Why my wife's PoW grandad wouldn't mark a minute's silence for the Japanese



No one with a shred of humanity can fail to be moved by some of the pictures coming out of Japan, whether an elderly woman being rescued from the rubble or frightened, bewildered schoolchildren waiting in vain for parents who will never return.

The devastation is on a biblical scale. Comparisons have been drawn with the dropping of the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Our natural inclination is to wonder how we can help. But besides sending specialist search teams and offering heartfelt sympathy, there is nothing we can do. Japan is an advanced, wealthy nation, which will recover and rebuild over time. It doesn’t need our money.

Brutal: The images from Japan might be horrific, but do they really warrant such highly publicised hand-wringing?

Despite filling our homes with Japanese electronics and our garages with cars made by Nissan and Toyota, despite the vivid images on TV and assorted social networks, it remains a faraway country of which we know little and understand less.

Anyone who has visited or worked in Japan will tell you it is like landing on another planet. Beyond the baseball caps and Western clothes, the Japanese people have a distinct culture of their own, which is entirely alien to our own values. They are militantly racist and in the past have been capable of great cruelty.

War crime: British soldiers suffered horrific deprivation at the hands of their Japanese captors during World War Two

It is wrong to visit the sins of previous generations on their modern descendants, although that doesn’t prevent the British Left constantly trying to make us feel guilty for centuries-old grievances, from the slave trade to the Irish potato famine.



Yet many surviving members of the Burma Star Association still harbour deep animosity to everyone and all things Japanese, 65 years after VJ Day.

They won’t want to be associated with the expressions of sympathy over the earthquake and tsunami. And who can blame them?

Like thousands of other British servicemen who were tortured in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, my wife’s late grandfather, Harold Tuck, would never have joined a minute’s silence for Japan.

Until the day he died, Harold would refuse to remove his shirt, not even on the beach on the hottest day of the year. The scars inflicted by his sadistic Japanese captors were too horrible to be exposed to the harsh light of day.

Were he alive today, he would have remained doggedly in his seat if requested to stand in silent tribute to the dead of Japan.

I often wonder what our fathers and grandfathers would have made of modern Britain’s ghastly cult of sentimentality and vicarious grief.

Ever since the hysteria surrounding the death of Lady Di, when half of the nation seemed to take leave of its senses, a section of the population seizes any excuse for a sobfest.

Showing ‘respect’ has become institutionalised. Before every one of the weekend’s Premier League football matches, for instance, fans were forced to stand and observe a minute’s silence for Japan. Why?

I have no objection to honouring the dead in public, if the occasion or sense of loss warrants it. At White Hart Lane we’ve recently said goodbye to some of the stars of Spurs’ double-winning side from the Sixties. There was genuine sadness over the loss of men many in the crowd had known personally.

But how many of the hundreds of thousands of supporters corralled into grieving for Japan could even point to that country on a map?

Like most monsters, the Premier League has a sickening streak of sentimentality. Barely a week passes without yet another minute’s silence before kick-off. Soon every club will have to employ professional mourners in black tailcoats and top hats to lead the teams out onto the pitch. Replica shirts will come complete with black arm bands.

There is nothing more meaningless than seeing highly-paid, precocious superstars linking arms and standing in silent tribute to victims of an earthquake on the other side of the world.

The spectacle of a giant furry mascot dressed as a chicken bowing his head in mourning is beyond preposterous. It is football’s equivalent of those teddy bears you see tied to railings at the scene of every road accident.

Of course, there is a commercial incentive here for the Premier League. No doubt the Japanese TV rights are up for renegotiation soon.

But why Japan and not, say, those massacred in Rwanda or starved to death by Mugabe in Zimbabwe? I don’t remember a minute’s silence for Haiti, although I may be mistaken. I’m sure we didn’t have a minute’s silence for our earthquake-hit Commonwealth cousins in Christchurch, New Zealand, before the Milan game. Maybe we did.

These days we’d have a minute’s silence if Harry Redknapp’s dog got run over.

I abhor the modern tendency to co-opt every tragedy in the world as an excuse for a self-indulgent display of cost-free compassion.

Sam Kirkpatrick, a reader from Stanwick, Northamptonshire, saw a woman taking part in a road race this weekend wearing a T-shirt imploring spectators to: ‘Pray for the Japanese people.’

