The EU criteria mean members must not export any weapons or equipment to be used for “internal repression or external aggression”.There it was With all the certainty the Foreign Office is capable of. No arms exports to Israel.”No, no, no!” the official whispered again, quite agitated. “I’ll explain it in detail later.”"This two-stage solution means what it says,” Mr Straw declared bravely. Of course, nothing means what it says.Outside the chamber, the official said you could export anything you liked as long as you were able to assume that it mightn’t be used for suppression or aggression.

Yes, grouse shooting, for instance.And those British chassis in the occupied territories? Had they actually been withdrawn? Er. No.But then, why had we thought that? Hadn’t the minister said the chassis had been withdrawn? Have we learnt nothing? Simoncarr75 hotmail
More from Simon Carr. Soho is London writ large. Whatever there is in London – excepting open spaces, and who cares about open spaces? – there is more of it in Soho.

I am tempted to say that “when a man is tired of Soho he is tired of life; for there is in Soho all that life can afford.” But that is at once to overstate and to understate the case All of life isn’t here, but then it isn’t meant to be. For Soho is a sort of joke on life, a very English tease, now seeming to give you all you want, now taking it all away again. Which may be why, in vexed middle age, I have decided to live here And why I love it

Soho is London writ large. And why I love it.
That I have set my new novel, Who’s Sorry Now?, in motion in this place, allowing it to propel my characters into more trouble than they can handle – more happiness and more unhappiness, because the one hangs on the other’s coat-tails in Soho, as surely as tears follow laughter – is a further proof of my affection. “Twilight agitates madmen,” wrote Charles Baudelaire, himself a great haunter of the inner city. By which I take him to mean that twilight also makes sane men mad. The Soho twilight, with its dulled-down allure, does damage to my characters’ minds, anyway.