An amusing image
I haven't had any takers for my suggestion of a mass gloating session at Russell Square. I have however had an e-mail from Frode in Norway telling me of the time he went to Russell Square to cash a cheque about four months after the card room closed. At the reception, the doorman questioned him about his motives for visiting, demanding to know `How do we know you're not a gloater'?

Sadly, the story bears an uncanny resemblance to a scene in Blackadder when Lord Percy is given the task of delaying visitors to condemned prisoners. I am nevertheless tickled by the idea of the Russell Square reception desk having to weed out people whose sole intention is to gloat at the empty basement.

Does anyone fancy a gloat?
It's over nine months since the Russell Square casino closed its card room. While I accept the duty of companies to make unpopular business decisions for the sake of shareholder profits, I thought that the closure was a mistake. The reason is that I could not see anyone other than poker players wanting to spend their evenings in a dimly-lit, low-ceilinged basement full of machines. At least, not outside of Leicester Square.

I've always listened out for news of how the casino is faring. I'm delighted to report that most people tell me that the downstairs area is dead and that the casino is quiet mid-week, when it used at least to have some atmosphere due to the presence of the poker players. But I have not seen this for myself yet. I have been meaning to go back and have a gloat some time this year. Would anyone like to join me? We can have a few drinks in the bar then move downstairs to look at an empty room of shining machines. It will of course be compulsory to make tutting noises if we catch the eye of managers while we survey the wasteland and a few cries of 'this used to have fifty people on a Wednesday night' should accompany the ritual sighing ceremony. Then we shall head off to a nearby restaurant.

Any takers? Write to me at sleeplessyoung@aol.com about this or anything else I've written. I deliberately don't have a forum, but this doesn't mean that I don't want feedback.

A warning about a mind control cult.
It started with a strange phone call. I answered a call from a friend named JL. He began by telling me that I had always been a great friend to him, but that he hadn't always been sincere and straightforward with me. I laughed and said `Don't worry mate, I never thought for one second that you were'. I had no idea what he was getting at, but if was depressed, I wanted to lighten the atmosphere. He chuckled for a bit. Then he continued in the same miserable tone that he had started with by explaining that he was on a course and that in order to achieve the maximum benefit from it, students were expected to invite friends or family members to the final session. Would I like to come along?

I declined. I don't recall why I said no. I might have been busy. I might have been lazy. I might have been concerned that this could cost me money. I could hear that he was in a room with lots of other people making phone calls and this all seemed too much like telesales to me. What on earth was going on? He told me that the course he was taking was called the `Landmark Education Forum' and I resolved to find out a little about what he had become involved with.

I discovered a site called www.rickross.com. It's highly informative about groups using mind control methods. I didn't like the sound of what I read at all. For a start, Landmark was based on the ideas of a man named `Werner Erhard', the founder of `est' (Erhard Seminars Training: the use of small letters is to make it look like the Latin word for `it is'). People attending an `est' course were pressured into relinquishing their freedom. Grown adults were locked in rooms and told that they had to put up their hand to ask to go to the toilet. Some people used to wet themselves in their sessions.

JL told me that a friend of his called MK had introduced him to Landmark. I had met MK a few years before and found him very amusing and intelligent. A few months later, I saw MK and JL on a night out. MK started telling me a bit about Landmark. I wasn't interested. He was with a girl called `Cat' whom he'd met on a Landmark course. At one stage they discussed my personality using terminology I'd never heard before. I found it slightly creepy but I'm strong enough not to really care.

A few days later, MK called me at home. He tried to recruit me to come to a discussion about Landmark. He wasn't the funny witty person I met come to know on this call. It seemed utterly impersonal, like a business call. He made lots of claims about what it could do for me, but could not elaborate on specifics. Any question was answered with `You have to come to the Forum to understand'. At one stage he elaborated on a Landmark theory about pain. It made no sense to me at all. I resisted his invitation several times on the call and he still said that he would diarise to call me again about it in two weeks time.

After the call, I read some more about Landmark and wrote a long email to him in the form of a Word document. I must have had in mind that I would show it to others in the future, as a warning, because I wrote it in an essay style. I attach it below. Please feel free to show it to anyone you know who is approached about joining their courses. It is extremely expensive and all that any course teaches you is the need to attend another course in the future.

So why do people go? Because they are dazzled by the power of `Large Group Awareness Training' or LGAT for short. You don't need to go to many football matches to know how people can lose their minds in crowds. It could be regarded as a weakness in human nature but I think that evolution has equipped humans with this so that we can rally ourselves to confront common challenges more effectively. But it's dangerous. See the glee on the faces of the children who met Chairman Mao or Stalin. See the trance-like state of some of those who attended the Nuremburg rallies.

