BUSH’S AMERICAN EMPIRE HAS GONE

America confuses me. I spent a year in the States, studying at Duke University, North Carolina, and loved it. At the end of the studies, my wife and I drove from coast to coast, from North Carolina to California, then all the way up the west coast to Oregon.

The scenery was wonderful, so varied. The people we kept meeting were quite unlike the stereotypes of American people so prevalent in this country. By and large, we found the Americans we met to be generous and curious. That has also been true of Americans we have met in this country.

This was confirmed again on a six-week trip to the States three years ago. The view that the "Yanks" are boorish and loud and ignorant – held usually by people who have never been to America and are basing their prejudices on meeting one or two tourists – is a travesty. It is an unjustifiable generalisation.

Americans are natural friends of the Brits. We share a love of freedom and democracy, however imperfectly we live these things ourselves. There are so many values we hold in common.

So what is my confusion, then? Simply this: how can a country with so many decent and humane people elect a president who acts with such arrogant disregard for the impact of his actions? Out of the vast number of able people living in the United States of America, how come the best the Republican party could come up with was George W. Bush?

Clearly, the president speaks for a lot of people, otherwise he wouldn't have been re-elected. Nor is he simply the daft man that he is often made out to be. What concerns me is his view of the world, one which doesn't square with so many Americans I have met.

It is not only me who is confused; the American body politic is confused and confusing.

How can we get to the core of the constellation of issues facing America? The prescient words of one of her greatest theologians, Reinhold Niebuhr, shed a great deal of light on the current situation.

In his prophetic book The Irony of American History, published in 1952, Dr Niebuhr predicted that the winner of the cold war would inevitably "face the imperial problem of using power in global terms, but from one particular centre of authority, so dominant and unchallenged that its world rule would almost certainly violate basic standards of justice".

Niebuhr was afraid that if America became that dominant nation, it would not recognise its own injustices toward others, for its good intentions in world affairs would be so self-evident.

He went on: "We find it almost as difficult as the communists to believe that anyone could think ill of us, since we are as persuaded as the communists that our society is so essentially virtuous that only malice could prompt criticism of any of our actions."

There is bewilderment in America over the fact that so many people perceive the US as other than benevolent. Niebuhr has been proved right. For many Americans, the hostility is attributed simply to jealousy.

There is undoubtedly a great deal of truth in this. Is it really so surprising that, in such an ill-divided world, a country which flaunts such wealth is resented? Or that the most heavily armed superpower the world has ever seen is feared more than loved?

The core issue which Rein-hold Niebuhr identified has to do with empire. America's dominant and unchallenged position as the only superpower in town is bound to lead to injustices unless reined in by conscience.

George W. Bush is the wrong leader at the wrong time. He and his more gung-ho acolytes in government see the world in such simplistic terms that they do not even understand the damage they are doing.

Do' you remember the arrogance of Dubya when he taunted the Iraqi resistance leaders, inviting them to "come on"? This is the language of the playground or the Wild West.

Recently, Newt Gingrich, a senior Republican politician, said that a new world war could begin in the Middle East, then added: "Bring it on."

It is hard to believe the crass-ness of this stuff. It is only fair to say that many Americans are simply appalled by this. They are wondering if their emperor's clothes have been purchased in a moral second-hand shop. Has the American Revolution really come to this?

And has Tony Blair really come to this? Repeatedly, people in America said to me that while they had little confidence in their president's grasp of the world, they thought the British prime minister was "smart".

In fact, many had been persuaded to support the war in Iraq by Mr Blair's passionate convictions.

Now, as more and more of the story unravels, they are not so sure. Tony Blair is the ally Bush wants, but not the one he needs. While the American public admires Tony Blair's loyalty, they are now asking questions about his judgment.

Recent events in Lebanon confirm the feeling that Mr. Blair is too close to Mr. Bush. I have never been Margaret Thatcher's greatest fan, but while she had a close relationship with Ronald Reagan, she didn't hesitate to tell him what she thought. She was also scornful of the reasons given for the invasion of Iraq.

