Climate change protesters meet to plan possible protest that could bring London to a standstill this Summer.
Protest might start with a camp at Heathrow, which might then travel down the M4 to central London and probably converge in Hyde Park.
There could also be a flotilla.
The reporter is speaking live from somewhere in Heathrow, the stage of possible protests.
We are shown the document where these probabilities are discussed.
Probably.
Next news story: the Southeast might see an increase in the number of incinerators to deal with the problem of lack of available space at landfills. There is just too much rubbish...
...how appropriate.
(Anyway, local activists don't want the incinerators either. Like those in East London who don't want a new huge Royal Depo on a brownfield site - by brownfiled I mean a wharehouse ruin overgrown with weeds - where rare - rare for London that is - species of spiders and other insects breed. It's a brownfield site for heaven's sake...!)
P.S. On a different, but non unrelated subject, I have just been told I'll be going to Mozambique to do some work related to the environment, land use and possible effects of climate change. Hooray!
I haven't really been following the story of the disappearance of nine-year-old Shannon Matthews but either something is wrong in the news, or no one makes sense anymore.
In this article in the Mail we are told she might have fallen in the wrong hands and police are now treating the enquiry as a murder investigation.
However, further down, we are told "a man helping in the search for missing schoolgirl Shannon Matthews is believed to have been crucified outside his house just yards from the nine-year-old's family home"
"A neighbour of the 'crucified' man said she found him singing 'Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ' as he lay nailed to the cross.
"She said: 'I was leaving my neighbour's house at 11.45pm when I heard him singing. I told him to get up, thinking he was drunk, but he cried 'I can't'.
"She claims that the victim said somebody had dragged him out of his house and done it to him, with locals claiming the attack was related to the hunt for the missing girl.
"But police have denied any link to the Shannon Matthews case, adding that the incident was minor and no-one had been arrested" (is it normal for people to get crucified outside their homes these days?...)
Now, there may be no relation between the two cases, but with a man crucified "just yards" from Matthews' house (and with the cases of bus stop stalker Levi Bellfield and Mark Dixie in a week), something is rotten somewhere.
(and by the way, is Jersey's reputation as a "tourist destination" at any risk as a result of the current abuse "crisis" or is it still safe for families from the mainland to visit?)
I mean simply to highlight how the implications of the perception and fear of crime.
Liquids were banned from hand luggage (no point in explaining the lady at the x-ray machine that the 150ml tub of wax - hardly a liquid - was practically empty, containing perhaps less than 25ml - the rule was 100ml max, and that was that! no point either in disposing of lighters and sharp objects either because I took them with me through security all the time without being stopped and they were widely available anyway at Boots and kiosks at the duty free end), heavily armed police and tanks were deployed to airports to safeguard our sandwiches, protests were banned from the vicinity of Westminster (no point in protesting there about anything anyway - no one really listens, not even a million on the streets nearby), etc. etc.
So, Prince Harry is in Afghanistan. Serving (did reluctant NATO countries need better evidence than this to prove US and British forces really are desperate for additional forces in Helmand...!?).
Serving Secretly (obviously not secret enough...). On the front line. Since December.
And apparently 500 metres (what happened to yards?) from Taliban fighters.
"Chief of the General Staff and professional head of the British Army, General Sir Richard Dannatt, was furious the strictly-enforced embargo had been broken" (read here)
The story was first leaked by New Idea. Back in January. Everyone says how naughty of New Idea to leak this story. For those like me who had never heard of new idea, here's why. New Idea is an Australian women's magazine that "provides entertainment, information and ultimately enjoyment and satisfaction to Australian women".
Anyway, a US blog (yes, a blog, or more precisely a news aggregation web site - the Drudge Report) "picked up the story and broadcast it around the world, after a German newspaper ran a piece on Thursday" (golly they're slow...)
Dannatt didn't mince his words: "This is in stark contrast to the highly-responsible attitude that the whole of the UK print and broadcast media, along with a small number of overseas, who have entered into an understanding with us over the coverage of Prince Harry on operations. After a lengthy period of discussion between the MoD and the editors of regional, national and international media, the editors took the commendable attitude to restrain their coverage".
Sky News and practically everyone broadcaster and newspaper in the UK thought, the hell with it, if it's been printed on a news aggregator and an Australian women's magazine (never doubt the power of the women's magazine with audiences in terror training camps...) we might as well print and broadcast the full thing; at least it wasn't all that secret to them anyway.
A bit naive of the MoD to think the media - all of them - would honour some sort of news blackout agreed by British media. If it was agreed only with British media and only British media knew about it, where did the leak originated from?
Sky and the BBC were happy to tut-tut the behaviour of foreign media (err... the accents may be estuary English but isn't the station almost practically foreign anyway?) and what do we get next in the news?
A report on how the way the UK media is reporting the Jersey child abuse story risks tainting the image of the island forever...
Just one more thing. "It's no great holiday resort apparently but I really look forward to going there. It is winter, which is a slight disappointment, it is just going to be a little bit cold, a bit snowy, but at least we might have a white Christmas", said the prince before leaving in December, dismissing "bullet magnet" fears.
Today we hear the interview recorded some time ago where he says at least the weather is a lot better "and I hear the weather in Britain is poo!"
That's just no way of treating British weather...!
I got home from work a little (well, more than a little...) frustrated today, not as much from work as from people at work (and nothing to do with having turned up at 10 a.m. by mistake when I wasn't supposed to start until 1 p.m....).
There is nevertheless nothing like a real mean-spirited kill-joy to help me thicken my skin and fight excess displays of emotion (all very un-English and unsightly, and traits I had over the years worked hard on perfecting but which have almost lapsed since I began working alongside "foreigners" like me - which, for the record, and for those who insist on getting all worked up about the opinions Brits express of those who move here - tend to be a lot more impolite, insensitive, uninformed and proud than the natives; naturally this is a crude generalization, but I hope I can get away with it because I'm not generalizing about "a" people and I have my experience with English people to compare with and corroborate what I just said).
Anyway, this rant came about because where I work (and this is where things begin to make less sense in Britain - although I guess it's part of the policy of solving problems by shifting them on to someone else's desk or to keep them out of sight long enough until they disappear by some divine intervention) should someone become a problem, they are either sent on an attachment scheme to another department (to lighten up things at the source) or offer them a good enough pay package to entice them to leave "voluntarily" - even though they are blatantly the cause of serious problems and in almost any other country in Europe at least there would have been enough evidence to justify sacking them (the irony of capitalism in addition to the power of some unions, who in most cases I know have always jumped to the defence of the most unashamed and unafraid prevaricators).
