The widespread anger in the West at the release of Libyan bomber, Abdelbaset al-Megrahi is not surprising. There is, though, another perspective that has been widely eschewed, for, while tainted by what appears to be a lack of openness on the part of the British Government, the event does spotlight the confusion between what we call justice, and what should be called retribution.

While it’s a rational and nearly always desirable response for the direct and collateral victims of crime to want to identify a culprit in order to achieve some kind of resolution or closure – which is the function of ‘Justice’ – there is very little evidence that harbouring grudges or malicious feelings towards the perpetrator or fostering a desire for revenge achieve anything more than sustenance for bitterness.

It’s normal and understandable that the families of terrorists’ victims should find their lives poisoned by a consuming hatred for those who took their loved ones from them. It is part of prevailing Western culture to nurture – even celebrate – these negative emotions although it is abundantly clear that they can do nothing to restore a lost daughter, son or spouse – and they certainly won’t provide any respite from unhappiness. As part of the greater picture, they can only increase the misunderstanding, tension and aggression that already exist between terrorists and their targets.

However, despite the entirely negative consequences of bearing grudges and seeking revenge, these are seen in the modern western world as proper, macho responses, to be recognised and commended. In this they reflect a C19th American pioneer culture (possibly sustained far beyond its historical context by the seductive influence of the Hollywood Western).

The truth is that the desire for revenge is uncouth, uncivilised and always destructive – at both personal and international levels.

 It would have been far more constructive (though ridiculously fanciful to expect) if after 9/11 George W Bush had appeared on television and told his country that while Islamic terrorists had sought to destroy symbolically the heart of their nation, and taken the lives of thousands of their fellow citizens, they should turn to those terrorists and ask why.

“Why do you hate us? How have we offended you? What has driven you to take such drastic action against innocent Americans? What do you want from us? How can we, the most powerful nation in the world, help you?”

It would have taken a braver (and more enlightened) man than George W Bush to take this stance in the face of his unsophisticated, traditionally xenophobic electorate, although there might have been more support for it than he realised.

Instead, he told the nation he was going to whup the terrorists to avenge the American deaths, and their effrontery; he was going to start a war – two wars, as it turned out – which, eight years on look barely nearer resolution and have undoubtedly recruited 1,000s to Al Qaeda’s camp, including hundreds of Britons alienated by the indiscriminate hatred directed at anyone who might conceivably be Muslim. 1,000s more American (and British) lives have been lost to carry out Bush’s revenge for the lives lost in the Twin Towers, as well as those of thousands of innocent Iraquis and Afghanis.

Perhaps if Bush had had the courage to show understanding and forgiveness on behalf of his country, the impetus for more young Muslims to join al Qaeda would have been neutered; if the US (with Britain) had had the foresight and forbearance to put themselves in a position where they were no longer targets – as Obama is now trying to do in the face of inevtiable knee-jerk oppostion – there would have been no cause for young British Muslims to bring about the deaths and mayhem of London’s 7/7.

Undoubtedly, if Bush had proffered his hand in forgiveness, the neo-cons and the red-necked hillbillies would have hollered that to capitulate in this way would open the floodgates to terrorism. They would not have paused to consider that failures of reconciliation are manifestly fewer than failures of aggression.

It is salutary to consider the supreme and undeniable dignity of Northern Irish Methodist, Gordon Wilson, after his daughter, Marie had died holding his hand beneath the rubble caused by a massive IRA bomb in Enniskillen on Remembrance Day, 1987.

He said, ‘I bear no ill will. I bear no grudge. Dirty sort of talk is not going to bring her back to life.’

His forgiveness of the IRA terrorists who had killed his daughter helped to lay the foundations for a genuine and profound reconciliation that has led to the decommissioning of IRA weapons, and the participation of Sinn Fein in the Northern Ireland Government, and the beginnings of genuine understanding between the two communities.

To see al Megrahi die in prison can do nothing to restore his victims to those who loved them; to forgive him and allow him to die in his own country would offer them a supreme moral strength and a release from the destructive bitterness of hate, while it could also achieve something real for long term peace and understanding.

Were you to ask me how I would react if one of my own much loved offspring were killed by a terrorist’s bomb, I would answer that I don’t know, but I profoundly hope that I would find the strength and courage to forgive.

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The idea of reproducing, in an arena like the Circus Maximus, a race between half a dozen highly-tuned quadricas (the observant among you will have spotted Boadicea driving one with four fresh-looking animals across the top of Hyde Park Corner) was a well-formed fantasy of mine in my foolish, romantic 20s. Evidently, German impresario Franz Abraham has not grown out of his version of this fantasy. He claims to have staked his all on the realisation of his dream, Ben Hur Live at the O2 Arena; if it’s a flop, he’s said, he’ll be ruined. Poor old Franz. After reading the reviews and seeing some clips of the show on the net, it looks to me as if ruination could well be on the cards. After all, it’s reported that the ‘chariot race’ -  the apogee of the whole show, surely – lasts a mere two minutes – not long enough to deliver satisfaction of any sort.

