? I look forward to hearing from you, Yours sincerely, Glyn Gowans GLYN MACAULAY GOWANS S'HORT D'EN PAU, SEXTA VUELTA 6163, S'HORTA, 07669 MALLORCA, SPAIN

I came across this site when I Googled the serial number of the plane: http://www.ww2inthehighlands.co.uk/folders...erlandw4026.htm Interesting take on Andy Jack + some photos.

I'd just like to say that I'm finding this thread fascinating. Well done, John, for starting it …

One small point that's been bugging me is "hundred kroner" notes. 'Kroner' denotes the currencies of Iceland, Denmark and Norway, but not Sweden (where it'd be 'kronor'). This might be a British mistake, though. Denmark and Norway had to use German notes during the occupation, so hundred kroner notes wouldn't be valid there … A hundred kroner was a lot of money too - something like a month's wages at the time.

Sunderlands were only really allowed to land in sheltered waters. There's an interesting quote from the site below, which says "Like other flying boats, it could land and take-off only from sheltered coastal waters. From 1942 onwards, landings in open sea were expressly forbidden, except in special circumstances and with permission.": http://uboat.net/allies/aircraft/sunderland.htm Sunderlands did do search-and-rescue missions, and one once rescued over 30 seamen from a torpedoed merchantman, but it was risky for them to land on the open sea, since they'd have problems taking off again. You'll find a photograph of the interior of a Sunderland on the page above. If the British wanted to rendezvous with a U-boat at sea, an MTB or motor launch was probably a better bet. Take a look at these memoirs of a telegraphist on British MTBs operating in the North Sea between the coast of Britain and the coasts of occupied Europe from Norway down to France: http://www.smesh.co.uk/ml108/interest.htm

Good point. There are some investigative Swedish journalists, who've uncovered a whole lot of dirt on the secret services. One of them is Jan Guillou: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Guillou Unfortunately, not much of their work is available in English. Guillou has made a packet writing 'James Bond' type stories, where the main character is a left-wing secret service agent (!). Those books are full of digs at the incompetence and double-dealing of the Swedish secret service. Guillou writes a column in Aftonbladet twice a month, where he often brings up critical information … but only in Swedish.

Swedish governments are typically minority governments or coalitions, where the balance of voting at the election went 51%-49% between the blocs. However, until 1991 Swedish governments sat for 3-year terms, so a government was always looking over its shoulder at the electorate. For most of the last 100 years, it was the Social Democrats who got to run things, but they were always careful to try to get the opposition parties to sign up to important pieces of legislation, such as social insurance laws and pension laws, so that they could be sure that there'd be some continuity in Swedish society. It worked very well … to the extent that the right-wing party had to change its name to 'The Moderates' just to have a chance of being elected. At the same time, there's been a series of oligarchies running Swedish industry, with very firm ties to the government in office (usually the Social Democrats). That's why Ericsson is such a big name in telecommunications - it was sweetheart deals with the Swedish governments in the 1930s and 1940s which enabled a little place like Sweden to create a world-leader in telecommunications. Or, at least, that's how they made their first thousand dollars! Swedish company law allows for a small shareholding to control a huge company, with what are called A and B shares. If you want to buy shares in, say, Ericsson, you can buy as many B shares as you like, but it's the A shares that give seats on the board, and they're not for sale! As regards your point b, I have a declaration of interest to make. I'm actually a member of the Social Democrats (sit on the ward committee of the Funkabo district of the Kalmar Social Democrats). At first sight it certainly looks the way you describe it … but the picture I see is very different. We're one ward in a city of only 60,000 people, but we've got more dues-paying members than New Labour in the city of Manchester in the UK! And by 'dues-paying members', I'm talking about people who get their paying-in slips personally in their hands from people who visit them in their homes - not block union members. In other words, yes, there are people who've held office in the Social Democrats who've provided this veneer, but the party as a whole is still a strong grass-roots party, where people expect to have their say and to have the policies they believe in carried out by their party in government. You might have heard of Employee Investment Funds which existed from the early 1980s until they were abolished by the 'Moderate' government just before they were kicked out of office in 1994. The right put the cash in those funds into a series of trusts which were given the task of investing in Swedish science and technology, and it's thanks to the money they'd collected (from a levy on company profits) that Sweden's so advanced when it comes to IT nowadays. If the Social Democrats were just the court jesters, then those funds would never have been created (the oligarchs hated having to invest money in funds for social investment). In fact, many leading Social Democrats were bitterly opposed to them. To sum up, Sweden's just another north-western European country which fights the same fights as everyone else. It's just that the right win less often here than they do in other countries, which is why Sweden's still one of the richest countries in the world … There are ups and downs (we're in one of the 'downs' at the moment), but what most people want is what most people everywhere want: prosperity based on fair treatment and social justice. Each time the right have gained power they've tried to break people of this desire … but so far they haven't succeeded.