And then I read in the news that "Stephen Nelson, chief executive of BAA, which operates the much-criticised Heathrow airport, is to step down".
My first thought: how much is he being paid "to leave"?
Before I got the answer I found out the name of the man who is replacing him - former Severn Trent and Hays chief executive Colin Matthews - and that "the new chief executive will be forced to consider drastic measures to reduce its £10 billion debt".
Shocking figures?
Well, a little while ago I got the answer for how much BAA will be writing on Mr Nelson's payoff cheque (look away now if you're of a nervous disposition): £1 million, at least, that is...
Still trying to recover from the shock, I decided to open today's post and among the bills I found a leaflet from SAS, the Scandinavian Airlines advertising their latest joint-venture.
Under this new promotion anyone who is a member of their frequent traveller scheme an who makes four journeys in one month on Economy Plus (posher economy) or Business class will be entitled to £10 vouchers to shop in John Lewis. However, to be entitled to these vouchers card holders are asked to create an account and follow 3 or 4 "easy" steps. My question is this: four trips on Economy Plus and Business will cost a minimum of £1,000; these card holders who travel Economy Plus and Business may well shop at John Lewis, but why on Earth would anyone with their spending power bother to redeem a £10 voucher from John Lewis? and asking them to follow a few "easy" steps and asking them to follow a few "easy" steps too many! and I wonder how much SAS spent on the glossy advertising? Anyway, my point is: whoever came up with this advertising campaign was undoubtedly very well rewarded...
Good night (and hopefully no tremors tonight - the irony being I called mother to tell her what had happened and she laughed. The reason: she lives here!)
The tremors lasted about 15-20 seconds. I'd finished the previous post at 00h45m and gone to bed at 00h55m. I decided to read to help me sleep and a couple of minutes later the bed started shaking slightly at regular short intervals. I asked my partner to stop moving and was told to stop joking. Instants later it felt like I was lying on a water bed!
First I thought the air conditioning that runs on the outside wall was about to burst, then realized walls don't usually shake like that.
I got up, checked the news and nothing. Tried the British Geological Survey web site, but it was fast asleep...
Got dressed,went out and asked the first person I saw whether they had felt anything. They thought I was mad and left me. Couldn't see anyone apart from the usual inebriated late-nighters and decided to walk around for a bit.
That's when the ghost theory sank in. Maybe ghosts exist and whatever it was was waiting for me to go to bed!
Back in the haunted house I switched on the TV and finally there it was, on Sky... proof ghosts don't exist.
Phew....!
4.7 in the Richter scale apparently (or so says the US National Earthquake Information Centre; always a safe bet; and reassuring too - for us anyway...- to find out Indonesia has felt 12 tremors in the last 4 days and Greece 5 in the last 48 hours...)
Ninety million passengers by 2012, 84 shops, 64 restaurants and "a baggage handling system said to be state-of-the-art" (do I find a hint of jealousy?)
Norman Foster vs Richard Rogers.
I did find this passage about Heathrow's new Terminal 5 a little surprising: "new security measures - including the fingerprint scanning of all passengers - could cause hold-ups"...
"Fingerprint scanning of all passengers"? Did I miss something or is this the Daily Mail just winding us up?
Replace Berlusconi with any other defendant in an alleged fraud trial and you get the picture. Actually I'm sure anyone had got it by now, apart from the Italian electorate that is...
Nevertheless, with Bush about to go (even though there is always the possibility of getting McCain in) and left almost only with Sarkozy, Berlusconi is always a welcome addition.
(OK, that is not the real Berlusconi, but a double who did a series of fake videos; but it managed to fool thousands of Italians!)
The news is "Turkey is preparing to publish a document that represents a revolutionary reinterpretation of Islam - and a controversial and radical modernisation of the religion".
According to Fadi Hakura, an expert on Turkey, "Turkey is doing nothing less than recreating Islam - changing it from a religion whose rules must be obeyed, to one designed to serve the needs of people in a modern secular democracy."
Which sort of leaves last week's decision by Turkish President Abdullah Gul to sign into law "constitutional amendments which allow women to wear Islamic headscarves at universities" a little bit at odds with that same secular society...
News that Pakistan was responsible for a near global blackout on Youtube, and most likely than not deliberately is more than anything else annoying, be it the Danish cartoons or a trailer of Geert Wilders' new film the likely causes of the move by the Pakistani authorities (which like trannyfattyacid points out, shows the true colours of the newly-elected liberal government of that democracy-seeking country...) Perhaps the Pakistanis should learn from their friends at Hamas TV, in the Palestinian territories, and fight back using the same forum.
Remember the bunny, Assud, who replaced his "martyred" brother Nahoul the Bee, who in turn, replaced Farfour, the Hamas mouse, killed by the Jews they all promised to eat?
Well, Assud is back and not only does he want to eat Jews, he also wants to boycott Danish products (shouldn't be too difficult since pork is Denmark's biggest export) and kill Danes; because those "cowardly infidels" because they "don't know the mercy in Allah's heart":
This attempt by Pakistan (and apparently by other liberals too such as Turkey and Thailand) to block Youtube reminds me however of how commentary on some videos (like this one) gets blocked. There you are, ready to leave your rant and boom, we get told that "adding comments has been disabled for this video"... who decides,when and why? (perhaps in this case it was the French trying to protect their language or such like...)
Anyway, always looking forward to the next update on The Office of Tony Blair's web site, I find out Mr Blair has been to the city of Nablus (on 7th February) "to see the progress the Palestinians have made in improving their security capability", so that "business in the West Bank could continue to grow".
And should we want to learn more about Mr Blair's busy pursuit of peace in the Middle East, we get a link to... The Independent's take (briefing?) on the visit!
I know Beckham is desperate to get his 100th international cap, but...
All eyes are now on Capello. Will he or won't he (...risk his reputation and pay check)?
Anyway, Sarah Brown couldn't confirm the dates of the visit due to security concerns.
"Security" concerns?... Over what?
Perhaps PR bloopers? After all it's his wife Sarah who's the PR expert.
And talking of busy bees, a friend of the Beckhams says "they don't seem likely friends but the Browns have a lot of time for the Beckhams"... are we talking of the same prime minister who was too busy to travel to Lisbon to sign the EU Treaty (and ended up missing the ceremony and signing it alone)?
French President Nicolas Sarkozy "has been caught on camera swearing at a member of the crowd at the annual farming fair in Paris" (read more here)
"Get lost then you bloody idiot, just get lost":
But, alas, Sarkozy is no Prescott:
With nearly seven years of Sarkozy ahead of us, the high probability of a Berlusconi comeback, the surprise factor of "the audacity of hope" or a McCain win in the States (?) - there's only the cherry missing on the cake: President Blair, of Europe.
