Is this child mine? None of your business!

In the UK it is now illegal to obtain DNA samples for paternity testing without the consent of both parents. In fact recent legislation has even made it a criminal offence to take a tissue sample that is either left by, or derived from an individual in order to perform a DNA test, unless that is the individual has given prior consent, or the test is undertaken for a medical or legal investigative purpose. In support of these new powers under the Human Tissue Act, UK Courts may now impose a maximum three-year prison sentence if anyone holds or tests DNA samples without lawful authority. At the same time as this Draconian defence of human liberty was enacted, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced his advocacy for DNA technology, suggesting that there should be no limits imposed upon the number of samples held within the national DNA database (taken of course without consent).

So exactly where do these DNA database samples come from? The Criminal Justice Act currently entitles police to take and keep DNA samples (presently 3.6 million DNA profiles are held on a central database) from anyone arrested for an imprisonable offence, irrespective of whether they are subsequently charged or found guilty. Already more than 140,000 of those UK citizens who have been arrested and released without charge or caution are the proud owners of a criminal DNA profile on the National database. Tony’s feelings on the matter are suitably philosophical and clear, “if this is helping us track down murderers, rapists...then go for it... if you've got the technology then it's vital to use that technology to track people down." When asked if there should be any restrictions on the size of the database, Tony replied: "The number on the database should be the maximum number you can get."

However, on the subject of British men trying to establish if they are the fathers of dependent children, whether it is in order to claim visitation rights, to avoid paying unnecessary maintenance, or simply to see if they are raising the product of someone else’s fun and games, Tony’s message is very different. Simply put, fathers who conduct covert paternity tests on their children will face prosecution under Government legislation. In 2002 the Human Genetics Commission recommended that the ‘theft’ of a person's DNA, including the clandestine removal of a child's hair or saliva, should be regarded as a criminal offence, even if it were taken from a comb or a plastic spoon.

Such a proposal emerged from anxieties that increasing numbers of fathers in the USA were exploiting the growth of DNA testing services advertised on the Internet to undertake clandestine paternity checks without the consent of either the children or their mother. Naturally there were one or two red faces when some men discovered that they had been toiling to raise the seed of other men. In some cases there are huge sums involved, as in the relatively recent case of Media Magnate Steve Bing, who was alleged to have fathered a child outside of wedlock with actress Elizabeth Hurley. Paternity was ultimately established, despite a ‘non-exclusive relationship’. Guilt aside, Liz certainly didn’t deny playing the field, and it is not difficult to understand the origins of Mr.Bing’s reasonable doubts. In another related high profile case, Californian billionaire and octogenarian Kirk Kerkorian, fought a recent claim from former wife and tennis player Lisa Bonder over claimed child maintenance payments of £223,000 a month for four-year-old Kira. An expensive pre-school education for sure, not to mention a flattering tribute to the enduring fertility of Mr. Kerkorian. Unfortunately for Mr.Steve Bing, he was again alleged to be the father when strands of dental floss in his trash can were found to contain DNA samples which matched those of Kira. Given Mr.Kerkorian’s ripe old age and the trash can evidence, it is not entirely difficult to understand Mr.Kerkorian’s doubts or desire to maintain the integrity of his golden estate of MGM studios and Vegas casinos.

Meanwhile, back in the UK of A, a Government code of conduct published last year contends that, in the case of children, the consent of both the mother and father should be obtained before samples may be taken for testing. It is interesting to note that the government’s benign protection of the DNA of mothers and their children is not extended to those who have been wrongfully arrested.

So why adopt such a ‘Janus’ policy towards the sanctity of an individual’s personal DNA? Perhaps the truth lies in a darker part of our primitive (primate) nature. All men are not born equal, nor are they endowed equally. Some men have multiple sexual partners (I sense that there are few disagreements on this issue from the gallery), and many of these are already married or publicly engaged. The solution for the sexually avaricious and dominant social ‘alpha’ male is no different to that of our primate ancestors (albeit more subtly enacted). Dominant males simply have ‘acquiesce’ more girlfriends when they are young, and when they are older these ‘additional lovers’ take the form of mistresses and daughters. Naturally, our true biological natures do not sit well with our monogamous Christian culture which preaches sexual abstinence before marriage, and forbids both adultery and bigamy (which is of course actually illegal). So herein lies the source of our deepest social malady: how to reconcile the dilemma of all our married men and our many unmarried mothers. The solution, until now, has been an age old remedy. Take a young man’s girlfriend as a mistress, give the young man a job in your capacity as a ‘father’ figure (pun intended), and hope that the love-struck youth doesn’t catch on.