One thing you have to bear in mind about Sweden is that significant portions of the population were pro-Nazi … right up until May 8th 1945 when they took the portraits of Hitler off the walls and became pro-American! The secret services had (and we suspect have) a lot of these unreconstructed Nazis in their ranks. One of the failures of the Social Democratic governments has been in confronting these people and flushing them out. During the war, the Swedish secret service was very pro-Nazi, turning the King of Norway back at the frontier, and handing lots of Jewish refugees back to the Gestapo. On the other hand, I've met several ex-soldiers who said that they had people in their units on the borders whose job it was to shoot the officers if the Germans invaded, because their captains and lieutenants would just go over to the German side. A lot of this goes back to pro-German feelings, which have been a significant influence on Swedish society since the mid-19th century. The fact that Bismarck turned first on Sweden's old enemy, Denmark, helped get this started. In many ways, traditional Swedish society was very Germanic - with the love of titles, social ranks, law and order, etc , etc. It was this deference which made the Social Democrats go along with things like the Institute for Racial Hygiene, which instigated the sterilization campaign on people seen as social deviants. The governments of the day just went along with whatever a Professor in white coat told them was 'scientifically proven'. Another strand is Social-Democratic anti-communism. The Social Democrats had several scares way back in the days around World War One, and had every reason to suspect after World War Two that the pro-Moscow Communists were a threat to them. This made them suckers for secret service campaigns against Communists, since the Social Democrats were competing for the same voters. The Communists still sit in Parliament in Sweden, and were an important support group for the last Social Democratic government (and probably for the next one too). It was this anti-communism which made Swedish governments so deferential to the Americans. Yes, I know all about the Vietnam War protests, but they've only just fished up the wreck of a Swedish spy plane which was spying on the Soviets for the Americans when it was shot down. Strange behaviour for a neutral power …

A bit of Swedish reaction … Anna Lindh was running the campaign in favour of Swedish entry into the euro zone when she was murdered. This was unpopular (the vote went against in the end), and it gave her a lot of publicity at the time. She didn't have any secret service bodyguards … but, on the other hand, the Swedish secret service must rank as one of the most incompetent in the world! They've got plenty of right-wingers in their ranks, but they're quite capable of screwing things up on their own. Anna Lindh's killer was also very mentally-unstable at the time, so there's quite a lot of credibility in the idea that he just happened to run into her in the NK department store and decided to murder her more or less on impulse (the evidence from the store's own surveillance cameras was used in court to great effect). As for Olof Palme, it also looks very likely that Christer Pettersson carried out that murder, probably on impulse. His trial was something of a farce … but Swedish courts are famed for screwing up even the simplest of cases. For example, if you and I murder someone, and then each of us blames the other one for the decisive blow (and we're careful to, say, stab the victim plenty of times, so that it's difficult to say which blow actually killed him or her), then we'll both be acquitted! The rules of evidence are a bit of a joke, and the panel of judges (who both decide on guilt or innocence and pass sentence) has a majority of laymen on it. Sweden's still a very open society. I've stood within yards of the previous Prime Minister, Göran Persson, on two occasions, when his bodyguards were somewhere else - and I don't even live in Stockholm. The Swedish secret service definitely had it in for Palme … but, once again, they're pretty incompetent, so you don't have to go looking for explanations of their many failures immediately after the event.