"The OECD estimates that 1.1 million highly skilled Britons - more than one in ten of the total - are now living overseas."
And what is the percentage of the non-skilled ones living abroad?
Anyway the reasons we are told are: "the coarsening of British society, the rudeness and the aggression on our unsafe streets, the dead hand of welfarism, hospitals that make you sick, not better", etc.
But above, all: "that unchecked immigration over the past decade is creating a country many Britons no longer feel comfortable in".
So, uncomfortable with foreigners at home, Brits are deserting the country to live amongst them somewhere else?
Could the Telegraph be one of the first victims of the brain drain?
Further to my newly-discovered TV fest/quest, I thought someone might appreciate this highlight (apparently part of an evening on the Tory opposition)
I suspect it might be footage aired to exhaustion, but perhaps worth a watch, if nothing else for the entertainment value.
It's on tomorrow, on BBC4 at 9 p.m.
Meanwhile I was rather alarmed this morning at finding what looks like an increasing amount of white hairs around the crown of my head (but made sure I didn't pluck any out since my mother and great-aunt used to say that if I pulled one, eleven new ones would grow to replace it...).
Could the white hairs (even though I still have a few years to go to the big 4-0) and this TV revisiting be in any way related?...
There are some terms in the English language that I really don't understand.
While some Serbs set fire to the embassies of the countries who "betrayed" them over Kosovo (I can't avoid getting flashes of the old Roman Empire, the great wars and former empires nor stop wondering about the real goals of the most fervent Europhiles) I keep hearing reports saying how "non-essential staff" have been evacuated from Belgrade.
If they are not essential, how come they were there in the first place?
A bit like Belgium; she was without a government for six month after the July 2007 election impasse and is, since December, on a 3-month caretaker term.
Still, the beer kept flowing in the bars and the country hasn't collapsed yet.
I've just finished watching a brilliant (despite the doomsday score) BBC4 documentary called "Jet Stream and Us" (you can watch it here)
The best thing about this film is that it questioned the recent "certainties" about climate change and defended the idea of more research into the apparent fluctuations in the Jet Stream to make us understand better the changes in climate patterns before we invest more on fighting "global warming".
I've always been interested in the Jet Stream, and even though much of the physical subject matter covered in the programme felt already quite familiar, it was nonetheless broached in a fresh way.
We learnt that, despite the deeply ingrained myth of the low IQ and attention-threshold of US audiences, they are said to feel a great deal more comfortable than their British counterparts in accepting technical weather terms interspersed in their weather forecasts.
Perhaps that has something to do with a story told in the first part of the documentary.
To start with, the knowledge we today have of the Jet Stream is relatively new, dating back to World War II.
One of the first encounters with the Jet Stream phenomenon occurred during the high-altitude precision bombing over Tokyo by US planes.
Ignorant of the sheer force of such winds, pilots didn't understand why they kept overshooting targets; and the last thing US war planes wanted was to bomb the Imperial Palace or the sacred city of Kyoto (funny how the weather became to be associated with the weather...)
Flying against the Jet Stream on the other hand, and with rudimentary or no radio navigation systems in place, pilots would sometimes believe they were approaching their destination and in fact flying to their deaths and crashing against mountain tops.
The Japanese though, armed with more knowledge of these weather phenomena devised the balloon bomb attacks on US territory, since they didn't have sufficiently-advanced planes capable of reaching US mainland.
Of the approximately 9,000 bomb-carrying fire balloons released to America, only 1,000 actually reached the mainland (causing only six deaths, unluckily children, in Oregon) and instead of creating havoc, they were either captured or shot down. This recurrent link between ingenious warfare and acquired scientific and technological knowledge has always fascinated me; thus, I guess, my obsession when young with films like War Games and a powerful machine that acquires human traits and spirals out of control (perhaps not as distant a reality as we thought since fantasy might become reality sooner than we thought, more precisely in 2029, but with a twist: machines will achieve human-level artificial intelligence but rather by merging machines and humans, in other words by inserting tiny robots in people's brains to, we are told, "make people more intelligent" - alhtough isn't that a bit like competing in the Olympics with performance-enhancing drugs? I can a whole new social dimension at parties, trying to establish who's wearing a chip and who's not...)
News the US has shot down a "spy satellite" is making things even more interesting, although I suspect this was just a very good PR stunt. A few weeks ago we had this dying satellite ("the size of a small bus") going out of control - you wouldn't want that one on your soup bowl... - next we get space war theories.
Anyway, back to the weather and how phenomena like the Jet Stream could be causing changes in global weather patterns.
I mention this because a few hours earlier I'd watched another documentary on the BBC (as I've explained on a previous post, I recently and accidentally found out that unbeknownst to me I had access to all sorts of TV channels on my flashy, but until now, seldom used TV - so I'm making up for lost time...) about how the islands of Tuvalu may be about to become one of the first victims of global warming and rising sea levels.
The plea of its people was put against the backdrop of the "King Tide". We were shown pictures of a flooded island where salt water is slowly making life impossible in that small nation in the Pacific (asked if she was going to stay in the islands for the rest of her life, a young girl answered with an air of surprise that she obviously wasn't because the country had no future against the waves; asked the same question, a perspiring prime minister said he was going to fight that prediction and added he was pretty confident that the islands were not going to be submerged - how? once richer nations decided to save it - which looking at the fate of other similar remote islands which are or were once part of colonial empires, some not even threatened with rising sea levels, doesn't augur well for Tuvaluans...)
(on that, we were told how Taiwan funded the construction of the local parliament in its global attempt at turning public sympathies to its cause - a story repeated around the globa, in many small nations, mainly island states which can get them UN votes; a very much forgotten story these days, with China's ascendancy; which means the Taiwanese migh well be the ones financing the giant wall around Tuvalu...)
Nevertheless, before anyone decides to spend their money saving the flooding island, perhaps they would now like to look at the Jet Stream (there are two, one in the Northern hemisphere, one equatorial), since we now know that the Jet Stream fluctuates and it looks like it is adopting new patterns.
(Let's not forget the biggest blooper of all and the unfortunate face of public disaster when it comes to getting the facts wrong)
Yet, man-induced or not, the changes taking place in glaciars and the poles is not exactly encouraging.
Especially for Tuvalu (say the man living in London-on-Sea; at least it will make up for the exctinction of Lidos in this country...)