These intense emotions can be more powerful than some people experience in any other facet of their lives and when the rally is over, they want to revisit it as soon as possible. The following link covers it very well:

http://skepdic.com/lgsap.html

For a good laugh, visit: http://www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.html
And click the link marked `Werner goes reggae' under the photograph of the magazine cover. It plays a mixture of the teachings of the founder and the blissed-out bewilderment of his subjects set to reggae music. Utterly hilarious, as well as a warning of how easy it is to be swept up in this nonsense.

My letter to MK.
"Paradise Hyped"

You have approached me as an unpaid volunteer Landmark graduate, who is a friend of a friend. We have met three times. The first telephone-call that you ever made to me was to discuss Landmark. I spoke to you for twenty minutes. In that time I listened to what you had to say with as open a mind as is possible. You made great, yet vague claims for what Landmark could do for me. In this document I make valid and demonstrable claims about what it could do to me and what it has started to do to you. I preface these remarks by pointing out that I am aware that Landmark's founder was able to prove his innocence of the charges of child abuse and tax evasion that were levelled against him and also that he received financial compensation. I believe that he was innocent. However, what his creation now does is more serious than tax evasion and amounts to the abuse of adults.

From my examination of Landmark, I have established to my satisfaction that its methods of teaching its trainees represent an inappropriate approach to the task of personal development. Although I do not quite think that it qualifies as a cult, it is extremely close. The methods that it uses are in many cases identical to those used by proven cults and if it chooses to employ them, then you must accept that it will be considered a cult, `de facto' if not `de jure', by most neutral observers. You may be able to furnish me with some examples of graduates who have made beneficial changes to their lives. I believe that these are merely a side-effect of a treatment that is directed towards another purpose: to foster a dependency culture that is reinforced by group pressure and which requires its customers to revisit the group's forums and events in order to experience the `high'.

Let us examine some of Landmark's more unusual features:

1. It does not advertise.
2. It therefore recruits solely through its graduates and members.
3. Course members are strictly controlled in their bodily routine through sleep deprivation, control of diet and toilet functions. They are reverted to an infantile state, by methods such as being required to raise their hand to ask simple questions.
4. Course members attend 15-hour sessions with homework sessions added and cannot take notes.
5. Sundry matters: Tuition is provided in large groups, in featureless rooms with distractions removed. Capital letters are used throughout on all blackboards. Course leaders are confrontational and humourless. Questions are posed as statements in order to plant subliminal suggestions.

I can imagine that these factors alone could be very damaging to someone who has mental problems or is vulnerable in some other way. You did not ask whether I have any history of depression or mental instability. As it happens, I do not, but those who do will usually display no signs of it.

Doomed to succeed

In the conditions described above, it would scarcely be surprising if members did not report the `breakthroughs' that are promised. For a start, they are under immense pressure to do so. It is almost impossible for a human mind to resist 15 hours of intense pressure for three days. I do not have the arrogance to believe that I can stick my head in a lion's mouth and come out unscathed. It is simply facile to say that I should `come and see what it's about'. There is a joke that says you should try anything once, except for incest and Morris Dancing. To this list I would add Landmark Education forums.

It takes three days of captivity to mould a human mind into obedience. It is a simple task of mental manipulation. US Navy sailors were kidnapped by North Koreans in the late fifties and were briefly converted into avowed communists who hated the US. It's the technique that has the effect that you praise, not any inherent truth in the curriculum.

They refuse to answer your questions, but they incessantly ask questions of their own. I actually felt guilty for using the bathroom and I thought that the rooms were uncommonly warm.: Quote from attendee of Landmark.

"Dianetics Lite"

While it may differ from Scientology in the extent and scope of its mind control, there is much that makes it similar: notably the financial element. In the quest for further `highs', graduates often spend increasing sums of money to get closer to the bliss that they have been pledged. I can only say that it seems slightly less rapacious than Scientology.

"Free Will"

Landmark might respond to these remarks by saying that it offers people the chance to leave. I won't confront that head-on. I should instead point out that immense promises are made to those who reach the final day of three, by which point the inevitable personality change has been effected. It is therefore safe to offer people the chance to leave with a refund on the first day. Trainees will usually stay just a little longer to see what they can get out of it.

I had no intention of signing up for this class at this time, am normally a very strong person who enjoys debating things and to be honest I have no idea what came over me. I remember thinking that this is a bunch of crap, and reminding myself not to listen, then at one point I began to defend another person in the room who was trying to leave, but it seemed he didn't want to be rude.

The next thing I remember I was in the hall with one of the volunteers crying and telling my life story and how I felt that "The Forum" was a "cult" [sic], which is why I wasn't listening to what they were saying. - Quote from an `almost Forum attendee'.

