The Venezualan Experience. Dudamel .. one hot Dude.

We are indebted to the excellent (and vastly underheard and underrated Rod Sharp on BBC Five's Up all Night) for flagging up President Chavez's concerns about 15 year old Venezulean girls on their "quinesa" or 15th birthday being given breast implants by their parents.

Unless hearing is going the way of Alzheimers, the report said that 400,000 Venezuelean women (Total pop. 26Mn !) seek breast "augmentation" every year at a cost of upwards of 2,000 Yanqui dollars a time... which seems highly improbable...but should do wonders for the tourist trade ... especially tha sad bastards who sit up all night or drive lorries up the M1 listening to this.

Chavez himself reminisces fondly about attending past beauty pageants. But when his televised speech to the United Nations interrupted the September 2005 Miss Venezuela broadcast for 15 minutes, hundreds of angry viewers in Caracas protested by banging on pots from their windows, blowing whistles and even firing guns into the air.

At the same time the child prodigies of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela will make their Bay Area debut(Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco - next up San Francisco, Boston and Carnegie Hall) led by Venezuelan wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel, 26 and the most talked-about conductor on the planet.

Those who have followed the ecstatic response in Europe have watched the superstars fighting to conduct them including Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado and Esa-Pekka Salonen all who praise the youhful (and hey girls glamorous)Dudamel.

When Salonen leaves the Los Angeles Philharmonic,in 2 years Dudamel is lated to will take his place in Walt Disney Concert Hall.

For 30 years, Venezuela's music education program, known as "El Sistema" ( the state funded program that puts an instrument in any child's hand by the age of two)- or the "National Network of Youth and Children Orchestras of Venezuela" - has turned tens of thousands of youngsters into classical players. (Chavez takes the credit but it started long before he was elected) Dudamel the dynamic, rock-star-y conductor and the Simón Bolívar band (one of about 200 youth orchestras in the country today) are its shining stars.

The Department of Health in Venezuela devoted 29 Mn. Yanqui dollars this year to the program whichproduced 250,000 students who practice or play two to three hours a day ans 30 professional orchestras have sprung up to accommodate them, and 125 youth orchestras.

For a taste, go to www.youtube.com, search on "Gustavo Dudamel," and take your pick of videos: The wunderkind conducts Mahler, Shostakovich or Brahms. Or do an Internet search for "Gustavo Dudamel mambo proms," and click on: "Video gtltornt9 - gtltornt, 9 - Dailymotion Share Your Videos."

Girls, get ya tits out... this Dudamel is one hot Dude ... and he has dimples!

PS. Didn't George Best claim Miss Venezuela (AKA Miss World that year ?) was the best score he ever made ?

Youthful gunslingers in London not new or novel

Derek Bentley (aged 19 , illiterate and mentally subnormal with a mental age of 11 see pic) and Christopher Craig (aged 16) armed with a revolver (Colt .45) broke into a London warehouse (Barlow & Parker's Warehouse, Tanworth Road, Croydon)on 2nd November 1952. They were seen and police were called.

DS Frederick Fairfax climbed on to the roof, and managed to grab Bentley. Craig shouted defiantly at the detective and Bentley managed to break Fairfax's grip. At this point, Bentley is supposed to have shouted "Let him have it Chris".(Bentley himself denied having used the words and a police witness later denied it was ever said.) Craig then fired the gun grazing Firfax's shoulder despite this Fairfax continued after Bentley and managed to finally arrest him.

Bentley told Fairfax that Craig had a Colt .45 and plenty of ammunition.

More police arrived including PC Miles (42) He was immediately shot in the head by Craig and fell dead. Craig wildly used up the magazine, jumped from the roof, badly injured himself and was arrested.

Even if guilty Craig was too young to hang but Bentley wasn't.

At the trial before the hanging Judge Goddard (in whose house Ziz lived as a student when it became a Hall of Residence in the 60's) the police seemed unsure how many shots were fired and by whom. A ballistics expert failed to positively identify Craig's gun as the weapon that fired the bullet that killed PC Miles. What was meant by Bentley's phrase "Let him have it Chris"? Did he mean that Craig was to give the gun to the officer and surrender? Did he mean that Craig was indeed to shot the officer?

Lord Goddard told the jury that, in law, Bentley was equally guilty of firing the shot.

The jury took just 75 minutes to find both Craig and Bentley guilty of PC Miles' murder. Due to his being below 18 at the time of the offence, Craig was sentenced to being detained at Her Majesty's Pleasure. Bentley was sentenced to death and hung at Wandsworth on 28th January 1953. Exceptionally in such a case, the jury added a plea for mercy along with the guilty verdict.

Christopher Craig served 10 years in prison before being released.

Fairfax was awarded the George Cross . In addition Police Constables Norman Harrison (London Gazette 6 January 1953 Page 167) and James McDonald (London Gazette 6 January 1953 Page 167) were awarded the George Medal, Police Constable Robert Jaggs the British Empire Medal and Police Constable Miles was posthumously awarded the Queen's Police Medal for Gallantry.

On 30th July 1998, the Court of Appeal overturned the controversial conviction of Derek Bentley . In an unprecedented and damning attack, the Lord Chief Justice, Lord Bingham, ruled that his predecessor and Bentley's trial judge, Lord Chief Justice Goddard, had denied Bentley "that fair trial that is the birthright of every British citizen." In a 52-page judgment, Lord Bingham placed the blame for the miscarriage of justice with Lord Goddard. Describing Lord Goddard as "blatantly prejudiced", Lord Bingham concluded that he had misdirected the jury and that in his summing-up had put unfair pressure on the jury to convict. The court also granted a full posthumous pardon to Bentley.

His sister Iris who had relentellsly campaigned on behalf of her brother died in 1997 and was never to learn of his pardon - although hinted at by Michael Howard when he was Home Secretary, who said Bently should never have been hanged.

Benedict Birnberg, a long-time lawyer for the Bentleys said the judgment was also a condemnation of the Home Office which repeatedly refused to re-open the case.

He told the BBC: "None of the fresh evidence which was put to them had any bearing on the matter.

"This was consistent with their attitude all the way through."

Anthony Samuelson a young QC at the trial said after the apeal : "It is not a question of whether he was the most frightening judge in this century. You have got to go back to Bloody Judge Jeffreys to find his like."

Craig and Bentley ... by the way .. were not black.