I was amused yesterday when I saw Prince Alois of Liechestein refute the German government's accusation that the principality was fuelling tax evasion in Germany and that its lack of cooperation was turning that small stretch of land into one of the most secretive tax havens in the world. (I was amused and amazed, because how often does one see a royal answer publicly to journalists' questions, especially the only absolute monarch in Europe - and note that I didn't use the word surviving, since absolutism is a more or less recent addition to the small nation)
Germany has apparently counter-attacked by using spies to buy information on Cd's (here's another country with a digital information problem at hand...) on German businessmen clients that have bank accounts there.
The Crown Prince argues the problem is not Liechtenstein but "Germany's own punitive tax system": "I think the only real long-term solution for Germany is to change their tax system to introduce an easy, simple-to-understand and just tax system. I think, then, people are happy to pay", he told the BBC, and insists his principality has done a great deal to clean up its image as a financial centre (notice the lack of an adjective between "as a..." and "...financial").
Interestingly the Prince mentions attempts at getting a clean slate since it was Liechtenstein's "rent-a-state" tourism initiative a few year's ago that propelled the quiet principality to the world stage. At the time the scheme was dubbed here in Britain as the "'rent-a-count" initiative. It was necessary to explain there no prince included to squash false hopes that minor members of the royal family might be included in the price.
According to the scheme interested parties would given keys to the capital, Vaduz, and offered "team-building" and "tourist activities", including tobogganing - and OK no prince, but full access to one of the country's royal castles doesn't sound that bad! (however, would we have to bring our own bedlinen?)
A few (but only a few I suspect) complained, saying they were not for lease. An angry Liechtensteiner even complained ''this whole thing has a very bad taste for me because it shows that we are not taking ourselves seriously as a country" (I'm going to abstain myself from commenting on serious nations because - as you will understand later - I don't want to ruin my employment chances...)
Under the scheme (which won the author a deserved Ig Nobel Prize) "companies will also be able to temporarily 'brand' buildings and institutions with their own logos. ''This allows people to identify themselves with the surroundings and the people'' said Karl Schwarzler, chief executive of Xnet, the company in charge of the project'.
...At last, an opportunity to let my imagination run free, after all those childhood years watching Heidi, Peter and Heidi's grandfather in Maienfield (OK, Maienfield is in Switzerland, but it does border Liechtenstein, and Switzerland fits well on the debate around the notion of serious nations and clean financial centres).
Although I can see the Bilderberg Group renting Liechtenstein on a regular basis for events, I don't see why my boss can't suggest swapping the cheap restaurant round the corner for Vaduz as the venue of our yearly day out or Christmas party.
The rural principality (funny it still calls itself rural when 2000 figures show only 1.3 per cent of the population is employed in the agricultural sector) is said to reek: of money and manure.
I'm not so keen on the latter, but I could easily overcome the stench of the former...
And thanks to the "unsurpassed cultural and economic development" the principality boasts, one can easily access the many recruitment agencies in a country of only 32,000...!
I wasn't sure what to get but settled for a relatively small but HD-ready (whatever that means) model. I was told it came with freeview channels and I would be prepared for the big switch, when the plug is pulled on the analogue system and we will be left only with digital.
Since I don't usually encounter major problems setting up electronics I skipped the instructions manual, but was dumbfounded by the poor quality of the reception.
I was told my street had cable installed, and since our building was the last in our street the quality of the signal was slightly poorer.
By poorer I mean unwatchable.
Without hardly any terrestrial TV, let alone surplus freeview channels, I resigned to the fact that I wouldn't be watching any TV for the near future (not until, that is, I spent a few quid buying new cables and indoor aerials to try fixing the problem - in vain...)
Since we hardly watch TV at home it wasn't a huge problem. I was simply annoyed with the purchase of such an expensive item for no apparent reason.
I have since moved home - last December to be more precise - and tried the TV in the new flat, expectantly...
The problem persisted. I called the landlord to ask if there was any problem with the aerial. He came round to have a quick look at it and decided to call his son, better versed in today's gadgets to aski him to pay us a visit and have a look at it.
He turned up today.
He switched on the TV and the picture was suddenly clearer. We thought "amazing!"
Then I saw the Sky News logo on the screen. He asked us what was wrong with the TV.
Errr... apparently we only had to press the top button to the left of the ON/OFF switch button on the remote control...
I can't believe more than a year has passed and none of us had the brilliant idea of pressing that button...
I suddenly can see myself driving that bus that crashed onto the railway bridge in Camden...
Our shame made us part with a bottle of wine to make up for the journey the landlord's son had to endure (and the fact that I now have 100 new channels - although, I'm beginning to realize, mainly consisting of TV-sales and non-stop car crashes...)
It is "unacceptable" for President Ahmadinejad of Iran to use terms like "dirty microbe" and "savage animal" in reference to Israel, said the UN secretary general Ban Ki-Moon (read more here)
The commments came after Israel lodged a complaint about "Teeran's latest diatribe".
Apparently Mr Ahmadinejad told a crowd during a nationally-televised rally: "world powers have created a black and dirty microbe named the Zionist regime and have unleashed it like a savage animal on the nations of the region".
Should Mr Ahmadinejad feel like fulfilling his previous calls to eliminate Israel, and should he be looking to creative solutions, here's a suggestion from inside Israel:
About a week ago, "six people were injured when a double decker bus crashed into a railway bridge in north London" (read the story here)
You only have to take a quick look at the picture to see, without doubt, that the sides of the underpass do not allow room for a double-decker, unless the driver positions the vehicle right in the middle of the road (thus putting incoming traffic at danger).
A Transport for London spokesperson said "buses had been using the route under the arched bridge safely for 24 hours before the crash happened".
Which amounts to the same as saying the Titanic was sailing safely until it hit the iceberg...
The same spokesman added that "the route is a recognised diversion route and drivers know to drive straight through the middle."
Which, given what happened is a mistruth... unless he is trying to say his driver either doesn't know how to drive or read.
"There were road markings on the bridge and on the road telling drivers to keep to the middle, but I saw the bus go into the wall", said a witness.
If you think this is daft, I can give you at least two examples of how bus drivers operate in London.
I'm talking of incidents of a similar nature, rather than the dozens of times when I have come across drivers driving deliberately at 20mph and miss all the green lights only to call their superiors half way through to claim they are behind schedule and be let off early, thus cutting short the route and leaving us all stuck outside a bus stop in the middle of nowhere waiting for the next bus to complete our journeys (and even moan when you ask them to issue you a ticket saying you have already paid to avoid being charged a second time on the bus that follows...); or the opposite, when they are too late, have a traffic-free street ahead of them and speed past your bus stop without stopping, when you're all alone and have been waiting for hours, simply because they know they can (I once was victimised that way in Piccadilly Circus but managed to sprint faster than a drug-enhanced Chambers managing to catch the bus just before Park Lane and make a fool of myself in fron of the conductor - that was when you could still do this, before Ken Livingstone pulled the plug on the Routemaster - after correctly observing, in 2001, that "only some ghastly, dehumanised moron would want to get rid of the Routemaster"...!)