Can you imagine Winston Churchill fawning over George Bush? An alliance between friends necessitates the telling of uncomfortable truths. There is no sense that this is what is happening in the "special relationship" right now.

Professor Iain Torrance, formerly a professor at Aberdeen University and now president of Princeton Seminary in New Jersey, famously took the American government to task when he was Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

"As the most powerful nation in the world, the United States has nothing to fear militarily," he said. "However, your country's enviable reputation as a champion of freedom and upholder of standards of decency is now severely on the line. Your aggressive self-legitimisation undermines respect."

Niebuhr had it right. The American Revolution was a great and energising model of freedom for the world. But the American empire is a different story.

If America wants to get back on freedom's track, it will have to learn to love its Niebuhr as itself.

It’s hard to think of Phillip Schofield ending a man's career, but the disaster of it's Now or Never is just another reminder why the scales are tipping against Charles Allen. Only 1.7 million watched Schofield's Saturday night show – the sort of flop the ITV chief executive could do without as the rumours swirl about his future.

So far, 2006 has been so difficult that it is easy to see why Mr. Allen might be thinking about getting out after 15 years of television while he may be able to time his exit This year has been particularly bereft of good news: a horrible advertising market has come in a year when the football World Cup failed to deliver a turnaround.

Fundamental problems remain unsolved. ITV1 is still weak in the late afternoon, where its children's programming underperforms, and again from around 8.30pm. Instead of drama of the quality of Inspector Morse, there is not very popular nonsense such as Bad Lads Army. Meanwhile in the battle for younger viewers, Big Brother is unaffected by Love Island, the show that prompts the question: can society dumb down any further?

Yet the notion that Mr. Allen has sat back and done nothing since the Carlton-Granada merger is nonsense. Since ITV plc was created, he has tucked in the merger, launched four new channels and secured a big cut in the cost of license fee payments. The chief executive has tried to buy a way into the internet, with the optimistic purchase of Friends Reunited, and ordered a total revamp of its commissioning and scheduling, led by Simon Shaps.

Even the share price, limping below the loop level, is not as bad as critics would have us believe. Yes, the shares are down 13 per cent on the year, not pretty, but the broadcaster has done better this year than every other advertiser-funded company – ranging from E-map to Daily Mail and General Trust.

Unfortunately, though, Mr. Allen's activity has not delivered enough. ITV's new channels are not stemming the painful loss of viewers on ITVI, while the core channel's much-hyped revamp hasn't yet had the opportunity to deliver. Mr. Allen can say what he likes about the inevitability of viewer fragmentation caused by digital, but ITVI continues to lose share faster than any terrestrial channel besides Five. ITVI is down 8 per cent this year, BBC One is down only 6 per cent.

Mind you, life at the BBC is a doddle by comparison. Okay, so Mark Thompson has to get a new charter and license fee once a decade, but otherwise he knows where his money is coming from. The ITV boss has to deal with the fact that his company is dependent on the performance of just one channel, at a time when that channel is under pressure.

ITV's corporate structure has long made it the most vulnerable of all Britain's broadcasters. Look around the world, and there are few independent, private networks; most television broadcasters are part of media conglomerates controlled by people such as Sumner Redstone or Silvio Berlusconi. ITV, meanwhile, stands alone now, although for most of the past 15 years the third channel was consumed by distracting battles between franchisees.

At the same time, the strategic challenges faced are immense. ITV desperately needs to reduce its dependence on TV advertising – easy to say, but no simple task. But making money out of pay television is difficult in the current climate (unless ITV is sold to NTL). So, the future more probably lies in bolder attempts to harness internet revenues why – not start aggressively cross-promoting Friends Reunited as a start? – selling decent drama to the Americans, and getting into radio and other media, too.

