Kate's Wedding, Egypt and Sally Bercow.....

Are you looking forward to Kate's wedding?  It's going to be a cracker isn't it?  Amazing hair, dress, guests, food and debauchery?!  No not THAT Kate, double yawn all the way to the Shires, Kate from Croydon of course.  The fabulous Kate Moss whose wedding the first weekend of July will be the one we are all waiting for.  Has Kate Moss lost it, people whisper?  Not at all.  She is a better mooded Madonna, a girl who has been around the block more times than the pizza delivery man and still she is the height of chic and affection in every woman's heart.  Who wouldn't pay to be a fly on the wall of whichever hotel suite she chooses, on the wedding night of KM, that is Kate Moss, rather than KM as in Middleton who would be rather more cucumber sandwiches than caviar licked off the body, anybody, ahem that was just the best man.  I have a sneaking feely that Mossy has actually curtailed her wild days and realises that the excesses shows too well on the face after the age of 35.  Quite frankly I wouldn't be surprised if she read a good book in bed, probably Keith Richards' autobiography with a ciggy and a cup of fresh peppermint tea, whilst everyone's imagination of her is far wilder than her public persona suggests.

I couldn't be less interested in the other Kate's wedding.  In fact, am going on holiday to Arabia during that time, taking advantage of the extra public holiday and unlikely that Al Jazeera will have anything other than a passing glimpse on the news on the fateful day, when I expect there will be more students protesting outside Westminster Abbey, Bob Crow will arrange a successful tube strike and Brian Haw will have the ring-side marquee on Parliament Square.  Doors to manual will do a roaring trade in selling bunting through the party planners website and everyone will be a winner.

Check out: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1353873/My-Big-Fat-Royal-Gypsy-Wedding-How-Kate-look-marrying-traveller-style.html as one who does not usually promote the musings of The Daily Mail, however, anyone familiar with the television programme, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, may well enjoy it.  As a woman with a penchant for non-showy dresses and make-up, it is unlikely that Kate Windsor will commission a fairytale castle wedding cake, her mother rather unfortunately, will not be wearing pink terry towelling slippers under her mother of the bride's outfit and the groom will hopefully have not learnt his chat-up lines from 'grabbing' as the programme showed young men doing to women they fancied at the party, to show them who was boss.  Who knows what happens behind closed livery doors however.

In the past century, Egypt has been the stage for many ideologies: liberal nationalism, “Arab socialism,” Islamism, Pan-Arabism. Anyone who has spent time in Cairo talking with the political opposition knows how fractured and repressed it has been. The city is thick with human-rights lawyers, political activists, and intellectuals who have been blacklisted, jailed, and tortured—and yet pockets of civil society have persisted.   No one can predict with confidence what might develop after Mubarak—if, in fact, his regime falls. One anxiety, particularly in the United States and in Israel, is that the Muslim Brotherhood, despite its lateness to the revolution, will find a way to power, drop any pretense of co-operation with secular liberal factions, and initiate a range of troubling policies, including an insistence on Islamic law and the abrogation of the long-standing peace treaty with Israel. Last Thursday, Mubarak played on this anxiety, telling ABC that all the disorder was the fault of the Muslim Brothers.

Barack Obama, who came to office not least because of his opposition to the war in Iraq, went to Cairo in 2009 intent on assuring the Muslim world of a new kind of policy: engagement without hegemony. “I know there has been controversy about the promotion of democracy in recent years, and much of this controversy is connected to the war in Iraq,” he said. “So let me be clear: no system of government can or should be imposed upon one nation by any other.”  So go on Obama, do you REALLY believe that?!

He continued, "That does not lessen my commitment . . . to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere".  Well COME ON then Barry, show the world why we voted for you instead of that nutter Palin and show your country's true negotiation skills rather than your weapons for a change.

We should not be too contemptuous towards Sally Bercow.  She looked far more attractive than other MP's wives wrapped in a sheet, even if she does have a strange fantasy about doing it within the sound of the bells of Big Ben, whatever floats your boat down the Thames for sure, at least you have the view dear. Quentin Letts, the Daily Mail's, ascerbic sketch writer, wrote, "The duties of hostess weigh heavily on 'Sally the Alley', as she was known in her days as a loose-knickered trollop". If you're drawing that kind of fire it calls for more than an ability to simply turn the other cheek, as Dan Hodges writes in this weeks New Statesman.  http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/dan-hodges/2011/02/sally-bercow-speaker-wife

A SWAG (speakers' wives & girlfriends) rather than a WAG.  Although, if she were a man we would say, 'What a Wag,' as in someone with an enormous amount of character, although slightly edgy and naughty, albeit someone we are sort of cringy about in the company of parents.  Good luck to Sally Bercow, let the old boys club rip a little at the seams, keep twittering and entertaining us, especially on Question Time and Sky News weekend newspaper reviews.  Westminster would be so much more dull without you.

Aside from above, 10 other things I read, did and encountered this week that may be of interest or may be you would prefer me to shut up and you can go back to reading your new Heat magazine:
1.  Not having enough time to see all the terrific films currently on at the cinemas, Biutiful or Never Let Me Go, why that would have to be both then;
2.  Why do all the SPACED out drivers come out on a Sunday?  surely EVERYONE can't be hungover and completely out of it?;
3.  Alternating between the new Adele - 21 and Tinie Tempah Disc-Overy albums on the i-Phone, surely an amazing pairing, just look what happend to Dizzee Rascal on Electric Proms, rapping with a full orchestra behind him, pure magical mad couplings;
4.  Gulping at the price I paid for the very SMALL bottle of Miller Harris un petit rien by Jane Birkin;
5.  Not being terribly inspired by any of the current exhibitions in London which is a first, usually see EVERYTHING big & small;
6.  As a nut, potato and alcohol allergy sufferer was fascinated to read this week's The New Yorker 'The Peanut Puzzle', are we indeed increasingly allergic as a problem that we've created through our diet and environment? http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/02/07/110207fa_fact_groopman;
7. Yoga this Tuesday or getting Sebag to sign new tome Jerusalem in Ken High Street, hmmmm;
8. Not being very upset that Andy Murray lost the final, THAT lime green shirt, you could tell it was going to be a disaster the moment you clamped eyes on him;
9. If I had to choose only one nation's food I could eat for the rest of my life, it would be Japanese;
10.  Weekend resting, the property world has gone crazy yet again, everything selling out and  population forecasts project an additional 7,000 people per annum moving into Central London between 2011 and 2020, now has never been a better time to buy, whatever the papers may say, they are not on the shop floor of the worlds most exciting 'market'.......