Anyway, back to my London bus stories.
When I lived near the Portobello Road I used to catch the infamous number 7 route. Sometimes the almost as infamous 52.
More than once on the 7 route the driver would drive by Ladbroke Road tube station and continue down Ladbroke Grove towards unknown northern territories, until someone - usually me (I guess everyone else on that bus was either a recently-arrived immigrant, a tourist or too drunk or high to pay any attention to the route) - point out the unusual diversion to an unapologetic driver. One once even refused to take passengers back, forcing them out of the bus before performing a short-cut to catch up with the correct route.
More exciting was the time a number 52 driver got lost in a diversion in Ladbroke Grove, missing his right turn and starting to drive deep into the narrow lanes of Notting Dale.
Inside the bus not a sould complained. I must point out that this time the bus was practically full.
I finally got up, approached the driver who took a lot of convinncing before admitting his mistake. I told him that had he driven a few more yeards he would be stuck on the next street, as the road kept getting narrower.
His solution: "will you get out of the bus and help me out turn ing this bus around?"
And so I did, by now all eyes set on this strange man, who had stopped their thus-far-moving vehicle and was now outside, in the dark, helping the driver manouever his double-decker.
He did eventually hit the kerb violently and at a considerable speed (for a reverse movement that is) shaking the bus perilously and making me think what an idiot that is for getting myself in a situation where I could end up overturning a bus and everyone else inside it (although later this feeling was offset by big party of aussie tourists who begged me not to leave the bus until they reached their destinations safe and sound...)
For a nation so obsessed with health and safety and scared of being sued (resulting in overzealous authorities cutting roads to the traffic for hours, if not days, everytime any miny minor thing takes place) I'm still amazed bus drivers still manage to crash into walls.
At least in the Routemaster we could still count, if not on another brain, at least on the second pair of eyes of the conductor.
(Although, to be fair, a little bus crash into a railway bridge is nothing compared to the most infamous hotspots, such as Nigeria, Peru, the matatus in Kenya, India and Pakistan and any of the Caribeen Islands)
Anyway, I'm sure Transport for London and the bus operator have launched an investigation and, who knows, perhaps the driver fell indisposed. Or perhaps just needed a new pair of glasses.
I thought I had overcome my obsessive compulsion for purchasing tickets for anything - from shows to flights, exhibitions and even free events...
I've been known to buy tickets for concerts two years in advance.
For a while this mania had subsided.
Well, it's giving signs of wanting to come back. With a vengeance.
Help!... (maybe it's time to get a cat...)
I looked up a list of manias and obsessions to find out whether this particular one of mine had been recorded. Couldn't find it. Should have remembered, however, that I'm also a lapsed hypochondriac.
Even though I doubt I shall be getting epomania any time soon.
Natasha Kaplinsky is about to make TV history on Monday, by becoming "the first £1m newsreader and the first with her name in the title".
But Kaplinsky remains adamant her decision to leave the BBC had nothing to do with money.
Money motivations I would have understood. So, what could it be then?
Kaplinsky:
"The programme name was not my idea and I feel a bit nervous about it. I certainly don't plan to stamp my personality all over the news".
So, how...?
"They showed me some images and asked which did I prefer and I said, ‘You know what? I should not be in this meeting because I hate everything and I think looking at pictures of yourself is just vile."
Kaplinsky:
"The money side of things I’ve always found very uncomfortable. Chris [Shaw, Five’s Head of News] would probably hate me for saying this, but if they’d halved the money I probably still would have done the job. It absolutely wasn’t the money."
So, how...?
"Five seem to think I am (worth the money), but, no, how can anybody justify that? A dustman is worth £1m for cleaning up the rubbish, as far as I'm concerned, and a doctor is worth £20m for saving someone's life. It's just impossible to answer that question."
Kaplinsky:
"Sounds like a massive ego trip. That was not part of it, either. I didn’t even know that was part of the offer when it came and I feel a bit embarrassed about that too. Not just that, but it also puts a bit more pressure on me, you know, News with Natasha Kaplinsky. I’ve moved from a channel where I could touch six, seven, eight million people a night doing the Six or the Ten O’Clock News to a channel that is a relative minnow in the industry. It can’t be about wanting fame, can it?"
So, how...?
"The 'Spangles' nickname she earned after winning Strictly Come Dancing three years ago, which she hates, might even begin to fade". "I don’t think I’ll be out in my sequins on a Saturday night again and I certainly won’t be dancing any more", she says. "Five News offered me an opportunity I didn't think I would have at the BBC. A show is being created around me and I had never been on my own before."
Kaplinsky:
"Money is not a big thing in our family. It never has been".
So, how...?
Kaplinsky married a banker.
"Money was not an issue and I proved it by not taking the job for nearly three months. I needed a lot of persuasion!"
The question is (and let us not forget that the likes of Jonathan Ross - whose programme consists mainly of a series of lewd, crude and repetitive remarks to his attractive female guests - is on a £6m a year retainer) how come TV (and more to the point, public broadcaster wages) got to the state they are in?
But the fat cat pay culture is not exactly something we get to hear in the news, let alone to expect the government to act upon the rising gap.
Recently I've noticed that the space on the windows of recruitment agencies are taken up mostly by notes advertising kitchen staff vacancies.
Now I understand why. It is supposedly related to the lack of migrants from Bangladesh and Pakistan, a result of the government's tighening up immigration rules to reduce the numbers of unskilled immigrants (or potential terrorists, depending on your perspective) who come here to take the jobs of those who took the jobs from someone else before them...
I wonder if in France they call hspitality work "unskilled", but that really says a lot about how food is regarded in this country. At least until now, because the curry is at risk! (I'm serious about it, I love a good curry)
However, just wanted to point out that if unskilled Bangladeshi migrants, who want to come over here to work as chefs should not be allowed in because, among many other things, their poor command of the English language, how did Fabio Capello got through the net?
I know the ENO doesn't usually sell as well as its Covent Garden counterpart and was pretty much in the pits until its recent refurbishment, but audience figures be that bad that they need a real plug with an embarassing non-story on the BBC 6 o'clock news?