Nor is it clear that Mr. Allen has been well served by his chairman, Sir Peter Burt. Apparently Sir Peter was an excellent banker, but he has been a disappointment at ITV. While the BBC has, for the first time, a chairman with experience of broadcasting, ITV has a chairman who quite clearly has not a due about the nature of the business. Sir Peter is unfocused and halting in public: privately boardroom critics complain that he has not set his chief executive dear enough targets so that he can be judged. Yet, that said, he is not the man who runs the company.

The problem for Mr. Allen is that, for shareholders, his presence has become a byword for underperformance. If ITV wants to retain its independence, and avoid another cheeky venture capital bid, it is going to have to plead for more time to deliver on the current strategy. Mr. Allen is smart enough to realise this, which is why it must be tempting to signal an end to his reign, perhaps while he is still powerful enough to engineer his succession.

THE TOBACCONIST. Alan D Myerthall may be a tobacconist but, oddly enough, he doesn’t view the smoking ban as a wholesale disaster. ''If I never sold another packet of cigarettes in my life it wouldn’t bother me one iota,'' he says. Myerthall has run the aficionados-only Pipe shop on Edinburgh’s Leith Walk for 34 years, a spell in which he has developed his own brand of smokers’ apartheid: pipes and cigars good; cigarettes bad. He says profit on a packet of cigarettes is non-existent, though it’s the conflation of categories that bothers him most – cigarette smokers inhale, he points out, while pipe and cigar users puff.

The smoking ban will mean Myerthall will be unable to let customers test various kinds of pipe tobacco in the shop; instead they will be obliged to stand beneath the awning outside. But he doesn’t anticipate that the ban will hurt his business particularly. Cigars and pipes are principally domestic preferences, added to which he has a thriving mail-order business, delivering products worldwide.

Myerthall has also installed an ashtray outside his shop after one customer dropped a cigarette butt on the pavement before entering and was fined £50 for littering.

THE PIPE LOVER Ever the man of affairs, Donald Findlay – famously a pipe man but also a cigar smoker – will be responding to the ban with typically legalistic logical rigour. ''When it comes to restaurants,'' says the colourful QC, ''I just won’t bloody go, or I’ll go to a restaurant in England. I am not going to stand outside a restaurant smoking; it’s unthinkable. As for drinking, if a pub does not make an effort to accommodate me in this respect, with heated sheltered areas, I will not give it my custom. Simple as that.''

''If I were to smoke in a pub, be fined and refused to pay the fine, I would be jailed. But I could smoke in the police car that took me to prison and then in the prison itself. It’s soft-headed trendiness at its worst.

THE CIGARETTE SMOKER Formerly a two-lighters-a-day girl, Professor Sheila McLean, the director of the Institute of Law and Ethics in Medicine at Glasgow University, found cutting down was easy during recent trips to New Zealand and Dublin, where smoking indoors was outlawed some time ago.

''I found that when you don’t see it around you, you think about it less,'' she says. ''The same principle might well apply here. We’ve all learnt to adapt to circumstances in the last decade or so. Smoking is already banned on public transport, in cinemas and so on. If the ban had happened without those already being place it could have been very problematic. But we’ve accommodated restrictions as they’ve come along.''

The requirement to protect citizens from passive smoking can be achieved by segregating smokers into their own areas – so why is a legislative solution being imposed? ''There’s no legitimate basis for such a ban, beyond smokers setting a bad example to children. But children see their parents smoking at home. We have to conclude the state is taking it upon itself to make life choices on our behalf, which isn’t a happy thought.''

THE CAMPAIGNER. The tobacco industry’s most mortal enemy for the past 50 years has been Sir John Crofton, who will celebrate his 94th birthday at his Edinburgh home this week. For him, the Scottish smoking ban is the culmination of a lifetime’s work. ''It’s been a battle over the years,'' he says. ''But this law, especially the ban in pubs, which is the really striking thing, is extremely important. I’m an Irishman in origin, and if you can succeed with pubs in Ireland you should be able to succeed in Scotland.''

*aficionados-only Pipeshop – магазин курительных принадлежностей, ориентированный только на страстных курильщиков.

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