When my wife flew back from London the other week she arrived at the boarding gate to be told that there was no record of her on the flight.

It turned out that the wrong name had been printed on her boarding pass. That means that she walked through at least two security check-points in Heathrow airport with a different name on her boarding pass than the one in her passport. In fact, it was a man’s name. Yet no one noticed.

PS Last night we went to see The Fallen Idol (1948) at Film Forum in the West Village. It’s an adaptation of a Graham Greene short story directed by Carol Reed (who also directed The Third Man). What a great film. Much more enjoyable than the overrated Match Point which we went to see the other night. Even better was the fact that the child star of The Fallen Idol, Bobby Henrey, was in the audience. He did a quick Q&A after the screening. Apparently, after the The Fallen Idol he went on to star in one more film called The Wonder Kid before giving up acting and becoming an accountant.

Lew on League: Back by unpopular demand for a second consecutive season

Wigan v Leeds: Round 2 of the Championship Season 06/07

Last week in round 1 Leeds struggled at home to beat Huddersfield whilst Wigan lost away to the French side Catalan Dragons. Both sides in this game had been tipped for top three honors and both had disappointed their supporters. Nevertheless it was considered to be a temporary aberration, the sort of thing which frequently happens in the first match of the season. So more than 17,000 expectant spectators filled the JJB stadium for this Friday night match. If it was thrills they wanted then they had them in abundance. Read More→

My friend Ben Baruch has a new toon out. You can check it out here.

I know where I’m going to be spending my lunchtime from now on…

The New York Times op-ed page was full of the Danish cartoon controversy last weekend. In an effort to give a range of views it included a very critical piece from Martin Burcharth, the US correspondent for the Danish newspaper Information.

The piece explained that:

Denmark’s reputation as a nation with a long tradition of tolerance toward others…is something of a myth.

[...]For 20 years, Muslims in Denmark have been denied a permit to build mosques in Copenhagen. What’s more, there are no Muslim cemeteries in Denmark, which means that the bodies of Muslims who die here have to be flown back to their home countries for proper burial.

[...]After the flag burnings, the Danish news media began to refer to the white cross on the flag’s red background as a Christian symbol.

There was something discordant about this, for we’ve come to connect the flag less and less to religion. Denmark, after all, is one of the most secular countries in Europe. Only 3 percent of Danes attend church once a week.

Still, the news media were right. Up to a point. Legend has it that the flag fell from heaven during a battle between the Danes and the Estonians nearly 800 years ago. It was a sign from God, and it led the Danes to victory. Now that flag has become a symbol around the world of Denmark’s contempt for another world religion.

Shocking and embarrassing, I thought, until I received the following email from a relative in Copenhagen:

I have just seen an article in JP about Martin Burcharth’s article in NYT. He has now admitted that there were factual “errors” in his article, but that he “regrets nothing”! He explains that his article was rewritten several times and the last revision was made “under difficult circumstances”. Incidentally, he hasn’t lived in Denmark for many years!

His wrong information was apparently reproduced in a programme on New York’s National Public Radio this week by a Professor Mahmood Mamdani in a discussion with Die Zeit’s Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff.

The professor had no other source than this article and could not substantiate his allegations. It was however pointed out that he contradicted himself by referring to the desecration of exactly the Muslim graveyards which don’t exist!!!!

The experienced German correspondent also totally rejected his generally negative description of conditions in Denmark and said that Denmark was well-known for its well-functioning democracy and respect for human rights, and this respect for other cultures and thought was what made the country particularly attractive for Muslim immigrants.

There are many mosques in around Denmark in existing buildings where Friday prayer is practised every week, and there is no ban against building any new ones either. But there has been no agreement amongst the many different Muslim communities as to which school of Islam a new mosque should belong, and there has been a financial problem as well. Mosques have to comply with local town planning regulations like all other buildings, but that has not been an issue.

Also, his suggestion that the white cross in the Danish flag is now assuming a new religious significance for the irreligious Danes is just ludicrous. We have taken the flag burnings remarkably relaxed and with a forgiving shaking of the head. And the old myth that the flag came down from heaven….yes, surely we all believe that it came straight from God!

A very tendentious article all the way profiling the journalist at the expense of the truth.