Throughout the London News programme we got to hear trailers and mentions of the most interactive opera performance ever, how a member of the audience ended up on stage and save the day - making us believe this was some kind of Paul Potts - only to find out that the member of the audience in question was not only the understudy, but also an understudy who knew the singer in the title role had been feeling indisposed and might pull out at the last minute.
How come this is news?
This gave nonetheless an added opportunity for the soft-spoken, tall and dashing hero of the night (who looked slightly embarassed by the bluntness of the non-story himself) to plug his appearance at another opera. Nothing new though (and it looks like any endorsement counts these days)
But hey, what's news today anyway?(the second headline of the national news was the conclusion of the Maccas' divorce proceedings...)
Not unexpected either: the response of Lee Jasper, the London Mayor's senior race relations advisor to his standing down over a cash scandal (respnse which echoes Ken Livingstone's) - "I am not being hounded out of my job because of racist lies and smears. I am not capitulating to racism. I never do".
...And furthermore what about balanced reporting on Heathrow?
We hear that all three mayoral candidates oppose the construction of a third runway at Heathrow. We get only to see Red Ken visiting and being kissed on the cheeks by some suburban friend in Hounslow or whereabouts. The only anti-runway voice we get to hear is of an old long-term immigrant who doens't want to leave her house, even if offered compensation, because she has her dead husband's ashes in the garden and is used to the house. Straight away we get to hear not one, but two long pro-runway stances. One saying most people will accept the money and dozens of new jobs will be created, the other saying Heathrow is good for business. Even when the presenter on the studio asked a question in the lines of "but it's not just the people in the vicinity of the airport who will be affected by the additional air traffic, it's the rest of London too" the reply was, of course, because businesses, jobs and the economy will be at risk if the runway is not built!! and I thought the presenter meant the noise levels from planes flying either too early in the morning and too late in the evening was making it unbearable to more Lond0ners than just those next to the airport... I should have guessed, with all that red in the studio...
By the way, will Northern Rock be getting a new look now that it's in El Gordo's hands?
P.S. And since we're on El Gordo, I couldn't resist drawing your attention to the poor geography skills of this government. I'm not talking of anywhere outside the UK, I wouldn't expect that much, but regional geography. I'm talking of course the fate of Newcastle-under-Lyme now being forced to ay back the unspent share of £2.8m in grants awarded to the city by mistake.
Whitehall officials mistook it with Newcastle upon Tyne...!
Now that it knows which one is which the Communities Department says it was "taking steps to ensure this does not happen again and working closely with the councils involved"....
Which bit didn't they get and have to work hard on?
With glorious weather such as the one we've been lucky to enjoy in the last few days and with a weekend to spare I thought it would be a crime to stay home and just stick to the Sunday Matinee on TV.
So I decided to go for a stroll without a map and enjoy a bit of London at its best - free from the crowds and the hustle and bustle of the city.
Armed only with a small bag (to store some of the delicious rye bread the shop round the corner makes and which one has to get early before it sells out), I walked in the direction of Fleet Street.
The first call and big surprise was to happen only a few minutes into my journey.
I'd heard of Lincoln's Inn Fields - the largest public square in London and, allegedly thought to be one of the inspirations for Central Park in New York - but had never set foot on it, despite having passed practically by it every day for a while when I used to live in Bloomsbury.
It's right beside Kingsway and among its many wonderful buildings is the Sir John Soanes museum. The square was practically empty, apart from a young family also enjoying the early Sunday; apparently the best time of the week since, I'm told, the square and its gardens are beset by office workers and students from the LSE during practically every other day of the week.
Lincoln's Inn Fields features in Dickens' Bleak House and was also the stage of the public beheading of Lord William Russell, son of the First Duke of Bedford, of Rye House Plot fame, the conspiracy to assassiante or mount an insurrection against King Charles II (who is also one of the English Kings who interest me the most, due partly to his marriage to Catherine of Braganza).
At the southestern end of the square, the Royal Courts of Justice will take you to the stretch of the Strand that becomes Fleet Street, and it was there that I found the gate to my first planned port of call: The Temple Church.
Being a bit of a Templar follower - recently having followed the track of the Templars in Portugal all the way to the Convent of Christ in Tomar, bought a house in the border region of the French Pyrenees and the Languedoc and planning to visit as many vestiges of their presence around the world as possible, even Denmark (!), on the island of Bornholm - where history says the Templars have never set foot but where one can find four round churches, typical of the Templars.
Not only were the chambers deserted, there was a sung service going on inside Temple Church. To avoid disturbing I walked to the outside of the Round and stood by the door where I could listen to the music reaching us from the inside.
I wasn't able to follow my steps back to Fleet Street as someone decided to lock up the small gate that led to the Church, so I decided to walk round via Bell Yard past the place where Shakespeare dramatized the outbreak of war between the rivals houses of Lancaster and York, plucking roses for their badges from... Temple Gardens!
But there were more surprises to come.
I then walked up to St Pauls and bumped into Little Britain, a small road on the way to Smithfields where I almost rented a flat once. Nearby Smithfields Market was closed, so I decided to head to Spitalfields, another visit which was long overdue.
But first I ended up in the Church of St Bartholomew The Great. Although its main claim to fame today seems to be the fact that it featured in Four Wedding and a Funeral (and later in Shakespeare in Love and the new Elizabeth movie) - and, I've just found out while reading a little more about it, being the chosen site of worship for the Worshipful Company of Butchers (no doubt due to Smithfields' proximity), St Barts is one of London's oldest churches (established in 1123) having survived the Great Fire of 1666.
Again, there are sung services and concerts at the Church (only got a glimpse since the service was, again, just ending).
Before reaching Spitalfields I walked past the Barbican, that great divisive piece of architecture. For me it's a failed masterpiece, with some amazing details and ideas but also big mistakes; the two biggest, in my opinion, the lack of communication with the city where it was built and the way circulation happens in the building - which, on the other hand, always forces us to use the space a different way each time we pass it.
I quikly negotiated the dark, unremarkable and overbuilt stretch around Liverpool Street (which made me ,momentarily miss the real thing - Manhattan) and there it was Spitalfields.
Well, I admit this was a bit of a disappointment. I was expecting stalls full of antiques and artists selling their unique creations and what I found was a brand new shopping complex - clean, sleek and practical no doubt - with some of the same old stuff: free head massages, incense sticks and printed T-Shirts. It was all to Islingtn for my taste; all too cute and overpriced. Someone even pretended to trick me into buying a cheap copy of a really famous Danish designer using the old trick: I ask, "do you know who made that vase?", woman replies "I'm not sure, let me ask John. John do you know what that is?", John, says disinterestedly "I'm not quite sure, I once saw something similar by a Danish designer but I'm not quite sure". Well, I can tell you John that was no Axel Salto because if that were Salto you wouldn't be asking £95...
