A major event of international importance took place on Thursday night. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has fired the commander-in-chief of his armed forces, Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
The general’s crime was to have said openly that the terrible war that was tearing his country apart was now at a standstill. This is, of course, true. He is also in danger of becoming more popular than his political boss. This is also dangerous.
From this little-reported event we learned much more about the reality of this bottomless, stupid, unnecessary and cruel war than from most of the gushing reports about it. God willing this ends soon.
As the sound of slamming doors, fists hitting desks, and angry shouts no doubt echoed through the seat of power in kyiv, the world’s gaze turned to Washington DC and Moscow.
In the North American capital, a tragedy that had been evident for a long time reached a new and heartbreaking stage.
President Volodymyr Zelensky (left) shaking hands with Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhnyi.
President Joe Biden was humiliatingly freed from being prosecuted for mishandling official documents, because he is too old and confused. He is, one prosecutor said, “a well-intentioned old man with a bad memory.”
The President of the United States reveals it endlessly, mixing world leaders, countries and who knows what else.
I have always found Mr. Biden a likeable person, although I don’t have much of an opinion of his politics. It is painful for me to see his public decline, however dangerous it is to the world.
I am angry that his Democratic Party leaders are cynically trying to keep him on the ballot for the November presidential election.
How pathetic it is that one of the oldest and richest political movements in the world has no one else to pit against the almost equally alarming Donald Trump.
In Moscow, still magnificent in the snow, the creepy despot Vladimir Putin submitted to an interview by the brilliant but erratic broadcaster Tucker Carlson.
Putin is aging very much and increasingly looks like a pink sausage, like us old people do, with a swollen face and thinning hair. But he still has the wit about him.
In my opinion, officially interviewing a politician in power is the most useless form of journalism known to man.
Or the journalist colludes with the politician, who, through a prior agreement, exudes a “story” that can then appear on the front page or in the header of the television bulletin. Or there is some useless combat, in which nothing is given away.
In Putin’s case, he has the embarrassing habit of answering questions at length (most Western politicians avoid answering them).
This sort of thing is like being trapped in a prison cell with an obstinate and unpopular history professor (‘…and then, in 1386…’). You can not go. He wants to tell you everything (the mark of a bore) and won’t stop.
Poor Mr. Carlson fought so hard against the urge to yawn and was so intimidated that at times it seemed as if his brain were about to explode.
Two deep indentations appeared in the skin over the bridge of his nose as his eyes slid in and out of focus. I guess she still has a headache.
A woman holds a photograph of the former commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, during a rally in support of him on Independence Square in kyiv.
I knew how he felt. It reminded me of a dreadful interview with the future Sir Anthony Blair, which I was given while he was shadow home secretary. He was close to being physically painful.
When, many years later, I finally underwent a root canal, I remembered this encounter.
Dentistry was much more enjoyable and went by quicker. In a long, slow hour, he reluctantly told me something I didn’t know before: that his student rock band was called Ugly Rumors, my only little scoop.
But I still can’t see what was wrong with Mr. Carlson trying to get something. Several idiots suggested that Putin is like Hitler and interviewing him is treason.
What a bilge this is. The whole point of the Ukraine war is that Britain and the United States are too afraid to join hands directly.
We still have embassies in Moscow. Your employees are not traitors. Neither is the BBC’s superb reporter, Steve Rosenberg, who lives in Moscow, speaks excellent Russian and would no doubt be delighted to win an interview with Putin. But I doubt even he will get anywhere.
7mph sign on the access road to Oxford Academy in Littlemor. Photo credit: Peter Hitchens.
This is the strangest speed limit sign I’ve ever seen: it requires a maximum of 7 mph.
According to Oxford Academy, a secondary school in my hometown, this works by making drivers think.
I would add that it is also pretty close to the actual speed of traffic in that city, since the recent introduction of a new motorway plan. Well, it’s good for cyclists like me.
I won’t be watching Masters Of The Air, the new TV series about the American bombing of Germany in World War II.
I immensely admire the young people who undertook these terrifying missions. But I hate the glorification of the bombings, which were astonishingly ineffective, often very harsh on innocent civilians, and a huge waste of aircrew.
Subsequent surveys showed that bombing German cities cost less than three percent of German economic strength.
The entire bombing offensive, British and American, cost only 17 percent of Germany’s economic potential in 1944.
But politicians, ignorant and easily seduced by television and movies, still think bombings are a magic weapon and are surprised when they fail, as is happening now to the Houthis.
Callum Turner and Austin Butler in ‘Masters of the Air’
Conservatives missed a trick with Maggie’s miners
Just before Christmas 1984, at the height of the bitter and violent miners’ strike, Margaret Thatcher invited a group of hard-working miners to dinner, although they might not have come if they had known she would be there.
The pitmen had bravely resisted intimidation from striking supporters of Arthur Scargill. Each received a mysterious phone call.
A voice said: ‘Be in this direction at this time on this day.’ When one of them, Roland Taylor, responded that he would not go, they told him even more firmly that he should be there. “No, you’ll be there,” he declared. Then the person he called hung up.
He consulted with his fellow resistance members and they had all received the same call, so they went together, went down to London from Nottinghamshire by train and took taxis to the address.
This turned out to be the grand house of former Labor MP Sir Woodrow Wyatt (father of journalist Petronella). As they sat chatting, the door suddenly opened and in walked Mrs Thatcher and her husband Denis.
Roland, who is fiercely apolitical, says politics was not discussed. As he shook her hand, Roland recalls, “She looked like a porcelain doll, but she gave off a very strong aura of power and warned anyone, ‘Don’t mess with me.'”
Mrs Thatcher chatted calmly with the miners whose courage would lead to Scargill’s defeat. One of them addressed her as ‘Maggie’ and then became ashamed of her, but she insisted that everyone call her that.
Roland briefly discusses this event in the recent Channel 4 series.
For me there is something tragic about it. If he had been of the Conservative Party, he would have rewarded the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire miners who stood up to Scargill. His wells should still be open.