Well this timeless strategy has worked its wonders throughout the courts of Western Europe for thousands of years, until that is of course the arrival of widespread and affordable DNA testing. Now those men who never quite managed to quash their uneasy feelings as to how their occasional protected sex or coitus interruptus resulted in their partner’s pregnancy can at last scratch that nagging doubt. Well, at least they could have until it was made illegal. After all, no woman in her right mind is going to give consent to have the paternity of her child(ren) laid bare, especially if she is harbouring a dark secret - 'I mean how could you, after all these years?!’

The modern world affords many opportunities for the unfaithful to practice their dark arts of deception, and of course ignorance is bliss. After all, men of power, responsibility and respectability will always crave their vices, and ‘when needs must the devil drives’. Infidelities are a privilege of rank, so long as they can be married off and raised under the distant gaze of a benefactor’s wry smile. This natural social order has doubtless ‘been going on for hundreds of years’, until that is the advent of the cold and exacting science of DNA technology.

So we now have the ultimate dilemma. Collect all DNA and revel in the mysteries of our ancestry and genetic lineage, or sweep our primate natures under the carpet and keep all DNA sequences within the authoritarian hands of those who apparently need to know. The truth would indeed be a revelation, especially if most families harbour a dark secret or two. The past hundred years have focused upon the rights of women: their right to vote, their right to work, their right to maternity leave, and their right to an abortion. Now perhaps it is time for the age of men’s rights: the right to father your own children, the right to refuse to pay to raise someone else’s, and the right to know the difference. After all, when a man marries a woman, doesn’t she enter into the contract by saying ‘I do’?


N.B. The author has recently been taking a break and can nervously and apprehensively inform both of his readers that he/she has not (yet) been apprehended as part of the recent wave of blogger arrests. The author is apparently a category B+ blog threat and is scheduled to be gassed next January.

Global Master of Accountancy Finals

Welcome to your Global Master of Accountancy Finals, your opportunity to make the world a richer place for yourselves and your paymasters (and hopefully for me too, your examiner)… The rules of this exam are simple, don’t rock the boat, do your job and, most importantly, apply due diligence with due discretion. Before the questions you will be provided with some light and digestible background information about one or two recent multi-national collapses. Following this you will be tested on your ability to clean up the mess.

Global Master of Accountancy Finals. Duration 3 hours. October, 2006.

Background Material

Read the following background passages carefully and take note of the technical errors that you are about to take on. Remember humans have a short memory, but can usually remember when a few $billions are misplaced. The golden rules are to draw out proceedings, bill for generous expenses, keep a poker face, and make sure that all money is properly ‘cleaned’ and accounted for at all times.

Andrew Fastow, former CFO of Enron, has just begun a six-year sentence for his role in the Texas energy firm’s little $30bn meltdown. This fiend and wholly guilty party has, regrettably, tried to implicate the two British Banks Barclays and RBS, claiming that these two noble British institutions did, in conjunction with Credit Suisse and Merrill Lynch, knowingly help to prop up Enron’s balance sheets. This creates a itsy bitsy little problem for your two banks as, if true, it might make your two banking clients liable for some $30 billion in losses being actively sought by Enron’s shareholders. Lined up against you is attorney Bill Lerach, the biggest shark ever to assault the good name of our financial institutions. Unfortunately for your clients, Lerach has smelt blood in the water and is looking for a good bite of tuna steak.

According to Fastow and the prosecution, in late 1997 Enron’s executives discovered that an outside investor was going to quit their newly formed venture Joint Energy Development Incorporated, or JEDI for short (straight-up this was apparently in homage to Star Wars and in no way reflects upon the mental age of the Enron Executives or their lust for supreme mastery of the galaxy). This Joint Venture ‘generated’ 40% of Enron’s ‘profits’ in 1997 and allowed some $700m in debts to be dealt with in the ‘fullness of time’. Given that JEDI was a separate entity for purposes of your accounting, Enron did not have to mention the $700m in its published accounts, or the equivalent of one Imperial Star Destroyer.

