Flat Earth

First and last

EVEN IN my half-awake state, something in the BBC World Service news one morning last week unsettled my subconscious. ETA, the Basque separatist movement in Spain, had declared "its first-ever permanent ceasefire", according to Bush House.

Hang on a minute, said one of my few functioning brain cells - saying it's the first permanent ceasefire implies that there might be another one later, in which case the previous one by definition wouldn't have been permanent. If ETA never fires a shot in anger again, it would be its last-ever ceasefire, not its first.

By this time I was fully awake, and able to reflect that one could see what the Beeb was getting at. The Irish experience has shown that "permanent" ceasefires are not always what they appear to be. The IRA's example is said to have spurred ETA on, so maybe one can hope that what seems to be a once-and-for-all cessation of hostilities in Ireland is emulated in Spain.

Barefaced cheek

I DON'T know if we are related, but I would be proud to claim kinship with Jim Whitaker, mayor of North Platte, Nebraska. As an incentive to an animal charity with the excruciating name of Paws-itive Partners Humane Society, my namesake said he would walk naked through the streets if they raised $5,000 (pounds 3,000). They did.

The mayor's promise drew national attention and not a few angry calls to his office. He kept it, too, but in the end nobody was offended.

Jim - no Godiva, he - walked the streets all right, but kept all his clothes on. He had a dog with him, rescued from the North Platte Animal Shelter about a month ago, which he happened to have given the name "Naked". "Everybody bought it," he chortled. Spoken like a true Whitaker.

Bill et Monica

FRENCH surfers on the internet have been doubly delighted, if a little bemused, by the instant, rather literal computer translation into the language of Moliere of Kenneth Starr's report on the Lewinsky affair.

You had to be a student of American politics and a crossword fiend to work out that the strange character called "Facture Richardson" was actually Bill Richardson, the US ambassador to the United Nations. Vernon Jordanie was easy; he was Vernon Jordan, Clinton's old pal. Nouvel York was New York. Sexual intercourse became conversations personelles (if only they had). But what on earth was a pistolet du tabagisme (a revolver of cigarette- smoking)? Ah yes, of course, "a smoking gun".

In American bookstores, meanwhile, the Clinton-Lewinsky saga has left even JFK's multiple liaisons in the shade. As copies of Kenneth Starr's explicit report flew off the shelves by the hundreds of thousands, at least one Washington store was selling off copies of the recent John F Kennedy expose, The Dark Side of Camelot, at knockdown prices. The Borders chain had piles of Camelots stacked right beside the Starr report, marked down from $26.99 to $6.99.

His ladyship

THE MAYOR of North Platte threatens to wear no clothes, his counterpart in Quellendorf, a tiny village in Germany, wants to wear women's clothes, and eventually plans to have a sex-change operation. Many of the voters are not amused.

Norbert Michael Lindner has started calling himself Michaela, and the village council has called a referendum in November to decide whether he should be impeached. The mayor, a married man with four daughters, is strongly supported by his family, but his deputy said he had lost the public's trust.

One resident who supported the council's decision complained: "We voted for a man, not a women. He should have told us beforehand."