Anyway, the food stalls offset any disappointment I might have felt, for that part of the market was a real treat: banana cake, cheses, salads, chocolate, olives, bread and other delicacies, even fresh Irish oysters (which, for the record, I didn't eat but, I think, looked great nevertheless).
And the day ended as it started. I had to try the rye bread from Spitalfields.
It was yummy.
And now toying with the idea of getting a playstation...
Apparently the Eastern Caribbean, the North Sea and the seas off the coast of Japan are the most over-explored and damaged by human activity.
Hereby I confess, I am a vegetarian. I have been one, stricly speaking for over a year.
I grew up in a country which together with Iceland and Japan make the top 3 fish-consuming countries in the world.
I was therefore never very partial to meat - with the few exceptions from duck, goose, partridge and other birds (there is a passage in George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia in which he says "almost always the sky was empty of birds. I do not think I have ever seen a country where there were so few birds"; until reading it I had never really thought much of it, but one only has to look at a southern European table to find out why...)
Worst of all, among my favourite things - in addition to fish - was foie gras...
Unfortunately I found out about the ethical version a few months too late...
Anyway, some meat I disliked tremendously and stopped eating the red variety 12 years ago, making it an easy transition to my present meat and fish-free existence.
But I can honestly say I have no regrets and have not yet faultered (although my doctor says, due to a previous health scare, I should sometimes eat fish for its healthy fat oils) - although that is also partly due to the fact that I live with a strict vegetarian who has kept true to the cause for more than a decade and who is, most importantly, amazing in the kitchen. In fact, I'm pretty sure many other omnivorous wold feel tempted to live on the same diet as mine should they have it as easy as I do now; because being a vegetarian IS hard work. Above all because I hate chopping!
To clarify further, I don't belong to any vegetarianism ranks, am not squeamish of meat lovers' eating habits, nor do I insist that becoming a vegetarian makes you healthier (although it can), because there is also the unhealthy vegetarian meal, which can be as delicious as the omnivorous equivalent.
I do, however, find this heart-breaking and unecessary.
No one is asking them to stop eating sushi (another one of my past favourites). After all, if they got round to do this, couldn't they find a quick, painless way of dealing with the above?
Just heard the silliest report on the BBC's 10 o'clock news.
Basically cookies (the foodstuff the reporter thought we, the idiots behind the screen would have the least difficulty grasping - and to the word idiots perhaps I should add obese idiots) are causing global warming and pulling the UK away from the "climate change challenge", we were told.
The reasons: the amount of extra fertilizer and land needed to grow the crops used in producing extra cookies (this was in response to special offers of more cookies for less money), the extra manufacturing time is producing more CO2, the fat content in the exra cookies are making us "obese" and landfills are being flooded with unwanted cookies, damaging our environment...
and I always thought cookies were biodegradable...!
More to the point, the message the government is trying to give supermarkets and the public - in the typical social justice spirit of this Labour government (and of a PM who himself looks like he's had his share of extra cookies) - is that cheap food is no longer good for us anymore.
The irony: minutes before we had been told salmon products were being taken off supermarket shelves due to fears of contamination with diesel.
The veredict: it will taste bad but won't kill you.
So, there you have it: diesel salmon is better for you.
...And talking of parsimony, and of the same broadcast, here are the words of Anthony Philippson, the father of Capt Philippson, who died who died in a firefight with Taleban fighters in Afghanistan in 2006, and whose death a coroner has blamed on the Ministry of Defence for failing to supply soldiers in Afghanistan with basic equipment:
"They were outgunned by a bunch of terrorists. I do hold the Ministry of Defence (MoD) responsible for James's death but it is not just the MoD - it goes much deeper than that. The Treasury and the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, will be really to blame for what happened. It's not really the MoD who are responsible - it's that miserable, harsh, parsimonious Scotsman we now have as prime minister who starved the MoD of funds."
And this is the response of Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth (is it just me or does his toothbrush moustache looks quite out of place in a Ministry such as the Defence's?) who insists that the provision of kit to troops in Afghanistan has been dramatically improved since Capt Philippson's death:
"This is not the first time delays in the supply chain have caused casualties in theatre. I can't promise you that it will be the last. We are operating in very difficult, very complicated circumstances. Getting supplies to the frontline in a difficult theatre will always be difficult. But I have to say to you that there has been a huge improvement, recognised by everybody, in the kit, equipment and supplies to our people both in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last couple of years."
Doesn't sound like a good enough answer to me, and could he be inferring that while McBrown's time at the Exchequer frugality was even worse than today, thus corroborating Mr Philippson's comments?
I don't know about the difficulties of the "supply chain", but that didn't stop McBrown from making a polished appearance in his Sunday best when he visited the troops in Afghanistan.
And on a final note, and to add to parsimony, what about glaring daylight robbery, control-freakery gone mad and plain and simple double standards:
The mind-boggling government advisors' (boo!) proposal to introduce £10 smoking permits!
At this rate I wouldn't be surprised if the government founded a scheme or a special enforcement team to make sure even Her Majesty's Forces complied with the law.
Further on the Danish cartoon controversy, and the debate (?) it has apparently triggered on Facebook, I thought I'd give non-Danish speakers the chance to hear what the author of the most polemical cartoon had to say before deciding to join the ranks of "Sorry Muhammad" or "No Need to Apologise to Muhammad" groups.
So, at the end of this entry here's an English translation of an article published in the daily Politiken, a couple of days ago, profiling Kurt Westergaard, the man at the epicentre of the controversy and the alleged target of an assassination plot.
(And for those wanting to read a little more on the first wave of condemnation from the Muslim world you can read a bit more here, here, here and -look away now if you find the drawing objectionable - here)
This obsession with cartoons by some people is rather mind-boggling at times, to say the least...
...and pretty scary on other occasions. Especially when you use and manipulate children to make a point. Scary especially when you recognize the most unnatractive traits of the least attractive adults pouring out of young children way ahead of their time.
For the sake of balance I must stress I don't mean to single out any particular religion; but it is almost impossible to shun figures, like pretending not to see the statistics of inmates by race or disease infection by gender or sexual preferences.
The most famous satirical cartoonist in Danish history, Kurt Westergaard, does not at first glance look like a man assassins would like to see blown to pieces. The former German teacher and school inspector from Thy is about to turn 73, but has lived the life of a hunted man the last couple of years, on the run from terrorists and Islamists and with the Police’s Intelligence Service (PET) as his perennial companion.
