Whenever I leave the country for a few weeks, something crazy happens to it. I still feel guilty about the Falklands War, which broke out during my sojourn in Kuala Lumpur as a consultant to the Malaysian Ministry of Health, which itself happened for a crazy reason. In such circumstances, we happy band of expatriates heard astonishing rumours of an inexplicable event back home. We scoureds the available media for news. In 1982, I had to rely upon the
New Straits Times, which reported that in my absence, Margaret Thatcher, with the entire Cabinet and Ministry of Defence too spineless to stop her, had declared war on Argentina; in evidence of which, a Royal Navy fleet was making its stately progress to the pointed end of South America. We could not believe what we were reading; but being away, we had missed the hysteria which must have made it seem rational to the stay-at-homes in England. Moral: you have to be there. Mind you, it was Margaret Thatcher who created the chain of events that put me in Kuala Lumpur in the first place. In one of her hissy fits she had decided to stop subsidies for foreign students at British universities. In revenge, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir decided to throw out all British consultants, of whom I was one. Or was I? I had an Australian passport, and had been working for an associate firm of our London-based consultancy in North Borneo, called Hanafiah, Raslan & Mohammed. Thus I had impeccable local credentials, and on this specious basis, was accepted as not British at all, but a
bumiputera, (“son of earth”), an indigenous citizen who was to be encouraged and raised up in accordance with Malaysia’s racially selective policies. So I was attached to an IT project run by a Canadian firm. As it happened they had no use for me, and accordingly gave me an air-conditioned office to myself and allowed me to work on anything I wished. So I drew diagrams and let the hours drag on till I could meet my girl-friend. I was just an item on the bill to the Ministry of Health, part of the price it paid for pursuing its politically-correct racist ideology. As I was saying, I leave the country for a few weeks and something crazy happens to it. This time, I have only to spend two weeks in Jamaica for a volcano in Iceland to isolate Europe from the world more totally than the submarines of both sides could achieve in the Second World War. But that’s old news that I’ve covered in previous dispatches. I’m talking now about something else. The other phenomenon I was powerless to prevent, on grounds of being out of the country at the time, was a quasi-coup, in which Nick Clegg, leader of the third and hitherto inconsequential party in British politics, suddenly became the acclaimed leader Most Likely to Succeed. This was, it seems, an effect of the televised debates in which the leaders of our three main political parties presented themselves for scrutiny by the electorate. We have a General Election coming up on Thursday. In the British system, you don’t vote for a Prime Minister, only your own geographical Member of Parliament, from which a party majority is calculated by the number of elected members. The Prime Minister is chosen by the winning party. However these televised debates, in imitation of those in the US, give the impression that we are about to elect our own President.
The parties have gone along with the illusion, and their leaders are assumed to personify their own party. As I understand it, Clegg was the darling (not to be confused with Alastair Darling, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer) on the paradoxical grounds that he talked
least like a politician. (A sort of Sarah Palin effect? He’s as handsome as she is pretty, I suppose.) Now I’m back, sanity is resuming. If he didn’t talk like a politician, then what did he talk like? A talk-show host? In the middle between the two main opponents, he kept squeaking against the making of “party political points”—as if he, as Prime Minister, would lead a grand Coalition, in a nation acting as one against the common enemy, a War against Dishonest Politicians and National Bankruptcy. As for me, I support one party with a deep and instinctive passion; and am delighted that its leader expresses my own views so closely, views I cannot express myself with much coherence. Dear reader, be thankful for small mercies! ------------------------ My illustrations show our new University, now complete and functioning, in the Town Centre. In the lower picture you can see it as the blue rectangle to the right of the Hospital where K works. Oh, we are glad to be back!
Whenever I leave the country for a few weeks, something crazy happens to it. I still feel guilty about the Falklands War, which broke out during my sojourn in Kuala Lumpur as a consultant to the Malaysian Ministry of Health, which itself happened for a crazy reason. In such circumstances, we happy band of expatriates heard astonishing rumours of an inexplicable event back home. We scoureds the available media for news. In 1982, I had to rely upon the New Straits Times, which reported that in my absence, Margaret Thatcher, with the entire Cabinet and Ministry of Defence too spineless to stop her, had declared war on Argentina; in evidence of which, a Royal Navy fleet was making its stately progress to the pointed end of South America. We could not believe what we were reading; but being away, we had missed the hysteria which must have made it seem rational to the stay-at-homes in England. Moral: you have to be there. Mind you, it was Margaret Thatcher who created the chain of events that put me in Kuala Lumpur in the first place. In one of her hissy fits she had decided to stop subsidies for foreign students at British universities. In revenge, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir decided to throw out all British consultants, of whom I was one. Or was I? I had an Australian passport, and had been working for an associate firm of our London-based consultancy in North Borneo, called Hanafiah, Raslan & Mohammed. Thus I had impeccable local credentials, and on this specious basis, was accepted as not British at all, but a bumiputera, (“son of earth”), an indigenous citizen who was to be encouraged and raised up in accordance with Malaysia’s racially selective policies. So I was attached to an IT project run by a Canadian firm. As it happened they had no use for me, and accordingly gave me an air-conditioned office to myself and allowed me to work on anything I wished. So I drew diagrams and let the hours drag on till I could meet my girl-friend. I was just an item on the bill to the Ministry of Health, part of the price it paid for pursuing its politically-correct racist ideology. As I was saying, I leave the country for a few weeks and something crazy happens to it. This time, I have only to spend two weeks in Jamaica for a volcano in Iceland to isolate Europe from the world more totally than the submarines of both sides could achieve in the Second World War. But that’s old news that I’ve covered in previous dispatches. I’m talking now about something else. The other phenomenon I was powerless to prevent, on grounds of being out of the country at the time, was a quasi-coup, in which Nick Clegg, leader of the third and hitherto inconsequential party in British politics, suddenly became the acclaimed leader Most Likely to Succeed. This was, it seems, an effect of the televised debates in which the leaders of our three main political parties presented themselves for scrutiny by the electorate. We have a General Election coming up on Thursday. In the British system, you don’t vote for a Prime Minister, only your own geographical Member of Parliament, from which a party majority is calculated by the number of elected members. The Prime Minister is chosen by the winning party. However these televised debates, in imitation of those in the US, give the impression that we are about to elect our own President. 
The parties have gone along with the illusion, and their leaders are assumed to personify their own party. As I understand it, Clegg was the darling (not to be confused with Alastair Darling, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer) on the paradoxical grounds that he talked least like a politician. (A sort of Sarah Palin effect? He’s as handsome as she is pretty, I suppose.) Now I’m back, sanity is resuming. If he didn’t talk like a politician, then what did he talk like? A talk-show host? In the middle between the two main opponents, he kept squeaking against the making of “party political points”—as if he, as Prime Minister, would lead a grand Coalition, in a nation acting as one against the common enemy, a War against Dishonest Politicians and National Bankruptcy. As for me, I support one party with a deep and instinctive passion; and am delighted that its leader expresses my own views so closely, views I cannot express myself with much coherence. Dear reader, be thankful for small mercies! ------------------------ My illustrations show our new University, now complete and functioning, in the Town Centre. In the lower picture you can see it as the blue rectangle to the right of the Hospital where K works. Oh, we are glad to be back!
