Widening The Gulf

So, let me se if I've correctly interpreted the stance of the British tabloids? It's morally repugnant for Iran to parade the fifteen captured British Navy personnel on television. And yet it's perfectly decent to splash pictures from that broadcast all over your front pages? Thus causing the families of the sailors, especially of Faye Turney who seems to be made the star of the show, considerably more distress?

Of course, the hypocrisies of the British media are being dwarfed by others. It's OK to patrol the waters of a country you illegally invaded on the whim of America – as long as you stay out of the waters of a country you're merely about to invade on the whim of America? Mohammed said women in public must cover their heads, but would have nothing to say about a woman being displayed as a trophy of a war that's not even started yet? It's a squalid affair and getting worst each day. And, whatever occurred in the Shatt al-Arab waterway last week, it should have been over by now. The diplomats ought to have sorted it out between themselves, quietly and behind the curtains. That's what they're there for. But Blair blundered in, strutting about in front of the EU leaders. So Ahmadinejad had to start blundering and strutting in response. Two weak men mainly held up by bluster, and they've quickly reduced it to the level of the playground. "They were in my waters." "No, they were in my waters" etc. And trapped in the middle are the only real innocents; because whichever bloody waters they were in, they would only have been there because they were sent.

However this mess resolves itself, Ahmadinejad is likely to regret it. It's unlikely to start a war on it's own. Britain isn't Israel. We don't care enough about our soldiers to fight for them. But it's got the blood of the tabloids up. They didn't care much hitherto about Iran building nuclear reactors or funding Hizbullah or any other tricky issues. Humiliating a young British woman though – that they can understand. Ahmadinejad is already being manoeuvred into the role of Brutal Arabian Dictator which was forcibly vacated by Saddam Hussein. That his name is hard to spell and even trickier to pun with could cause problems. The fact that he was actually elected could cause some qualms too, albeit rather less. That shouldn't stop the journalists, however. When they want to make someone a folk devil they usually get the job done. With the headline "Who do you think you are kidding Mr Ahmadinejad?" The Sun has already begun the Hitler comparisons.

Why should Ahmadinejad care about this? Because it will make the task of selling an Iranian war to the British public considerably easier. The one honest reason for invading Iraq, after all, was "Saddam is nasty." And a real tabloid clamour may even push a British government into attacking. Blair has always capitulated to the newspapers on all major issues sooner or later. David Cameron goes even further, making the improvement of his image his sole consistent policy. The capture of one boat won't start a war, but suddenly it feels like the build-up to one.

Ozymandias, King of Kings

I saw Rick Witter on Friday night. It was a bit dispiriting. You may recall Rick Witter: former schoolmate of mine, former lead singer of Shed Seven, former pop star. He wasn't on stage when I saw him. He was just having a drink in the Punchbowl, a smart but not especially fashionable pub in York city centre. Nor did the place exactly erupt when he walked in. The only people who seemed to recognise him were me and my friend; and that's just because we went to school with him.

"He's keeping it real," my friend suggested. But I've never been in favour of celebrities doing this. Like royalty and football players, they have a template they should adhere to. When Witter goes out on a Friday night, he ought to step large. He should be sniffing coke in a London nightclub, berating his agent who's angling to book him a place on Celebrity Big Brother. Not having a drink in places like the Punchbowl in provincial little York, along with the rest of us tossers.

The more depressing thought is that maybe Witter has no choice nowadays. It's been a while since Shed Seven split up, I know, and his new band don't seem to be going anywhere. I'd always assumed, though, that he was still lit up by the half-glow of former celebrities, still getting a few invites and bookings. Maybe not. His life might have become an arc so perfect that even Hollywood screenwriters would reject it as unrealistic. And he's back precisely where he started, the point most of us never left anyway, wondering if his years of chart stardom were just a dream.

An Anti-Social Crime

The Guardian recently highlighted a new phenomenon on our streets, comical and disturbing in equal measure. The Mosquito, an ultrasonic device which apparently emits regular, high-pitched beeps only audible to the under-25's. It is designed to be fitted to shops and the like, and to make any loitering teenagers so annoyed that they will eventually skulk off. The aim is to stop them indulging in that act which has so blighted our cities – Hanging Around and Sometimes Swearing.

This is amusing because I can't imagine for a second that this dog-whistle-in-reverse can ever work. The human ear changes a little as we age, I know. But is there really a switch that suddenly flicks on one's 25th birthday preventing you hearing anything above a certain frequency? And even if the science holds, the effect surely won't be what is intended. If youths are ever annoyed by something, youths with enough time to identify the source and a propensity to petty vandalism – well, that object is going to become a lot of serrated metal and cut wires fairly soon. Besides, who's to say that teenagers will be repelled by repetitive beeps? This is, after all, the generation which rediscovered the joys of illegal raves. They just need to bring along a beatbox and the Mosquito will supply the soundtrack for their evenings.