   If only Franz had sought to work out his fantasies in a more manageable way, like the surprisingly adventurous Lord (David) Lipsey, who despite his credentials as an economist, financial journalist and adviser to the Labour government, has seen the fulfilment of his equine dreams by owning and driving his own trotting horses, and, much to the amazement of the Welsh trotting folk who sold them to him, winning with them.

Driving trotters (or “pacers”) from a flimsy sulky, as practised in mid Wales and the Marches, is (I’m told) a seriously gut-churning experience and, even without Charlton Heston to whip it up, provides as exciting a spectator sport as you could see in any public arena, which, without the spinning axle blades to slice an opponents’ spokes, has it over Roman chariot racing as far as our Health & Safety minders are concerned.

I love the trotters, and persuaded my friends, John & Carol Challis that they too should experience the rough and tumble of the Mid-Wales and Border Counties Trotting Association – an organisation with a pleasingly slender rule book (unlike their more fastidious cousins, the British Harness Racing Club). Given John’s alter ego, since 1981, as Boycie in Only Fools and Horses, he risked the tabloid headline, “Boycie visits the Trotters” but agreed to traipse across country to the Bell in Almeley, west Herefordshire, where we met Ray Thomas, landlord of the Lion Hotel in Llanbister, builder, farmer, horseman, traveller and polymath, who had a runner in the pre-novice race and whom I’d asked to mark our card for the day. He led us off to a nearby field in which a few Portaloos and a beer tent had been erected for the races. A course was laid out with sporadic wood posts and lengths of rope. A flat bed trailer by the winning post accommodated the judges and the commentator. A race card offered the runners and rivers for a dozen or so trials of speed.

Trotting is not a traditonal activity of the tweed-and-Barbour Range-Roving classes; it is run and watched by unsophisticated, sturdy Celtic folk – skilled, tough and canny they are too, though not always as canny as the bookies that come out to take their money each week. Neither the bookies nor the punters, though, can ever be sure who’s trying to do what, and both rely on assessing the whiteness of the knuckles of the drivers of the runners-up in the earlier heats, so as to know how to skew the odds in the finals.

A lot of the punters, it turned out, were also fans of Only Fools and Horses, and John was asked ceremoniously to leave his imprimatur (or, at least, Boycie’s) on the bar of the beer tent that does the rounds of the border trotting meetings.

There’ll never be trotting at the O2 Arena, thank God, and with luck it will remain our Marcher country speciality for some time. The season’s more or less over now, but if you’d like to see some real, live chariot racing, make a note that the premier meeting of the year takes place at Pen-y-Bont in Powys, over a wonderful, ramshackle course, complete with clapboard Grandstand and known as the Wembley of the West, on the first Wednesday of August. You won’t need your Ascot hat, but you’ll see as much sport.

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 I don’t know if swine flu is yet rife within the offices of News Corp’s world wide operations, but there is a visible increase in cases of galloping amnesia, if not downright mendacity, doing the rounds among their senior executives, especially when being asked questions by Members of Parliament.

Les Hinton, with silver locks well coiffed and a chummy habit of calling his questioners by their Christian names, consented to give evidence today to the House of Commons Culture Media Sport Committee via video-link from New York. He used to be Executive Chairman of News International, which owns the Murdoch newspapers in Britain, until December 2007, when he was promoted CEO of Dow Jones in New York, after Murdoch’s News Corp acquired it in their takeover of the Wall Street Journal.

          He was, therefore, boss of Stuart Kuttner, Tom Crone and Andy Coulson, the management in charge of the News of the World when Royal Editor, Clive Goodman was jailed along with private investigator Glenn Mulcaire for tapping the phones of members of Prince Charles’ household.

          As executive chairman at the time, he was as responsible as any of his subordinates for what went on – unless, of course, they knew more than he did about those events. But one of the committee today pointed out the striking similarity in the way Hinton answered the questions put to him and the efforts of his former executives. The number of times he shrugged his shoulders and declared he was “sorry but he just didn’t know”, or that, “given how busy he was at the time, he just couldn’t remember”, almost rivalled Andy Coulson’s performance in front of the same committee in July, when he declared he had no recollection of his paper publishing a transcript of a telephone message left by Prince William for Prince Harry, reproduced verbatim on p.7 of the Screws with a strap across the front page.

          However, Les did let slip one little droplet of truth.

          Asked, ‘Did it surprise you that Andy Coulson didn’t know that a voicemail had been hacked?’ he answered, ‘He might well have known.’

          Thanks, Les. That’s what we’ve all been saying.

          But, on the other hand, Les didn’t know why News International had given Gordon Taylor and his associates a million quid in damages, although he was very much in charge when the events that led to it took place.

          That is so surprising, you could be forgiven for thinking Les was being a tad disingenuous. And when asked who had given him the advice that NI should give a substantial settlement to a journalist who had been dismissed for plainly breaking his contract, or how Clive Goodman had been able to afford a top QC to fight his case (when he’d already pleaded guilty), he’d jolly well forgotten again.

          If I were a share-holder in News Corps, I think I’d be very worried that one of its principal assets is being run by a man who has lost his capacity to remember such important details.

Popularity: 2% [?]