As the rebel investor’s hasty exit would have forced Enron to write off these hard earned profits and to acknowledge its debts, a new alliance was formed with the help of Barclays and Arthur Andersen, Sith Lord and chief accountant to Enron. This new vehicle was called Chewco (no kidding), after the Star Wars big shaggy dog character Chewbacca (no really, I am not kidding here…).

Barclays apparently lent Chewco some $240m which allowed Enron to claim a new ‘outside’ investor and to improve its 1997 profits by around $45m while deferring the acknowledgement of some $700m in debt. However Lerach claims to have in his possession many internal Emails and documents relating to RBS’s dealings with Enron, including the purchase and sale of a failing Brazilian power plant for $84m, which Fastow allegedly described as “a piece of shit no-one would buy”. The sale of the power plant however generated some $84m in ‘fictitious’ income for Enron, whilst burying a further $200m in debt. Note that the prosecution is ignorant and fails to appreciate either the genius or financial mastery of creative accounting.

In further great error of judgment and in apparent fear of Lerach, several banks, including the Bank of America & Fleet National Bank, have lost their financial nerve (the term shredded is forbidden due to the illegality of such machines), and have agreed to pay Enron almost $20m to settle the MegaClaims lawsuit filed against no fewer than ten banks accused of negligence. Understandingly, the remaining MegaClaims defendants, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Barclays are holding out and have summoned their remaining droid armies for a last ditch defence (as $30bn is more than enough to pay for a brand new Death Star...)

In a related story, Mark Abide has become the fifth WorldCom accountant martyr to be suspended from practicing his noble art. The Securities and Exchange Commission has suspended him for engaging in ‘improper’ accounting activities, a popular euphemism for losing large quantities of someone else’s money. Other than ‘making improper accounting entries’ on behalf of WorldCom so as to conceal ‘improperly capitalized expenses’, and encouraging others to do the same, (No Fixed) Abode is accused of selling 6,728 of his shares in WorldCom stock during a subsequent investigation before their value was wiped out in market free-fall.

Questions.

Section A. MCQ. Please select one of the following options and ring the correct answer. Just one. There is no need for joined-up writing or automated Excel spread sheet files as these cannot be taken into the exam room with you. Tough I know, but at least you may file for generous luncheon expenses and bill your time for sitting this exam at $300 per hour, as clearly this time spent proving your value may be deemed a loss of earnings potential. You have three hours to answer the questions, but may invoice for all of them, even if, due to your outstanding efficiency and productivity, you finish the exam within a half an hour and head off to play golf.

Question 1. The investigation covering the collapse of the Bank of Oil Exporters International (BOEI), which resulted in the disappearance of some $7.1 billion of investors’ money (although the governments of Oman, UAE, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia have subsequently vowed to operate their piggy banks more stringently), has asked you to perform a full forensic audit of all BOEI accounts. This is potentially embarrassing as your company in fact audited the accounts prior to the collapse of BOEI.

Do you?
(A) Shred all remaining BOEI records in your office.
(B) Smile with relief and accept the afternoon's work.
(C) Agree, but demand full access to all of your records and file for generous expenses.

Question 2. The corporate energy giant Energon has suddenly filed for bankruptcy after three years of profits in excess of $6 billion due to a collapse in share price. You have been asked to produce a corporate balance sheet detailing all of Energon's assets. You discover that Energon's only actual assets are three high rise city center skyscrapers in Dallas, Manhattan and Chicago, fifty-nine luxury beach condos in tropical locations, and a disused gasoline station in Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Do you?
(A) Shrug your shoulders and call in the realtor (estate agent).
(B) Sell the real estate yourself for $3.4 billion and label it expenses.
(C) Declare the market's reaction to be premature and hysterical and refloat the Corporation with a couple of hotels thrown in.

Question 3. The global telecommunications giant Worldmobile.com has just collapsed following an accounting error amounting to over $4 billion of unrealised income. You have been asked to replace the existing auditors and produce an explanation for the discrepancy.

Do you?
(A) Go through the office drawers looking for the $4 billion in case someone mislaid it.
(B) File through all the accounts hoping for some missing 0's.
(C) Demonstrate your creative accountancy skills and claim that the revised figure failed to take into account third quarter projected growth in mobile phone usage.