"On the stage"

I believe you when you say that you do not receive any remuneration from Landmark. In fact, you never will. I have established through my research that only 400 people in the entire world are paid any money. It grows and flourishes because of its 7,500 unpaid volunteers. In any other organisation in the world, I would expect someone as clever as yourself you to advance. You are involved in the one place where you will never make money. In multi-level marketing, you are either `On the stage' or `The c**t'. The former makes the money, the latter attempts to make a living selling whatever product or service is involved. It's a gigantic con. Don't fool yourself that you will ever become one of the charmed 400.

The crucial criticism is that Landmark is not open about how its approach works. Whilst I understand that it does not want its ideas to be copied, there is something sinister about that.

"You've lost that thinking feeling"

I want to tell you in writing that your personality has been changed and from my unique perspective, it is not for the better. You may have had some unhappiness that caused you to seek a crutch. The time has come to throw it away before your character and powers of reason are further diminished. I know that you are now forming most of your friendships and personal relationships through Landmark. It will have a pernicious effect on your dealings with others. I watched you and Cat sitting on the sofa dissecting my personality with the use of insider jargon like `rackets' and `stories'. It only slightly bothered me at the time, but it was quite conspiratorial.

They have a "language" all their own where simple words have esoteric meanings. Other group participants become insider enlightened friends with whom feelings are shared and confidence is placed. The unenlightened masses are looked upon as somehow missing out on life's possibilities. It seems the highest compliment a committed participant can bestow is to get you to enroll in the Forum. The answer to all criticism is. "You don't understand " and "You have to attend the Forum so you can understand."

You attempted on the phone to explain the concept of past, present and future with respect to pain. The explanation you gave was barely cogent. That cannot be because you can't explain things well, after all you have an MBA and a career in management consultancy. It's because what you were trying to tell me was total bollocks.

Humans do develop methods to cope with things and need psychological defence mechanisms to retain stability. It is reckless to approach people with an approach that, you must admit, requires people to be `broken down' before they can be `rebuilt'. The danger exists that a fragile subject could remain broken and incapable of a return to normal life.

The pressure that Landmark applies will either force you to snap out of its spell or drive you into total dependence. Listening to you on the phone today was not like holding a normal conversation. There was clearly an agenda in your mind and any normal chatter between friendly acquaintances was evidently a distraction. It all sounded insincere. After I told you that I did not find anything about it interesting, you still made a diary note to contact me again a week later. If I said anything to suggest that I wanted this, then I retract it now.

"The university of life, the school of hard knocks and the kindergarten of having the crap kicked out of you".

I have learned many things through personal experience and learning in a non-captive group. I intend to continue that way. Landmark's growth illustrates something sad about the lack of preparation that most people possess for the hardships of life. Groups of people pay money to divulge their intimate problems with total strangers. This is utter madness.

In the end, it reminds me of the film `Fight Club', in which the insomniac hero visits different self-help groups to fill his nights. Eventually he becomes addicted to the intensity of the emotion and is only snapped out of it when he spots a woman who does the same thing. She acts as a reflection of his deception.

I have learned that the great revelation on the final day of the course is that `Life is meaningless'. I completely agree with that statement and have said so in those exact words since I was a teenager. I scarcely need three days to be told it. The real benefit of the revelation is squandered though, if you switch dependence on your own mental crutches for someone else's.

I recommend that you do some reading about techniques used by mind control cults. One very good source of material is www.rickross.com and I would direct you to www.rickross.com/groups/landmark.html

If you are starting to fell unsettled by what I have written, then Good! You might start to feel the need or instinct to discuss this with another Landmark person in the hope that he will suck you back in. That ought to start the warning bells ringing!

If that does not convince you then I suggest that you spend 15 hours per day for three days locked up in the company of myself and other like-minded individuals. First lessons are free!

David Young


I Can Talk You Out Of This

Billboards
I went to Scotland for the weekend for a family gathering. I was a passenger rather than a driver for most of the weekend, so I noticed things that I usually wouldn't. Two roadside advertising campaigns stand out.

Three Non-Blondes. I must have seen this poster advertising a new BBC comedy programme about 100 times this weekend. I shudder to think what the BBC has paid for so many billboards (both in Glasgow and London). What shocks me is that the programme being advertised is to be broadcast on BBC3.

For those outside the UK, I should explain that this means that only people who have invested in satellite, cable or digital-boxes will be able to see it. As the majority of UK households don't have these, it means that the corporation has spent a fortune advertising something that most people won't see. The choice of programme is bold too. BBC comedy has been pretty poor for years now. There are several fine satirical programmes, but situation comedy is in a parlous state. For the corporation to spend so much money to advertise its weakest offering is reckless. I have no idea how funny the show will be, as I don't have digital, but `new' comedy from the BBC isn't going to persuade me to invest money to get it.

