By going beyond the closure of Guantánamo Bay to shut the CIA’s international network of interrogation centres and ban the use of rendition and torture, Barrack Obama has won a significant battle in the true war on terror.

In a signing ceremony every bit as significant as a military victory Obama announced: ‘We are not, as I said during the inauguration, going to continue with the false choice between our safety and our ideals.’

Bush’s decision to fight fire with fire had reduced the moral high ground to scorched earth, Obama has made restoring it a priority.

In Britain foreign secretary David Miliband anticipated the change in mood, explaining why the UK no longer supports a ‘war on terror’ leaving some, like the Telegraph’s Con Coughlin confused: ‘If there isn’t a war on terror, then what exactly are our boys dying for?’

Con Coughlin could begin his education by reading this of diary of a Pakistani schoolgirl, who receives death threats for seeking an education in defiance of a Taleban order that has closed schools that teach girls; they regularly attack schools and assassinate teachers.

Con Coughlin could go on to consider Saddam’s near genocide against the Marsh Arabs, who’s population fell from 250,000 in 1991 to 40,000 a little over ten years later: many, says Human Rights Watch, were ‘arbitrarily held, tortured, “disappeared,” or executed’.

Going to war in Iraq was right because it removed a brutal dictator who’s other crimes included wiping out a whole city with chemical weapons and turning torture into a medical science.

The war achieved more good: the Marsh Arabs’ homelands are partly restored. Ninety per cent of the area some claim was the biblical Garden of Eden, was deliberately turned to desert as part of Saddam’s attempted genocide.

The big but is that the simplistic ‘war on terror’ was used to justify subverting the rule of law, torture and many more abuses. It encouraged and enabled the corruption of noble war aims; Obama’s challenge is to make that right.

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Listening to Barrack Obama’s inaugural speech, even in optimistic mood, could not fail to impress. He may have disappointed some journalists by not delivering oratorical flourishes that make nice sound bites and write their own headlines, but they would almost certainly have been empty anyway.

The role of this speech was to offer a direction, define scope and set an agenda for the next eight years. It was impressive for the distance it placed between Obama and what has gone before.

The Obama administration is to be internationalist; engaged with the world not because a spectacular terrorist attack on a major city has forced it to be, but because it understands globalisation and accepts a moral duty to care about those beyond its borders. Obama understands that whatever the effects of the current economic crisis, America remains a rich and powerful nation and that with riches and power comes responsibility. Responsibility to preserve and enhance the environment was accepted and damage already done acknowledged more than once.

He attacked conservative ideology, pledging to replace their small state dogma with a belief in society and the state’s role in promoting the common good. He recognised that ideals mean nothing if they are not upheld when it is hardest to do so.

Informed by warm-hearted values, Obama’s message was that with rights come responsibilities, that with hard work current challenges will be met and a better, stronger, fairer society will be built.

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When Iraqi journalist Muntadhar al-Zaidi threw his shoes at George W Bush there was a consensus that the then President of the United States had handled the incident well, deftly ducking out of the way and apparently laughing off the incident.

Sadly, Laura Bush’s ‘not amused’ stance gave away how the president really felt; it was an assault, she said, before speculating on what Saddam Hussein would have done.

Fortunately, that Saddam is Laura Bush’s moral yardstick is no longer worth fretting about. But that Muntadhar al-Zaidi, having been severely beaten in Iraqi custody, has apparently applied for asylum in Switzerland is. Bush could have made one last stab at persuading the world that he had some worthy ideals by forgiving al-Zaidi.

It is mistakes like this that have made halting show trials and closing Guantanamo so important that Obama. He has just a short time to prove America can change and can stand for something better.

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I’m terribly weary of all those who sagely counsel us not to get too excited by Barrack Obama’s inauguration later today, like Labour’s social networking guru and psychotherapist Derek Draper.

We need to be careful not get caught up in a peak experience, Derek warns, and instead imagine life when it’s all over and our feet are back on the ground. But what would life be without a few peak experiences? There is good reason to celebrate Obama’s coming into office.

A little sceptical, I favoured Hilary Clinton and wondered if Obama has the balls to be bold. But more importantly, I sense that everyone else feels similarly.

The change Barrack Obama promises is vaguely defined and he faces many immense challenges. Sure, he will disappoint us from time to time. But what makes today extra special is that people understand. They know that taking Derek Draper’s advice will land them in a place that is not the promised land, but choose to throw themselves into the moment anyway.

Today is a day to put realism to one side and indulge ourselves, not to hold back. Barrack Obama has proved that a man of mixed race, who identifies with African Americans, can become president of the United States of America, a country that had segregation not a generation ago. That doesn’t mean that racism is over with in America and that ethnic minorities have suddenly found themselves on a par with their white neighbours, but it does give us reason to hope that one day this will be so.

And it is that hope – and many more progressive hopes – that people rightly celebrate today.

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Eric Morecambe’s statue is the best known work to be commissioned by the Tern Project, but there is much more to see.

