2026

                 I don’t know, Dear Friends, whether this New Year started with a bang or a whimper. I am talking from both a geopolitical point of view and a personal one. I have long been of the view that politics and governance should be boring. I like to create my own excitement, I don’t need somebody else doing it for me. Belgium and Spain, at periods in their recent history, had spells where they managed without a government. In Belgium’s case this lasted for about 18 months. And yet, and yet, both these countries still exist.  I think I like my government to be tedious and nondescript. How much do I like it getting involved in foreign affairs? Well, I like it giving aid to poorer countries, I like it voicing and supporting a reasonable point of view that fits with humane norms. I do take an interest in history and geography. I have fallen off my goal of reading a biography of an American president every year. I will try to get back into it in 2026. There is an excellent argument for reading history through biography, I believe. I think it is fair to say that I am a fan of democracy as a way of life. I like the ability to have ideas and to express them with impunity. I think, Dear Reader, that most of us do. So, with my smattering of knowledge of the American Constitution, the ethical outline of rules for a democracy, I think of it as being one of the finest documents  created on how to rule. The Declaration of Arbroath and the Magna Carta are other paragons for a fairer world.

          So, Friends, 2026 started with the most powerful nation in the world barrelling off to Venezuela and carting their president and his Mrs away from home and hearth and into an American holding cell. So, by all accounts, Maduro was a brutal dictator and a drug dealer. If I am honest  I would be hooting and hollering with joy if the Americans had done this to Putin. But they didn’t because they couldn’t and they did because they could.  Sometimes American interference is welcome. Ask any European and they will tell you that the two world wars could not have been won without them. Also ask them about the importance of the Marshall Plan in saving Europe, particularly France, from communism. Ask my recently deceased relative about the sigh of relief he and his mates breathed when the atomic bomb ended the war in Japan. This hideous event stopped them having to be deployed to the Far East.  (The ethics of dropping the thing are unconscionable, I know, but I did like my 99 year old uncle, Jim Davidson, whose funeral is tomorrow. RIP Jim Davidson). But then look at the imposition of a Shah on Iran, the Vietnam War, the removal of Allende in Chile, the justification for the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, the return of the Taleban to Afghanistan and the implications of that on women’s equality. In their own country the witch-hunts of McCarthy, the failure to follow up effectively after the Civil War so that emancipation was slow to come and Jim Crow was there for years afterwards. To me, looking from afar (I have not been down to the US for over 25 years), the USA is a country with wonderful laws, an excellent balance between state and federal jurisdiction,  a tertiary education system which is responsible for innovation and innovators. It is brimful of kind, generous, welcoming people.  It is not perfect but it has checks and balances which many  countries do not have and, I suggest, envy. It is still a country where many people in the wider world would like to live.

         But as an immigrant to Canada, I do not understand why “Liberal” and “Communist” are pejorative terms in the country beneath us.  Communism, it is true, has not a good track record around the world but when it morphs into Scandinavian socialism it really is pretty impressive. Many experts now believe that Vietnam was more about a country wanting independence from imperialist masters than the domino theory of communism setting the casus belli of American intervention.  I do, I suppose, understand the antipathy towards taxes but, personally, I like living in a country that has them. What I object to often is how they are being spent.  By and large, I believe that taxes are a power for good. I also believe that a politician is elected to serve ALL of her country’s citizens not just those who voted for her.  Of course, criminals have to be brought to justice but the rest of us need to be given a chance to pursue and voice an idea even if that idea is likely to be rejected. Picking on people because of ethnicity, gender bias or sexual persuasion is truly asinine. It really means that one is not allowing certain groups of people to reach their full potential when their full potential is something which a country and the world needs.  I hope that the cure for cancer is discovered by a gay, African American woman who is partially indigenous and if they can add being transgendered to the mix so much the better.  I hope that that person is honoured to the highest level. I hope that she is modest, generous of her time and gives of her innovation without avarice.  I hope that they (singular) give as much attention to the homeless person in the street as she gives to her boss in the office. I hope they raise her children to be kind, aware and to place ‘pro bono publico’ as the most important of human qualities.

      Dear Friends, I have to be careful because I am rambling. Like you I could diatribe for hours about current leadership in our world.  It seems to be at the moment that leadership cares little for the grass roots, the plebeian masses, the great unwashed. It is inconsequential. It needs to understand that if it is going to create rough seas it also needs to understand how to calm them.  It doesn’t. It understands how to destroy but not how to create. It is good at riding roughshod over people but truly awful at raising them up. It has a master’s degree in cronyism, nepotism, cowardice, egotism, bullying and dumbness. There is a small part of me, a molecule, which feels sorry for a short inadequate Russian who thinks it is good to bring his dog to a meeting with the German Chancellor when he knows that she suffers from a canine phobia. Very childish. There is a scintilla of Davidson, a mere morsel, which feels sorry for a man who received only conditional love as a child and, as a result is vengeful and so inadequate that he always has to toot his own horn.  There is a nano second of sadness for a man who sees his state as only an homeland for Jews to the detriment of the Palestine people who have as much right to be there.  There is a passing thought for a man who thinks his country has the right to conscript the island of Taiwan into being part of his mainland, when actually cooperation on a peaceful level would benefit them both.

    So, Dear Reader, my hope for 2026 is that a pandemic of reasonableness, cooperation, kindness and thoughtful common sense breaks out. It is difficult to be a fence sitter at this time, trying to be impartial between the firefighter and the fire, really isn’t an option? I think, Friends, that more than ever people have to be engaged. We have to flood the world with kindness and acts of generosity . My hope is that, in the process, we speak truth to power and give power back to truth.

Burns Night approaches with the annual celebration of the poet’s birthday on the 25^th January. He said it best:-

                                                                             “Then let us pray that come it may

                                                                            As come it will for a’that,

                                                                             That sense and worth o’er a’ the earth

                                                                            Shall bear the gree an’ a’that*

                                                                               For a’that and a’that,

                                                                                 It’s comin’ yet for a’that

                                                                         That man tae man the warld o’er

                                                                          Shall brithers be for a’that.”

                       Thanks for reading.

*’Will win the prize’