The Alpha Course. Almost every church I drove past is carrying an advertisement for `The Alpha Course'. It's billed as a chance to talk about the meaning of life, but its real motive is to make people go to church. Attendance has been falling for years and this seems to puzzle church leaders. I'm tempted to explain to them that it's the non-existence of the underlying deity that is the problem, but they prefer to pursue the angle that poor presentation skills are to blame and have tried a marketing-based approach.

A friend of mine knows a woman who went on the course and her reaction to meeting her afterwards was to wonder `Has something eaten her brain?' I can't believe that much dissent is tolerated. I hope they don't screw up the lives of too many vulnerable people. Imagine the damage that could be inflicted by an evangelical who believes in demonic possession when confronted by someone with an undiagnosed mental illness.

The explanation for falling attendance is easier to express in terms of rising prosperity. Christianity has a strong appeal to those whose lives are miserable. The prospect of a better life in the next world is its strongest card. The advice to give away ones wealth to the poor is cost-free to those who have nothing to lose by it and something to gain.

But as living standards lives, the appeal lessens. Is it a coincidence that I see lots of churches in poor places (the Dunstable Road outside Luton Casino springs to mind)? Is it a coincidence that the most religious states in the US are also the poorest? Church leaders should be praying for recession.

Effluence about affluence.
I've been on a diet for just over two weeks. I didn't mention it from the start, as I didn't want this to become like Bridget Jones' Diary. But I am pleased to report that I have lost 10 pounds. I need to lose the same again. It's been fairly easy, as I have been at home preparing my meals most of the time.

The diet I am following could roughly be described as `Atkins'. I cannot be 100 per cent sure, as I have never read the Atkins book, but I know that its essence is the restriction of carbohydrate. This inevitably means an increase in the proportion of one's nutrition that is composed of protein and fat. This worries many people, as they have been conditioned to think that `fat makes you fat'. I'm not convinced. I have been reading a book called `Protein Power' and it advances ideas that are close to those of the late Dr Atkins. That is to say, that the gain in weight observed in western nations is caused by excess carbohydrate consumption, which leads to the body producing more insulin, the result of which is that the body switches its metabolic action to fat storage.

This appears to be borne out by the observation that people in industrialised nations are eating less fat now than 30 years ago, yet obesity has become a far bigger problem in the mean time. To the authors of Protein Power, this is not a surprise. They observe that mankind only invented agriculture relatively recently - about 8,000 years ago. Before that, humans lived a hunter-gatherer lifestyle and that is the one that our bodies are still conditioned to support; living on meat, fish, nuts and some small amount of fruit, like berries. What is not natural therefore, is the large-scale growing of fields of rice, corn and wheat. It takes some getting used to as an idea, as from the modern day perspective, it's an ancient practice.

So I'm supposed to be a hunter-gatherer? For most of my life, I've been a gatherer-gatherer-gatherer (try to visualise Cookie Monster from Sesame Street). According to some, our hunter-gatherer ancestors were `The Original Affluent Society'. At least that's the view of `Eco Action' (www.eco-action.org). It's a site devoted to `direct action' with a focus on woolly-minded `knit your own yoghurt' philosophies.

In this section of the site:

http://www.eco-action.org/dt/affluent.html

the old hunter-gatherer society is praised as being affluent because "all the people's material wants were easily satisfied". It goes on to say "There are two possible courses to affluence ... producing much or desiring little". The first method is the foundation of economics, the study of how man uses his limited resources to satisfy his unlimited wants. So far, so good, but then the author dives off the deep end into the sort of mystical nonsense that would make Shirley Maclaine proud by introducing the "Zen road to affluence". The latter tells us that "human material wants are finite and few, and technical means unchanging but on the whole adequate".

It's a shock to learn that every child who convinces himself that he didn't really want the toy he didn't get for his birthday is actually a Zen philosopher in the making!

I suggest that you skim read the article and get a sense of the patronising `Eco tourist' view of the poorest in our world. It's all very well to suggest that such people can be happy by not pursuing material wealth, but there are two practical objections. The first is that a poor H-G society that never developed the wealth to create any self-defence force could in the past (and perhaps still now) fall victim to slavery. The second is that the generation of material wealth leads to a demand for better health-care to both extend the duration of life and improve its quality.

Beyond those practical points, I find the whole thing utterly condescending. "The Noble-Savage was living on renewable energy before we did. Isn't that splendid Tarquin? I must put that in my thesis."