Essay Question. World Corporation (WorldCon), which specifically operates franchises for oil exports from Colombia and operates clean coal-fired power plants in the States of California and New Jersey, has asked you to audit their annual returns following an investment in a new off-shore drilling enterprise in Colombia. This has led to a surge in annual net profits from $2.1 to $11.3 billion. The breakdown of the growth in annual figures is given below. Can you successfully account for the WC annual return?

Expenses incurred in entertaining Colombian officials is itemised at $100 million for the fiscal year 2001-2002. Costs of oil pipeline section shipment to and from Colombia (for internal cleaning) is itemised at $43 million, with $150 million handling charges. The government of Colombia has borrowed $8.7 billion from WC for the costs of oil rig platform construction, $2.1 billion for infrastructure costs, and a further $1.5 billion for entertainment expenses at a cumulative annual interest rate of 27% APR. Due to economic stagnation and an ongoing civil war, the Colombian government has a shortage of funds and has delayed interest repayment for at least 5 years. This fiscal year oil exports (white powder form) exceeded 1,000 metric tonnes at $115,670 a kilo. Repair and maintenance is set at $450 million, and salaries, pensions and benefits at $1.05 billion. Account for the $9.2 billion growth in revenues assuming that both accrued interest and unpaid loans accredit the balance sheet positively.

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Before leaving the examination hall please shred all papers showing your calculations together with all receipts provided. Pick up your GMA certificate on the way out.

Many congratulations on successfully passing your Global Master of Accountancy Finals!

Of Football, Knights, Bungs and Blair

Amidst great fanfare, a recent BBC documentary detailed the outcome of a year’s investigation into alleged corruption within British football. Some carefully edited, tenuous, and predominantly indirect evidence from an undercover reporter claimed to implicate several Premiership managers as having received illegal payments from players’ agents. Such payments are popularly known as bungs within the cash economy of the working classes, lending a rather sordid air to the affair. Of course in industry such inducements are more commonly known as incentive payments, within business as a gratuity, or corporate hospitality, and in politics as a wise investment. Drug companies give doctors gifts and exotic ‘conferences’ to encourage them to prescribe their products, IOC officials are lavishly hosted and entertained by cities hoping to win Olympic hosting rights, and foreign dignitaries are spared no expense. However within the world of football, where the very poorest come to revere the very richest, the activity of paying incentives to managers to buy players suddenly takes on the darkest of associations.

The Lord Stephens enquiry into the scandal has requested a final two months to focus upon almost forty suspected ‘bungs’ within eight clubs. Some of the ‘dodgy’ dealings were reported by Luton Town manager Mike Newell, others by the Panorama team, and some doubtless came up in due process. Among the recorded Panorama evidence was a ten minute interview with popular Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp who, after being led on by an agent to believe that a Blackburn defender was available, clearly stated on camera that he ‘liked the player’. A shocking revelation indeed, and a damning indictment of the behaviour of the modern manager. Naturally it would have been far more serious from a legal standpoint if the Harry had claimed that he did not like the man. With such serious matters afoot, it is hardly surprising that a judicial review, conducted by a small and costly army of judges, lawyers, accountants and police officers, should be needed to bring such heinous activities to an end.

In a parallel, but perhaps not entirely unrelated police enquiry, questions are still being asked of senior government aides surrounding large ‘loans’ which were made by wealthy individuals to both political parties, many of whom subsequently received nominations for knighthoods and peerages. Loans you say, well I suppose we do live in a debt culture? However, police are investigating whether the loans were actually 'soft', that is to say that they were not really lent on a genuinely commercial basis, in which case there was a legal requirement that they should have been publicly declared.

Both parties of course have denied any wrongdoing. Despite their massive debts and huge planned electoral spending, they would of course in time have repaid the loans in full…well at least in kind. After all, the going rate for a Lordship must be at least £2 million, but it’s only a straight million for a knighthood. Three individuals have been formally ‘arrested’ during the course of the investigation, Lord Levy, Mr Blair's chief fundraiser; Des Smith, a government advisor; and biotechnologist Sir Christopher Evans, who lent the Labour Party a cool £1 million before the last election.