The implication being: not just that she was advertising the fact that she is a caring soul, but if you don’t pray for Japan you must be a heartless bastard.

By all means pray for Japan, if you are so inclined, but do it privately.

Do you think the Japanese held a silent tribute for the victims of the London Transport bombings in 2005? Me neither. Meanwhile, they are getting on with the business of mourning their own dead and beginning the process of reconstruction. In Tokyo, life goes on pretty much normally.

Caroline Graham reported from the Japanese capital in the Mail on Sunday. A businessman told her that reports of panic and chaos were greatly exaggerated.

‘Here in Japan we are more like the British with their stiff upper lip.’

It only goes to show that the Japanese know as little about modern Britain as we know about them.

And bang goes 'the baby milk factory'



From the moment the dominoes started falling in the Middle East, no one has been quite sure how it will all end. My inclination has always been: badly.



The decision to protect the people of Libya from genocide is noble. But we know nothing about the rebels with whom we are siding. They could be a front for Islamist nutjobs, or a bunch of sadists just as bad as Gaddafi.



Danger zone: Allied air strikes on Libya are popular now, but could soon prompt a wave of anti-war protests

The path chosen by the Government is fraught with danger. No sooner had defence secretary Liam Fox announced that we were prepared to target Gaddafi himself than two warplanes were forced to turn back because of fears that civilians might get killed.



For now, the public mood is behind Cameron on humanitarian grounds and because we’d all like to see the end of the tyrant who armed the IRA, blew up the Pan Am plane over Lockerbie and was behind the murder of WPC Yvonne Fletcher on the streets of London.



But once the TV starts bringing us pictures of bombed ‘orphanages’ and burned-out ‘baby milk factories’ strewn with strategically placed CNN teddy bears, sentiment will change and the Not In My Name crowd will be dusting off their Stop The War placards and taking to Trafalgar Square.



The notoriously flaky Arab League has already gone wobbly and the UN is worse than useless, despite its recent resolution in favour of military action.



So, how will it all end? Not a clue. And neither have most of the so-called ‘experts’ on the 24-hour rolling news channels.



For that reason, until the fog of war lifts, this column will remain a no-fly zone.

The right way to behave? The Reverend Martin Wray was forced to resign after attending a 'Vicars and Tarts' party

A parish priest has been forced to resign after turning up at a ‘Vicars and Tarts’ party dressed as a prostitute.



The Rev Martin Wray, from South Shields, Tyne and Wear, swapped his dog collar for shiny gold tights, a little black dress, pink high heels, a pink necklace and a long black wig. Friends of Rev Wray, who married his gay partner Lee Lovely in a civil partnership ceremony last year, claim he is the victim of a ‘homophobic’ hate campaign.



But is dressing up as a tart really a way for a man of God to behave? Wouldn’t it have been easier to go as a vicar?



I can’t imagine the Imam from the local mosque going to a disco dressed as Lady Gaga.



Call me old-fashioned, but I prefer my vicars to look like Derek Nimmo, not Lily Savage.





Jet was a diamonds geezer



Overshadowed: Guitarist Jet Harris

It’s a shame the death from throat cancer of ex-Shadows bass guitarist Jet Harris has been overshadowed by an accusation that Cliff Richard failed to offer to help pay for specialist treatment for his former band member.



Only a couple of weeks ago, despite being seriously ill, Jet played a benefit concert which raised £1,700 for Help for Heroes. He was a seminal figure in the history of British rock ’n’ roll and an acknowledged influence on generations of guitarists who came later.



Jet’s genius and generosity should be his epitaph.

The real Beales

The 2012 Olympic site at Stratford has been given its own postcode: E20, previously accredited to the fictitious Walford in EastEnders.



I missed the row over Midsomer Murders, but it strikes me that the East End depicted in the BBC soap is as much of a Fantasy Island as DCI Barnaby’s bucolic beat.



If the Beeb wanted an authentic portrait of East End life, the Queen Vic would have been closed down years ago and turned into a squat for itinerant members of the Respect Party.



The Church Hall would now be a mosque, home to poppy-burning Bin Laden wannabes, and every female character would be forced to wear a burka.