Eco-warriors? ... Wankers.

War and Peace.
I rather hope that the recent story about Sir Paul McCartney is true. For those who don't know what I mean, I refer to the incident in which he is alleged to have become involved in a scuffle on Tower Bridge on a visit to see David Blaine.

As I teenager, the political issue that I felt about most strongly was nuclear deterrence. I hated the CND with a passion. I could not understand how people could be so breathtakingly naive as to think that destroying ones own weapons would lead to greater security, when the history of WW2 had shown that Britain's military weakness in the inter-war years had almost cost us the war. The loudest voice for disarmament in my school was a boy named Matthew Leigh. We argued about it many times. He also played chess for the school, as did I. One day, during a game, I said that if he sacrificed his strongest weapon by needlessly losing his queen, I would offer him a draw. He declined.

McCartney has spent much of his time since the end of the Beatles writing dismal songs about 'peace'. He did so in an era when the Soviet Union was like a prison to much of its population, was holding the citizens of Central Europe captive within its orbit and was fighting a bitter war in Afghanistan, while all the time pointing nuclear weapons at us. None of this provoked McCartney to say that Britain should retain the right to use nuclear force.

But when a photographer wanted to take his picture on a night out, he was goaded beyond endurance and, according to reports, pushed the photographer in the chest shoving him to the ground.

Perhaps he needs to see a threat to his freedom right in front of his eyes before he recognises that sometimes force must be used.

Visit to Oslo - part two (final)
The following day we went to the National Gallery. I'm not a big art fan but I enjoyed the visit because it wasn't very busy or too big. The most famous exhibit is `Skrik' known in English as `The Scream'. Looking at it I was reminded of the look on the face of a particular Vic regular when he is outdrawn. It's a joke that's been made before about him but I couldn't get it out of my head when I saw the real thing. Rodin's `The Thinker' was also there. It was much smaller than I expected and was in metal. For some reason I always thought that it was in stone.

The afternoon was spent on a cruise on the Oslofjord. Although it's called a fjord, it's not as dramatic as the real fjords of the western coast of the country. That will have to be another visit. On the subject of travel to Norway, I have to mention again that it's the most expensive place I have ever seen. Expect to pay over ?4 for a bottled beer minimum. The highlight for me was realising that a jug of Sangria was costing us ?30! You have been warned. One consequence I noticed, and this could just be because of where I was spending my time, was that I didn't see any displays of public drunkenness on the scale of what I've seen in Britain.

The last day was spent visiting the fortress. It has several things to see but the part I found most stimulating was the Resistance Museum, which is dedicated to telling the story of Norway's occupation by Nazi Germany 1940-45. It was the first time I had ever seen a picture of Quisling (pronounced `Kvisling') and you could even hear him announcing his assumption of power if you pressed a button. He looked quite a lot like Hitler, especially because in the pictures I saw, he had his hair cut and combed the same way. For those who don't know Norwegian 20th century history, Quisling was the head of the Norwegian Nazi Party when the Germans attacked and he was installed as leader for most of the war years. His name has become a byword for traitor. He was executed on the grounds of the fortress.

Sadly he wasn't the only one. Many captured resistance fighters died there too. Norway also had a small Jewish population of about 1,600 at the start of the war. Of that, around half were sent to concentration camps in mainland Europe and only two dozen survived.

It was time to head off to the airport after that where we should have caught our flight back. However we had reckoned without a major systems crash by BA that shut down its entire checking-in facilities. The result was that we were forced to stay a further night in an airport hotel. BA paid for it.

In all, I do recommend going to Oslo for a brief trip. If at all possible, stay with friends if you can because the cost of eating out (yes, food too is dear) is astronomic. The standard of living is high, people are friendly and it has lost of interesting history. If I had grown up in the North-east of England or Scotland (for more than five years) I might have gained more from the visit. The word for child `barn' looks suspiciously like the Scottish slang word `bairn' for child. I'm sure that Geordie dialect contains Scandinavian words too.

Visit to Oslo - part one
I returned from Oslo last weekend. It was a fun trip with my parents and sister. I would love to go there again, but sadly it's the most expensive place I have ever been to. I stayed in the centre of the city in a hotel opposite the national parliament. It's weird to be so close to it. I can't imagine staying in a hotel opposite the Houses of Parliament, but it was an introduction to the greater accessibility of Scandinavian politicians. As we now know, this has since had tragic consequences in the murder of Anna Lindh in Sweden.