… and remember that there are a number of members who either are Swedish or speak Swedish …

I read an interesting account of English involvement in one of the Swedish-Danish wars in Peter Engqvist's book about Charles X. Charles had attacked Poland (with no greater motive than plunder, it would seem, although there was a dispute over the succession to the Swedish throne that had sputtered along for over 100 years). The invasion went well at first, but then ran into serious difficulties, so the Swedish Army retreated through northern Germany, ending up in southern Jutland at the end of 1657. At the beginning of 1658, Charles' troops made their famous (well, up here, at least) attack over the ice, when the whole army made their way over to the island that Copenhagen's on, over rapidly melting ice. They then laid seige to Copenhagen, which was supported by a combined Danish-Dutch fleet. Charles had already appealed for help from Oliver Cromwell to save him from the (Catholic) Poles, and an English fleet turned up off Copenhagen. However, when the English learned that the job they were now being asked to do was to attack the (Protestant) Danes and Dutch, they refused and withdrew. The Swedish seige of Copenhagen failed (with massive losses on the Swedish side), but the Treaty of Roskilde, which ended the war, gave the Swedes basically all the territory in southern Sweden which is now regarded as mainland Sweden. This, incidentally, more or less crippled Denmark as a potential power, since the territory lost was both very rich and constituted a large amount of the land mass of Denmark. Copenhagen had been more or less in the centre of the country, but now was on the periphery of it.

Churchill, for me, was a fairly typical conservative. For most of his life he was a reactionary, who fought to preserve things that shouldn't have been preserved, such as British domination of India, monarchies (hence his desire to overthrow the Bolshevik revolution and reinstate the Tsar, with the help of the British Expeditionary Force in Russia in 1919). When World War Two started, he was still regarded as an irresponsible agitator, but, as Orwell said in 'The Lion and the Unicorn', he understood that the war could not be won without fighting. He was able, during the war, to take a lot of hard decisions, of the kind that many other leaders had to take, such as not alerting Coventry to the raid which destroyed much of the town centre, in order to preserve what was seen as a greater secret, the breaking of the German Enigma codes. I'm reluctant to condemn him for that - I don't know how you're supposed to react in a situation where every alternative has dire or disgusting consequences. It was no surprise, however, that he lost the 1945 General Election massively. The British electorate were responding to Churchill, the politician, not Churchill, the war leader. What a shame that the incoming Labour government ultimately lost its nerve. On the way, though, it introduced much legislation which any government could feel proud of, such as the Town Planning Act, which gave local councils the power to start enforcing controls and standards on polluting industries and local landowners. I mention such an apparently 'trivial' law (rather than blockbusters, such as the National Health Service and the nationalisation of the railway system), because it's exactly the sort of 'minor' matter which conservatives in general look down on. In Beighton, outside Sheffield, though, one effect was to force the aristocratic Sitwell family to instal inside toilets in the tied cottages of their estate workers and pensioners. If you've ever had to go to the privy in the cold and dark, you'll understand what a boon it is to go to the loo indoors!

Jag känner att Inger Enkvist skjuter långt över målet. Det finns två fenomen jag märker när jag är ute i skolor (på besök hos lärarkandidater, och för att bedriva fortbildning av språklärare): att ingenting vasentligt har förändrats i kunskapsynen bland lärare sedan 50-talet; och att unga lärare har haft en så teoretisk högskoleutbildning att de saknar dem intellektuella verktyg för att förstå situationen och förändra den. Det ställs jättestora krav på dagens ungdom: bland dem förmågan att sitta passivt medan lärare delar ut papper som har kopierats om om igen sedan början på 80-talet! Naturligtvis är det lika svårt för dem att möta ett sådant krav som det var för deras föräldrar (som fick exakt samma blad från samma lärare för 20 år sedan!). Vi diskuterade, vi lärare i engelska på högskolenivå emellan, faktum att den faktiskta kompetensen bland unga studenter varierar sig så mycket, trots att studenterna har fått samma betyg från deras respektiva gymnasieskolor. Någon administratör påstod att flera betyg i skolan skulle lösa problemet … och möttes av ett hånskratt! Dessa studenter har redan haft nog av lätt mätbara svar att skriva - det är därför att de inte har utvecklat en riktig förståelse för språket. Lösningen ligger, tyvärr, i lärares händer … och för att börja måste de förstår att det är deras ålderdomliga metoder som behöver förändras.