Tern shows how public art can transform what would otherwise be a rather bleak landscape, made sad by imagined memories of bucket and spade holidays, into something rather special.

This sculpture, where the Stone Jetty meets the Midland Hotel, is part of Rock Islands

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The Midland Hotel’s Lancastrian Tapas make for a great pick-me-up after a bracing stroll on Morecambe’s seafront.

Pictured is the blue cheese and the mackerel, which cost about £2.75 each.

These delicacies are served in the Rotunda, a smart cocktail style bar with comfortable booths served from an island bar with sea views.

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Last summer Urban Splash restored and transformed Morecambe’s Midland into an art deco boutique hotel.

The public areas (we didn’t stay, but the rooms are reputed to be fantastic) do not disappoint. Admire Eric Gill’s Seahorses, mosaics and some really fun chairs (for sale, price on application) in reception.

We visited Eric’s statue, sang ‘Bring me sunshine,’ and there was sunshine (but only for lunchtime).

Katharine and I were here to visit the spa; except it isn’t really a spa as there is no pool (I guess ‘massage parlour’ sends the wrong signal). I left feeling great after an hour long full body massage that cost just £37, which is cheap enough to make regular visits from Manchester economic.

One day we’ll get a room and try the restaurant. Today was Lancastrian Tapas in the Rotunda…

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With lengthy digressions (this is stand-up comedy, after all) into the present day, it’s easy to think that Mark Steel has forgotten his show is about the French Revolution, but at the end of the hundred minutes you’re suddenly struck with the realisation that he really has covered all that really matters.

Steel’s strength is his ability to place himself in the mind of a revolutionary foot soldier, like the small village peasant who suddenly finds himself rioting in Paris, without necessarily having a particularly clear idea of what the revolution stands for.

The show’s weakness comes from those contemporary digressions which, like an episode of Have I Got News For You?, date quickly and it sometimes feels like a long time to be watching one man on stage.

And that makes Mark Steel’s Vive La Revolution a seven out of ten.

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‘ …there were over 250,000 Jews living in Britain at the start of the First World War. They integrated and in the main, were accepted.’
– Archbishop maps social change for Britain

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, has delighted some by arguing that post-war multiculturalism has led Britain to lose its sense of vision. In a speech to the Smith Institute he goes on to develop an idea of the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, that since the 1950s migrants have treated Britain like a hotel; ‘they are guests – they do not belong… any sense of a shared common culture is eroded risking increasing segregation.’

What seems most bizarre is that the Chief Rabbi might agree with Sentamu when he says: ‘…there were 250,000 Jews living in Britain at the start of the First World War. They integrated and in the main, were accepted.’

This is nonsense. Jewish people suffered constant discrimination; ‘Problem of the alien – London overrun by undesirables – vast foreign areas a growing menace’ screamed the Evening Standard in 1911 as it ran a series of articles on ‘the alien problem’. A reasonable desire to be close to people of a similar cultural background, no doubt reinforced by anti-Semitism, led Jewish people to form close-knit communities. They did not choose to become Christian and instead set about forming communities large enough to sustain synagogues, kosher food shops and so on. Had Dr John Sentamu been preaching then, it’s hard to imagine he’d have been talking up Britain’s Judaeo-Christian values.

In the hands of the Daily Mail’s Steve Doughty, the bishop’s words come close to becoming a call for migrants to ‘go home’ as they ‘just don’t belong’. Between the wars, the Daily Mail famously supported the Blackshirts in Britain and acted as cheerleader to Hitler’s invasion of Europe. Now it contains more stories on asylum seekers than any other newspaper, but doesn’t cover the human rights abuses from which they flee.

Remarkably, Steve Doughty finds it necessary to misquote Sentamu in order to conflate refugees and economic migrants: Dr Sentamu did not say ‘it was important to remember that Britain had always provided refuge for economic migrants,’ but was careful to distinguish between economic migrants and asylum seekers.

Economic migrants don’t require refuge; that there are no jobs in your country of origin is not grounds for asylum. Doughty feeds the myth that today’s asylum seekers are simply after British jobs; in truth those who qualify for refuge have shown that they are fleeing persecution and the stories of today’s refugees are as horrific as ever.

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I may have been quiet over here – sorry! – but I have been busy completing my Christmas project, Buff the Banana with Paul Dacre, a simple blog that diaries titillating stories from the Daily Mail, so you can go straight there without having to view the offensive stuff. And there’s a biography of Paul Dacre for those who don’t know who he is.

Looking after Buff the Banana with Paul Dacre will require me to read the Daily Mail each day, so you don’t have to, in order to dig out the best photos of celebrities with very little clothes on… and there’s plenty of content.

The Daily Mail might not have a Page 3, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t find topless or upskirt shots, often shot Peeping Tom style with a telephoto lens. A (not work safe) Google search reveals that a number of pornographic websites promote their wares with images grabbed from the Daily Mail.

You’ll find Buff the Banana with Paul Dacre at www.buffthebanana.co.uk.

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