On the first evening I met fellow poker player Frode Gjesdal. He's been to Britain many times and it was a pleasure to meet in his country for a change. We talked about the state of Norwegian politics (like you do). It's subject that I like to follow on the website that initially inspired me to create this site - Bjorn Staerk's Warblog: http://bearstrong.net/warblog. Staerk is younger than I, but his writing shows signs of incredible maturity and has far more perspective than that of most of the journalism that forms opinions in Europe.

The next day the family and I went on the underground to the hills above the city. We got a great view of Oslo but decided against walking down the hills to visit the huge Ski-jump that stands out on the skyline when you view the city from the south. We took the train back down as far as Vigeland Park. It's close to where Frode lives and he joined us again. The park is named after a sculptor and the park is filled with sculptures of the human form - naked in almost every case. I was initially reminded of the imagery of both the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, but this work showed far greater maturity. Instead of trying to propagandise for a totalitarian regime, the sculptures are devoted to showing people in various relationships or stages of their lives: children with parents, children with grandparents, lovers, girls playing with other girls, old women consoling other old women and so on.

The next day we took a boat out to a peninsular of the city called Bygdoy. It's the home of several museums. The first we visited was a folk museum that showed how Norwegians lived in past centuries. The thing that struck me most was a visit to a room in which people ate and slept in the 17th century. There was a fire in the middle and a small hole in the ceiling to allow smoke to leave. This was totally inadequate to ventilate the room and the result was that there was a low ceiling of smoke about nine feet in the air. I couldn't work out how people lived in these circumstances without getting serious carbon monoxide poisoning.

The Young family approach to visiting culture and museums is based on Steve Martin's LA Story, in which Martin goes around an art gallery on roller-skates, so we soon set off for the next museum in Bygdoy: the Viking Longboat museum. It's fairly self-explanatory what we saw there. There were three boats on show and various other artefacts. The boats were all restored. Their last usage had been as funeral boats for prominent people of the age who were buried with some of their possessions. It's known that these sea graves were looted later, so don't believe all those stuff about society getting more criminal! It's always been this way.

A short walk from there is the Kon-tiki museum, devoted to Thor Heyerdahl - a national hero who died last year. It was he who led a team that built a balsa wood raft to sail from Peru to the Polynesian Islands. His intention was to demonstrate that South Americans colonised the islands, not Asians. We were later told that DNA profiles have shown that he was right.

Close to there is a museum housing the `FRAM'. It's the boat in which Amundsen travelled to the South Pole. Before that, it had gone to the North Pole too, so it can truly be said that no boat has ever gone further north or further south. You can walk around the whole of it and see the cabins in which the crew lived for months at a time. Opposite there was the Maritime Museum, which again is fairly self-explanatory.

End of part one.

Two years on.


I've been meaning to write about my time in Oslo and am determined to do it, but as today is the two-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York, I thought I should write something about that instead. As many of you know, I am strongly supportive of the action that the US and its allies have taken since then: the removal of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein. I feel that these were good steps to take for our long-term security. Opinion surveys however show that a majority in Britain thinks that the world is a more dangerous place as a consequence of the `war on terror'. I believe that the majority has got this wrong.

Firstly there is the problem of what I call the `comparison with a vacuum' fallacy, a logical mistake in which people criticise the effects of doing something without considering the effects of NOT doing something. Specifically in this case, we have to consider that the September 11 hijackers took their action having seen the US do little after the 1st World Trade Centre bombing in 1993, the simultaneous 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania and the attack on the USS Cole. How can we say that the US actions make the world more dangerous when it was weakness and a lack of retaliatory action against Al-Qaeda that led to the attacks?

What, if anything, is astonishing is that there has been no major attack in the last two years apart from Bali, where the US can hardly be said to be in charge of security. American warnings to the Indonesian government were ignored. As things stand, many of the leaders of Al-Qaeda have now been captured or killed and it's now reduced to posting in tapes of `Osama' ranting. But the man himself never makes an appearance. Why is it? Surely his whole strategy would have been to have gone to Mecca during the Iraq campaign and try to destabilise Saudi Arabia when feelings were running high? This didn't happen and the lack of an attempt to ignite revolution there suggests to me that he's dead.

We were told that invasion and occupation would lead to `Hundreds' or according to some `Thousands' of new bin-Ladens. Has anyone found this bin-Laden factory? They seem to be keeping their product in deep storage. What is happening is that some young men, keen on fighting a holy war and spending eternity with 72 virgin sexual partners if they die, have entered Iraq to attack the US. It's better that they attack soldiers there than civilians here. This is what Bush meant by `Bring it on'.

There is no bright side to what happened two years ago, but it's some consolation that the measures being taken to prevent another outrage are the right ones.

I will come back to this subject again later this month when I will express my views about `root causes'.

