I was on a train on Tuesday when a small boy, aged about five, sitting opposite with his mother said “I love you Mum”. There had been no preamble, no apparent context, he just came out with it. His mother told him she loved him too and instinctively I smiled. It was a joyous moment for them and, I admit, for me too.

Three hours later we sat down to watch Our Girls, BBC1’s astonishingly moving, powerful and ultimately uplifting hour-long documentary about the three little girls murdered in last year’s savagery in Southport. Their names and beautiful, smiling, innocent faces have been embedded on Britain’s collective conscience since the horrendous events of July 29, 2024; Alice, Elsie and Bebe. 

This programme, which should win every award going, was never mawkish. it simply told the story of how their parents have coped, by building charities in the daughters’ names, helping the little primary schools they attended and running the London Marathon to raise both money and awareness.

I found it all the more poignant, not just because of that moment on the train but because I had recently finished watching Prisoner 951, the dramatised series of the capture and jailing of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. 

She was seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard when she was visiting her parents in 2016 and imprisoned for six years. She had brought her 22-month-old daughter Gabriella to Tehran to celebrate the Iranian New Year with her parents and when leaving to return home in London was held on trumped up charges of plotting to overthrow the Iranian state.

And just when she thought she was about to be freed a year later, Nazanin was further charged with running a BBC Persian Service online course educating journalists on how to spread propaganda against the country and its appalling collection of mad mullahs. 

The truth is she worked for a charity but somehow Iran’s police had come up with this new charge.

What could possibly have given them this idea? Why, step forward Boris Johnson, that ramshackled, lying, turd of a man who told a Parliamentary committee that she was teaching journalists in the country. He was Foreign Secretary at the time and, as a result of his characteristic distance from the facts, Nazanin was thrown back into a stinking cell, finally to be released in 2022 when the British government paid Iran the £400 million it had owed Iran since the Blair years.

Nobody comes out of this appalling affair well apart from Nazanin (and Narges Rashidi, the brilliant actress who played her), her husband Richard and her parents and those who campaigned tirelessly for her freedom. 

Certainly not any of our many governments this century who never admitted to the debt (and still don’t), and obviously not the ghastly freaks who govern Iran.

The series was as much about a mother’s unconditional love for her child as it was a Middle Ages regime caring nothing about freedom and truth, just merciless power against all odds. It showed many of the ordinary, decent Iranians who want change but cannot leave. When my daughters were small we had an Iranian au pair whom they adored. Today one of their best and oldest friends is an Iranian who, with her brother, has made a huge success of her life since fleeing the ayatollahs.

It proves, if proof were needed, that it is leaders of countries, not the people of those countries, who are bad. In the main, humanity is good. All the Russians I have met have been delightful without exception, so too most Americans. And though three Iranians is a very small sample, the same goes for them. But all are governed by mad tyrants. 

Donald Trump in particular because he is changing, in front of our eyes, a democratically-elected country which has done so much good, into an authoritarian state ruled by a Mafia-style family and assorted billionaires with no knowledge or interest in proper government, only in  making themselves richer. 

Trump admires Vladimir Putin because he is a strongman and despises Europe for being weak. In his latest outpouring he is clearly on the verge of abandoning Ukraine to the Kremlin and says he wants what he calls the ‘patriotic parties’ to govern Europe.

By this he means the far right in Germany, Italy, France and the UK and while the headbangers in the Neasden Omnibus canteen might be thrilled, a Farage government is the last thing Britain needs. Look at the way its councillors have screwed up Kent and imagine that on a larger scale. 

Our present government is weak but is it any worse than the ones run by multiple Tory PMs for 14 years? God help us if we turn to Reform and the spiv Farage and dance to Trump's mad tune. 

We are better than that.

*****

Still on trains, I can be in Westminster in just 30 minutes which, under proposals by the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, might entitle MPs with constituencies just half an hour's travel from the Commons an allowance of £30,000 for a crash-pad or hotel expenses. 

What absolute nonsense, Members earn £93,000-a-year plus expenses for staff and offices, they enjoy subsidised food and drink in the Palace of Westminster and can claim for foreign trips and when they lose their seats are invariably are offered lucrative directorships or consultancies.

When I was on the Express my journey door-to-door took about 80 minutes. I used the time in the morning to read the papers and on the return journey either  reading or simply relaxing. Or sometimes snoozing off a long lunch. MPs with constituencies more than two hours away should be able to claim for staying in London under current arrangements but not say, Epsom or Epping.

And anyway, good luck finding even the tiniest flat in SW1 for £30 k a year. 

*****

AND FINALLY

A friend who shall remain anonymous because he is very well known tells me he volunteered to write a speech for his wife on the occasion of her award of an honorary doctorate from a university. “I thought I would give ChatGPT a go and I was rather pleased with the result.

“The chancellor of the university got up to speak first and I was mortified to hear that half of what I had included in my wife’s speech was in his. Word for word! He had been at it too”. 

ALAN FRAME

12 December 2025