The web of society intrigue does not stop there (as opposed to grubby-handed and common football managers taking dirty ‘bungs’. Bob Edmiston, a Conservative donor was questioned ‘under caution’ as part of the ongoing 'loans-for-peerages' scandal. Bob loaned the Conservatives around £2m, although he since was reported as having said that he did not want the loan repaid. Unfortunately for Bob, his entirely coincidental nomination for a peerage was blocked by the House of Lords appointments commission, although this was allegedly in relation to tax issues rather than his non-returnable ‘loan’. Perhaps his loan will now be able to be returned to the Inland Revenue where it is sorely missed.

However the focus of ‘scrutiny’ has now turned towards Mr.Blair, who seems to be suspiciously central to all of this… The police have said hello to Ruth Turner, Tony’s director of government relations, and also to his director of political operations ‘John McTernan’. Leading Tory lights, Lord Laidlaw, Lord Ashcroft, and Swedish sports equipment tycoon Johan Eliasch, are also thought to have been ‘questioned’. Naturally with all the dealings, loans and financial interests of many recent Labour Lords and Knights, otherwise known as Tony’s cronies, now open to intense public scrutiny, Tony must be growing increasingly uncomfortable in his nest.

To make matters worse, Mr.Blair will himself be questioned by police before the end of October. He will be asked if he knows anything about these allegations that peerages were traded directly for cash. All roads lead to Rome, apparently, and the involvement of Number 10 looks decidely less tenuous than the allegations of impropriety levelled against football managers. In fact the scale of the Blair bungs fiasco has become increasingly evident, with as much as 80% of donations to the Labour Party coming from people who have recently been ‘ennobled’. Such covert borrowing by the Labour Party and Number 10 may amount to as much as £14 million, or around twenty football bungs. In fact the term bung should become the new international currency of large scale financial transactions, saving accountants all of those tiresome zeros. This October, the monthly trade deficit was an estimated 4,200 bungs…

Clearly Tony should have gone to the professionals, and recruited some football agents to raise his Party campaign funds. Not only would the bungs have been bigger and better, but the cash would have disappeared without a trace, leaving him looking sweeter than a good Premiership Manager. After all, a poor man’s bung is a rich man’s donation…

The divine rights of society

I must confess to having lived as a bewildered youth, confused by abyss that lies between the contemporary and academic use of English. Although English is a mongrel language, having been fertilised by wave upon wave of passing Celts, Romans, Saxons, Angles, Vikings, Danes and Normans, our mother tongue’s promiscuity is well compensated by her flexibility and versatility. However, the definitions of words and phrases learnt at school always seemed to be at odds with their actual use, and this was at times disorientating, if not downright confusing. For instance the ‘great and the good’ was a popular reference for society’s leading lights, until of course I discovered that the label often belied their modus operandi. Nowadays I prefer the phrases ‘those at liberty’ and the ‘privileged elite’. Similarly in my early teens I became confused by the phrase ‘law and order’ when inner cities were openly rioting and accusing the police of institutional racism, brutality and corruption. It wasn’t until my early twenties that I cottoned on to the fact that ‘justice’ was a euphemism for highly paid lawyers and the protection of vested interests. Well, all good intentions are heaven sent and hell bent…

For most of my early adult life I remained confused as to the meaning of the world ‘people’. According to the dictionary the entry for people is ‘all the men, women and children who live in a particular country or society’. So here then was a simple English word, triumphal in the elegance of its simplicity, serving as the ultimate collective noun for ‘everybody’ (human). Seeds of confusion first began to creep into the subconscious when phrases began to suggest that ‘people’, and its singular ‘person’, were not the all-embracing collective nouns they had at first appeared to be. Innocuous phrases such as ‘why do people work?’ at first appeared to reflect upon the general rights of employees, although soon they began to appear decidedly ‘selective’ in their reference.

‘People needed to know’ apparently, unlike those who were ‘not in the know’. Often ‘people did not approve’, although no votes ever seemed to be cast or any consensus viewpoint taken. ‘People’ usually took two weeks off at Easter and Christmas, although other employees were entitled to only three weeks paid vacation a year. ‘People’ seemingly did ‘other things’ during the summer, which presumably explained their often lengthy periods of absence from work during the long, hot season. As for other members of staff it was hours as usual. ‘People dined out for lunch’, whilst employees had only a half hour’s lunch break. ‘People had secretaries and PAs’, the remainder only paperwork. ‘People’ earned six figure salaries and ‘went away’ for weekends, whilst the masses trudged on from eight-to-six and caught what rest they could at the weekend. If a judgement was made socially or at work, charges were often dropped if the individual was the right ‘sort of person’. ‘People’ had the latest conveniences, Blackberries and shopped for designer clothes, others went to the sales.