Fjord Fiesta
I'm off to Oslo in Norway today for a four-day trip. I don't know whether I'll be able to write from there, so blogging will be light or non-existent. It's my first trip to any Scandinavian country and perhaps the furtherst north I'll ever go. Really looking forward to it.

Calling the top of the market.
My friend Dominic has developed a vital indicator of economic prosperity. It's the `David Young Durable Goods Orders Index'. Any time I spend money on something other than petrol or food, it's a clear sign of excessive consumer confidence and British borrowers should anticipate a rise in interest rates from the Bank of England to prevent further overheating.

We have an ongoing discussion about the future direction of UK house prices. We both believe that prices are headed for a fall in London. So sure is he that he has made a bet on it with Lee, a friend of ours who also lived with us in the past (the three of us are collectively known as WGC Research Associates). Lee is less convinced about a fall. The bet is for the highest stakes imaginable. The loser has to see Jimmy Tarbuck live (or the Krankies if they ever venture south of Hadrian's Wall).

A poker-playing friend who has made a lot of money from the game is buying a house in Buckinghamshire. Although he has plenty of free cash, he is taking a mortgage to pay for some of it. I asked him how he was getting a mortgage on the basis of being a professional poker player and he reminded me that he is technically a director of a company run by a relative. But he added, there was one mortgage company that he did tell he was a pro player and they were quite happy with it, but that was when he was only planning to borrow ?200,000.

Strange Customs
I have developed a reputation for speaking up in defence of the US and its international actions. I don't think that everything that the US has done is perfect, but I want to provide some balance to the 'alternative orthodox view', as I call it, that the US is a rogue state, which I find so lacking in perspective.

I've been to the US about seven times, but only twice in the last five years. My early visits were all extremely happy ones. I came back from my first vist in 1977 thinking how advanced the US was compared to Britain. I had never seen a digital clock before I went there! It was such an obvious idea to have numbers instead of a dial, yet I'd never seen one. And what's more, it was in a car!!!

Visiting MacDonalds was like travel to another galaxy back then when you were used to the boring, slow service of a Wimpy (what a terrible name) with food that was far worse. The way I felt then about the Big Mac is the way I now feel about fillet mignon. Breakfast TV was a real eye-opener. Kids were watching cartoons before they went to school! In every way, the US seemed light years ahead.

But I've had a couple of weird experiences with the US authorities. In the early 1990s I flew there alone to stay with friends and had a surreal moment at JFK Immigration. When it came my turn to be screened I was asked the usual questions and then the man said 'Right, Mr Young, you are wanted in five states for armed robbery.'

I was ever so slightly taken aback and expressed some surprise. He followed on to ask - "Did you come here in 1982?" I said no. He asked a few more questions. There was a pause after I had answered. He turned his computer screen to face me but I couldn't make out what it said. Eventually I said 'If that was me, do you think I would have come back?' He gave it some thought and shrugged. 'Okay', he said and let me through. It's so weird that I sometimes wonder whether I dreamt the whole thing.

That's not the only weird encounter I've had with US Immigration. In 1998 I flew to San Francisco to visit a friend who lived in the Bay Area. I had just resigned from a pointless sales job and was planning to either look for something else once I got back or to have another shot at playing poker. There was one internet related sales company that was potentially interested in me but I wasn't thinking of seeing them until I got back. The internet boom was at its peak in the US and the authorities were looking out for foreigners who might be planning to look for work. I was so naive then that I didn't know that I was in Silicon Valley. I always thought that Silicon Valley was further south, like Death Valley.

As I stood in the queue I rememeber thinking 'Please don't ask me what I do for a living'. When I got to the front of the line, the first question was 'What is your occupation?' I was struck dumb. I couldn't recall ever being asked this when I had held a job. I replied that I had just quit a sale job and would look for another one once I got back. He didn't seem impressed. 'That's not good', he said. I added that there was an internet company that was interested in me. He asked me where this company was. I said that it was in London. There was another long pause. I was getting worried that the holiday I had looked forward to for so long was about to go up in a puff of smoke and that I might get blackballed from entering the US for some time to come. So I added 'But it's not a problem as I've always made money from playing poker back home and I can do that whenever I want'.

He said 'Show me your poker face, Sir!'.

And I stood there motionless, with no expression for about ten seconds, though it seemed like an hour.

'I wouldn't know what you had' he said and he stamped my papers and let me through.

A journalist I admire
I am grateful to Allan 'the hat' Engel for introducing me to the writings of Mark Steyn, a Canadian journalist . Steyn writes for many newspapers in the English speaking world, as well as the Jerusalem Post. In addition to being funny, he brings up details that other journalists seem to miss. He's an outsider as far as journlists go, living in rural Quebec, far from the major metropoli of New York, Washington or London. It adds to his perspective, as he is able to eschew 'conventional wisdom'.