More disturbing is the intention. Mosquitoes aren't burglar alarms. They aren't anything to do with crime prevention. They are designed to deny people access to areas which are supposedly open to the public. Not all people either – note the targeting, even if it doesn't work in practice. Mosquitoes are the next stage in an increasingly vicious campaign against youth. It's a war which has included Asbos – punishments which don't require convictions or juries or proof – and a Prime Minister talking about the handily nebulous idea of "anti-social behaviour." Now it's going to the next level. Excluding teenagers from the streets entirely, only one step away from blanket curfews.

The posters for Mosquitoes apparently show a hoodie screaming in pain. Of course they used this image. The hoodie, an object rivalled only in modern demonology by the burqa. (Why is our society so reassured by the sight of human hair anyway?) The icon of the "feral gangs," in the words of the Daily Mail, who have taken over the night time streets. Not by committing crimes all that often, you understand. But simply by the foul act of Hanging Around and Sometimes Swearing.

Moral panic towards the young is nothing new. Stanley Cohen coined the phrase in his analysis of the huge campaigns whipped up against tiny groups of mods and rockers in the 1950's. But it seems particularly intense at the moment, when hysteria is so fashionable but the choice of targets are so restricted. If journalists want to frighten their readers but don't want to seem like racists, they usually have to pick on teenagers.

Asked if they support devices like the Mosquito, people often cite their own nervousness towards groups of teenagers. They usually seem a little awkward saying this, however. There is some recognition that it's silly to be scared of undernourished youths in silly jumpers doing nothing more than HASS-ing. And it is irrational. It's a phobia and it can be beaten. The first step is to keep the Daily Mail and their ilk a safe distance away. Perhaps with some sort of ultrasonic device.

King Balthazar

Some hobbies are only ever interesting to their followers. Others occasionally throw up items of fascination for the rest of us. Birdwatching is a good example of the former. When someone remarks that they saw a grey-breasted winchat on Kirkham Ings I find myself, as PG Wodehouse used to say, waiting for the punchline. The twitcher's life, chasing after obscure dippers and plovers blown off course onto ghastly beaches on Teesside, can only be experienced from the inside. It's all just names and numbers to the rest of us. Especially as the birds concerned are usually just little brown tweeting things.

Genealogy is the same most of the time. I'm sure I would have loved to meet my great-great-great uncle, even if he had been a birdwatcher. But I'm not that interested in his life. He would have been a tailor or a minister because nearly everyone's was. Or a blacksmith or a farmer or so on. Taken as a mass, the facts of ordinary people can form social history. On an individual level there's some interesting stories to b found. But generally, families aren't enthralling. They drifted around the country getting on with things, occasionally reproducing and/or dying. Genealogy is the collection of names, knowledge for the sake of it.

Occasionally, though, surprising ancestors can be found. Like those of the magnificently named Balthazar Napoleon de Bourbon. Historians are now fairly sure that Balthazar would be heir to the throne of France, if only there was still a throne of France. Which is hinted at by his name but not his person – a very Indian looking Indian lawyer living in Bhopal. The link seems to come from a rather demented sixteenth century nephew of Henry IV who 'swashbuckled' – i.e. blundered – around the world and founded a long line of Indian Bourbons. Somehow they survived, too obscure for even Robespierre to track them down and eradicate them.

Balthazar himself doesn't seem too excited by the revelations. Not surprisingly given that a) the last proper King of France got decapitated and b) there's no money. "Bourbon on the rocks" he calls his family, which is quite a good joke for someone with royal blood. Though he's filled his house with French geegaws, he isn't given himself airs. Tess of the D'urbevilles' life was ruined by genealogy. The discovery of a distant connection to the local wealthy family filled her father with pretensions, starting the chain of events which eventually destroyed her. Any daughters of King Balthazar will probably escape the same fate.

The Man From Another Planet

I'm currently enjoying the second series of BBC1's light drama, Life On Mars. For those who don't know it, John Simm plays a Manchester cop catapulted, for reasons yet to be made clear, back to 1973. Most of the comedy comes from the conflict between Simm's modern methods and those of his old-fashioned new colleagues. It's a contrast of TV clichés really. Simm's careful, forensic approach to crime-solving would get him a role in CSI: Salford. The other coppers, beating up suspects before sinking ten pints in the local boozer, would just have to change their accents to walk straight into The Sweeney. Simm is keeping his origins secret, incidentally, explaining his unorthodox style by saying he comes from Hyde. This is presumably a regional joke which gets them roaring with mirth on the East Lancs Road. I don't get it, personally.

My main objection to the show, however, concerns the title. It's clever enough. The Brave Old World which Simm lands on is made to look so thuggish and unrefined that it does seem like another planet sometimes. David Bowie's song Life On Mars was also released in 1973. Another notable event that year was my birth. So I've got to accept that during my lifetime, every facet of society has changed almost beyond recognition? Nothing seems all that different, to be honest.

It's going to get worst too. The decade of my adolescence, the 1980's, is currently very recognisable. It's the era of choice for the retro-bars. This is actually quite fun; I can tell people that I hated leg warmers and the New Romantics at the time and hate them just as much now. But they're going to go out of fashion soon and stay out this time. The magazine editors will move on to the 1990's and start pretending they love ripped jeans and Britpop. And the whole of my childhood will sink into an incomprehensible murk, as distant from modern life as pantaloons, rationing or Glenn Miller.