Soon I discovered that many educated individuals failed to qualify for the rank of ‘personage’, and that it was a social status that could be as readily conferred as it could be taken away. So who were ‘people’, and how could the all-empowering status of ‘personage’ be conferred, awarded or indeed recognised? After all, it was clearly not a qualification for which public examinations were taken or formal ceremonies held? After many years the language and coding of this society within society became somewhat clearer. Status was entitlement. ‘People’ had their teeth whitened at the dentist, others did not. ‘People’ could roll into the office at all hours with immunity or disappear without explanation, others could not. People left work after lunch on Friday, others did not. People were invited, others not. People ‘did it’, others could not. People were kept ‘in the know’, the remainder ‘on a need to know basis’. It is clearly an awesome collective cognitive ability which allows individuals to operate as a society within a society, using a complex, secret code of subtle signals and visual cues. Indeed, the day that awareness of this hidden society finally dawns is the moment a mass of confused jigsaw pieces suddenly assembles into glorious Technicolor. With this new paradigm of understanding, an unexplained chaos of events and actions are suddenly transformed into a smooth social logic. Some people are naturally more equal than others. People dine, others eat; people make love, others have sex; people live, others exist.

Surely though there is more to a thriving society than just people and those who exist to serve them? Naturally, there are of course many layers, and with each layer is bestowed more privileges and further ‘offices’. Humans are social animals, and as in all complex societies there are social dominance hierarchies. Ants and bee colonies have soldiers who protect the genetic legacy of their society, as do we; workers who maintain construction and the food supply, as do we, and of course young queens and drones to propagate the genetic legacy of the colony as do we. However it would of course be overly simplistic to talk in terms of such functional specialization for a social primate. Clearly there are alpha drones, beta drones and delta drones, and likewise for young queens. Exactly how these castes are defined is even less simple, and involves a complex interplay of factors such as who your father was, how much money you have, where you went to school, your marks of excellence, and your merits of social distinction (a gray area this one, but it goes along the lines of who you know and who you’ve slept with…).

With the exception of the occasional spat over a mistress or a promotion, these levels seem to pretty much separate out of their own accord, much like the layers of an expensive trifle with the cream of society occupying the top layer. As for those others of us who dare look on and question their divine right to rule over us in comfort, well you are of course free to be unemployed or to entertain yourselves in abstinence as you see fit. Mind you that’s how the ruling classes of England in 1639 thought, as did the aristocrats of Revolutionary France and Russia, and look what happened to them… Anyway, whatever the truth and balance of society, there is no doubt that ‘people’ serve as a fascinating sub-species for us humans to study.

Naming the Beast – Part I

A brief search on Amazon yields a virtual avalanche of titles relating to the ‘End Times’, supported by a barrage of documentaries, books and films. The End Times, or End of Days, is apparently the sort of party that only heavy metal and devil-worshipping vampires who like loud noises would actually want to go to. The Tribulation (or bad times) follows the Rapture, a global orgasm in which Christ’s true believers are whisked off to heaven in a moment of ecstasy, which is very bad news for Bush as most of his God-fearing crusader army will suddenly be spirited off the battlefield along with half the current Whitehouse administration. As hard as this may be to believe for many, the Rapture is not even given credence by the Bible which does not actually mention it. Apart from these minor considerations, this big party in the sky naturally excludes all Jews, Hindus and Muslims, which does seem a little sectarian. However it is not clear whether it will be the Catholics, Protestants or Evangelicals who get the express ride before the world degenerates into a phase of global epidemics, war and economic chaos (like any given day in the 21st Century).

It would be nice to treat these publications as a humorous side show were it not for the fact that End Time stories are amongst the bestselling books of all time. End Timers claim to be able to chart the precise decade for second coming of Jesus, give or take a generation, and also the birth of his charismatic, but not so altruistic opposite number, the antichrist. The antichrist, or beast, will after a period of world unification, peace and prosperity, suddenly get nasty and unleash a wave of devastation more terrible than any of Mr.Bush’s enforced democratisations of Muslim nations. Gripping stuff, and it seems especially difficult to pin the number onto the beast as virtually every politician seems to promise to follow exactly the same mandate before getting into office.