In one of his latest pieces, he points out something that has not been mentioned anywhere else that I know of - namely that Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envoy to Iraq who was killed along with others in the recent Baghdad bomb blast, was also the man credited with the success of establishing the independence of East Timor. While this was a humanitarian triumph, it did not endear him to Islamic fundamentalists, who saw it as the creation of a Christian enclave and therefore an assault on the world's most highly populated muslim nation: Indonesia. In fact, the smuggled-out tapes of 'Osama bin Laden' (I use quotes because I think they are fakes and that OBL has been dead for about 18 months) as well as remarks by the Bali bombers have stated that the creation of independent, democratic East Timor is one of their chief grievances.

The reason that this is important is that it undermines the general belief that giving the UN a greater role in Iraq would pacify the country and present a neutral face to Islamic fundamentalists. Given that it was a UN mandate that brought Israel into existence, I have always had doubts about this anyway, but I don't see this being mentioned anywhere.

I recommend that you read the piece. Click here!

His parting shot mentions something that I have never thought of before - that terrorists in the Middle East can watch CNN and BBC and will notice if our leaders wobble. Any suggestion that recent bombings should provoke a withdrawal will only encourage more.

During the war, many 'jihadi', young muslim men eager to risk death for their faith (not prompted by the belief that it will earn them endless pleasure with 72 virgins in heaven, no, no, not at all) flooded into Iraq to help their fellow Iraqi muslims defend Saddam against the West. They little expected that the Iraqi soldiers would have so little interest in putting up a serious fight and that they would be treated with disdain for their naivety by the ordinary people of the country. They cannot now get out of Iraq and have looked for a soft target to attack. The UN was one. It refused offers of US protection.

When scientists evaluate a theory, one of its chief tests is its ability to predict. Steyn's record in predicting the course of events in the Middle East is very strong. When others talked of a quagmire in the war (you remember that weekend, don't you?) he pointed out that it had already been won in the first few days. I give him tremendous respect because of his maverick methods. When he wanted to report on the situation in Iraq following the war, he flew to Jordan, hired a car, crossed the border with Iraq and drove around the country to see it for himself. He saw hospital wards that were no more stretched than any in the West, drank the water and spoke to the people. They were warm, friendly and appreciative of what the US had done in removing Saddam. He even drove to Tikrit, Hussein's home town!

Meanwhile the standard journlistic approach to reporting on Iraq is to check into the Palestine hotel in central Baghdad. Every Iraqi knows you are there and the place acts as a magnet for those with a sob story to tell (true or false). All those who lost their power and influence from the fall of the regime know where to stage their demonstrations to gain maximum effect.

His website is www.marksteyn.com and most of his written work is put there, shortly after it appears in print.

For his report on visiting Iraq click here.

For a follow-up piece, commenting on the extraordinary misery that our victory against a murdering tyrant has caused in the UK, click here.

Meanwhile, if you are looking for a real humanitarian catastrophe, consider France, where the recent heatwave has killed 10,000 people. I refer to Mark again. Click here.

You have to give the man credit.
I had a strange desire to do something out of character yesterday and decided to tidy up some of the paperwork in my room. In the course of this I took a closer look at my recent Visa bill statements. I had a surprise to read in my most recent statement that my credit limit had been increased without any request on my part. It seems to happen every six months or so. I won't say what my new limit is, for security reasons, but it's #1,500 higher than it was one month ago.

Quite how my bank has decided it's safe to do this, I don't know. The increase in my limit does not reflect in any way upon any improvement in my personal circumstances. By any objective measure, my credit rating should in fact be below that of the Polish Shipworkers Mothers' Knitting Circle and just slightly above the Saddam Hussein Christmas Party Fund. The only thing that I have done to 'prove' my credit-worthiness is to have borrowed within my limits before and never missed making a minimum repayment. That seems to be all that it takes.

The personal credit market seems like a timebomb waiting to blow. If you have ever watched daytime digital TV you will have noticed that many if not most of the adverts are for debt refinancing companies. Banks are throwing money at people. I know one poker player who was several thousand in debt a few years ago. He was nevertheless about #12,000 below his credit limit. He decided to borrow right up to the ceiling of what he was allowed and to 'spin it up' in the Victoria. His thinking was that it was a freeroll. If he won, then he could repay the debt and would have a bankroll to play professionally. If he lost it, he was going to 'knock' them. There was almost no downside as far as he was concerned. In the event, he won a large competition soon afterwards and is out of trouble. But the bank has no idea how close it came to losing its maximum exposure to him. I wonder how much his limit has gone up since.