Having watched [more than] a few documentaries on the subject, I would honestly refuse to dignify such modern interpretations of Scripture by actually reading them (and in doing so making their authors even richer). Other than being reinforced by the fact that more than half the American population believe in them (those who vote Republican, attend Church, and mostly didn’t get a full education – OK so take a poll and sue me if I’m wrong…), the End Times tales have less historical credibility than the Da Vinci Code (which at least was a gripping yarn).

As we all know the Bible was a compilation of contemporary texts assembled into testaments, which I believe means ‘bearing witness’, both before (hence Old) and after (hence New), the Life of Christ (yes I’m a confirmed Christian & a believer too). Most of the literal interpretations of the Bible used to furnish the End Times literature are taken from diverse references throughout the Bible, most notably the Book of Revelations by St. John the Divine, and the Book of Daniel, although relevant passages apparently pop up all over the Good Book to add fuel to the End Times doomsayers (all versions 1 through 37). Whether inspired by God or hallucinogens, whether written by divinely influenced hands or by disturbed minds, the contemporary use of symbolism and cultural references makes the Bible nigh impossible to interpret on a literal basis, let alone after its many and various translations from Aramaic to Hebrew & Greek and then finally to Old and then Modern English (Lost in translation?). Some even claim to have broken a Bible ‘Code’, but as one mathematician has shown, almost any event can be dug up in almost any novel using the same search ‘algorithm’ used to crack the code.

So for all the broken seals and seven-headed beasts, the interpretation of dreams, visions and hallucinations penned at the end of the iron age is hardly the stuff to set your watches by, though that just doesn’t seem to stop over a hundred million Americans from supporting a multi-billion dollar industry that would make the corrupt television evangelists of the 1970s and 1980s green with envy. Other than spawning an entire movie industry genre focusing upon the coming and identity of the ‘beast’, the most profound phenomenon has indeed been aptly proven, that of the self-fulfilling prophesy. Let’s face it, as more than half the population of the United States (yes the polls do say so) believe the End Times ‘interpretations’ of the metaphorical Book of Revelations literally, and as they all vote for the Christian right who are championed by George W. Bush, then a handful of right-wing religious extremists, the self-proclaimed ‘Biblical Scholars of the End Times’, are going to herd a nuclear power populated by lemmings right off the edge of the cliff… In essence it is really no different from claiming to have had a dream in Church that you were going to kill your neighbours, then telling everyone about it, popping over to their house to perpetrate the foul deed, and afterwards claiming that it was a prophesy and that God told you to do it. No wonder the Muslim nations are so anxious to get their hands on nuclear weapons with this bunch of lunatics determined to realise their prophecies of Armageddon in power and on the loose.

One of the favourite activities of today, a sort of 21st century version of a witch hunt, is naming the antichrist (well we all know his number don’t we…) Throughout history many despots, tyrants and mass murderers were honoured with the title ‘antichrist’, which is, from a legal point of view, the ultimate defamation. The first to be honoured was the Emperor Nero, also known as the beast, who just before the Book of Revelations was written, blamed the Great Fire of Rome upon the Christians. This gave him the perfect excuse to exorcise public anxiety with the systematic torture, persecution and murder of Christians in a form of mass public entertainment (hence the term anti-Christ). The fact that Revelations was written soon after his death in AD68, and that his name translated in Hebrew transforms into six hundred and sixty-six (although don’t use this formula in your maths exams or you won’t pass until your paper is marked by an End Timer…), explains a great deal about the origin and inspiration of the figure of the antichrist. Others to have been dishonoured by the title include the Prophet Mohammed, most every Pope in history, Napoleon and Hitler. Nostradamus was another one to get in on the antichrist prophesy racket, although he hedged his bets by naming no fewer three antichrists (well I’m sure that the Devil is fertile too…)

However there is definitely a market for End Times media, and I feel equally free to pitch in with my own poll of polls to determine the likely identity of the modern antichrist. Apparently those who sell a lot of End Times books claim that he is with us here today as was predicted, three generations after the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948. Well at least that narrows it down... and of course the End Timers have provided us with many intriguing clues as to his identity. So it’s time to weigh up the clues and to lay down the odds for Hollywood’s number one bad guy. Tune into part II to join in the reckoning of the name of the beast (it’s a star-studded cast…)