When the police picked up the trail of the potential assassins in November - people who had specific plans to murder Kurt Westergaard - he was sent on yet another odyssey of various locales to live incognito with his wife and meet with members of his large multicultural family.
The PET has saved my life, he says, summarizing the conditions that define his and his family’s existence.
The PET always knows where he is but it’s a life lived on the terms of the eternal refugee. We can only guess how many summer houses in Jutland Kurt Westergaard must have access to.
“Apart from a flat that I have somewhere in Europe” he says, as we sit down, at the round meeting table of Editor-in-chief Karsten Juste at the paper in Viby, near Aarhus.
“I will never get out of this”, is the sober assessment of the cartoonist, after having discussed the advantages and disadvantages of accepting an invitation to take part of a TV debate in a few days’ time.
Kurt Westergaard does not make any important decisions in his life without first having consulted his contact officer with the PET and without first having discussed things thoroughly, often after many hours over several days, with his wife.
Think of your personal security is the advice of Editor-in-chief Karsten Juste.
Kurt Westergaard replies “an interview on TV can either have a preventive effect or inspire those circles that want my life. I will have to think about it.”
Karsten Juste has recognized a long time ago that if a terrorist wants to get back at Jyllands Posten as an act of vengeance for the Mohammad cartoons, they don’t have to bomb the newspaper’s offices in Viby. All they have to do is hit Kurt Westergaard.
The cartoonist carried the destiny of the whole paper on his north-Jutland shoulders.
Kurt Westergaard does not look like a man crying out for post-traumatic counselling. In his own words, his daughter has almost completed her studies to become a psychologist anyway.
The ruddy, bearded North Jutlander, not short of smile lines, defines himself as a genuine cultural radical. His two years of living underground have simply served to make him more of a determined atheist than he was before the cartoon controversy erupted.
The cartoonist is happy to be labelled multicultural. Culture that was once considered exotic has long ago married into the Westergaard family; he has a daughter-in-law from Peru, an adoptive daughter from Albania and his niece’s husband is Iranian.
“I have been called a caricaturist, and that term is pretty accurate. I’ve seen myself as somebody who is in a position to be a catalyst for a process where people from different cultures could get closer to each other, living side by side in the same country. Then in the aftermath of the Mohammed drawings, when I saw that there was censorship of an art exhibition at a respected London gallery and in a Berlin opera house, I became seriously concerned.”
“I grew up in a country where we were raised to talk things through and to live in peace, even if we disagree over one thing or another. Some years ago Danish Christians were on to my case, because I made a cartoon of a Jesus figure who stepped down from his cross wearing an expensive suit and carrying a briefcase, and with a sign written on the cross which said ‘Only Available on Sundays’.”
“I have made cartoons of Palestinians who looked like the persecuted Jews from the time of the two World Wars, and after that entered into a long dialogue with a prominent member of the Jewish Society in Denmark.”
“After the cartoon crisis two years ago, I met the chairman of the Islamic Faith Society in a TV studio. He is a highly educated and eloquent man. I thought I could win understanding for my view point, which is that disagreements are the salt of democracy. Still, he insisted that I apologized.”
To explain the significance of the cartoon affair he uses an anecdote connected to the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. Picasso won world fame for his painting of the town of Guernica, which was bombed to pieces by German war planes in 1937. When Picasso met a Nazi office in the South of France a few years later, the German said “you were the man who created Guernica?” “No”, said the artist “you created Guernica”.
What’s the connection of Guernica 1937 and the cartoon affair? Westergaard explains that a caricature cartoonist is not, per definition, a provocateur. He reacts to real situations around him that he perceives as provocations.
What does the most famous cartoonist in Denmark think of the relationship between Islam and terrorism, about the way certain Imams influence their younger followers, about the difference between moderate and fanatical Muslims in Denmark?
“Terrorism finds its spiritual ammunition in Islam. All religions have their bureaucrats. With Islam is the imam. Once in a debate with the late Abu Laban I had the feeling that he had the power to release rabid forces or command them to hold back. It looks like sadomasochism and it’s all about controlling other people. When these priests evoke the words of a God they demand that their followers subject themselves or become martyrs.”
“I’m deeply sceptical of religion as a means for power and control. This goes all the way back to my childhood, when I was forced to attend Sunday school. When I left the school and looked up to the blue skies I realized that Our Lord was a long way away, but that the devil was right behind me.”
The cultural radical cartoonist, several years beyond mandatory retirement, does not look like a man who has been knocked down by the situation. Rather, he looks like a man who has stepped into character.
“My psychologist daughter is worried and now I’m going home to talk to the wife. Personal security comes first, but terrorists must not be allowed to decide over my life or what Jyllands Posten chooses to print.”
Well well. "Danish police have arrested three people suspected of planning to attack a cartoonist who drew caricatures satirising the Prophet Muhammad. Denmark's intelligence agency said the arrests were made in the western Aarhus region at 0330 GMT "to prevent a murder linked to terrorism. Two of the suspects are Tunisian and the third is a Dane of Moroccan origin." (Read more here).
It's funny because speaking with a few Danes recently I was told how things had quieted down and how the furore was over.
But "the BBC's Thomas Buch-Andersen in Copenhagen says the arrests have stunned people in Denmark, where the furore over the cartoons was thought to have passed."
The newspaper - based in Aarhus - for which Mr Westergaard works said he - 73 - and his 66-year-old wife, Gitte, "had been under police protection for the past three months."
In a statement on Jyllands-Posten's website, Mr Westergaard said: "Of course I fear for my life when the police intelligence service say that some people have concrete plans to kill me. But I have turned fear into anger and resentment."
Although I'm not quite sure how likely the anger of a 73 year old man is gong to be in order to scare off some crazy fanatics from blowing themselves off on his face - because surely that's what they would be likely to do right?...
Just before the November elections, the most excitable predicted "a shifting landscape" in Danish politics!
Today's popularity ratings for New Alliance and their freedom-lover Muslim leader: 0.8 per cent.
Shall I repeat that: 0.8 per cent! that's more than 20 per cent down since the period just before the election and before they came crashing down.
Of the 5 MP's who won seats in parliament, two have left - one having defected to the ruling party.
The whole point of setting foot in parliament - or so we were led to believe by Khader - was to stop the Right-wing Danish People's Party from influencing government policy on immigration.
...meanwhile, back in Jutland, "the Danish citizen will be released pending further investigation, while the Tunisians will be held until they are expelled from the country, said the Danish intelligence agency PET."
Since I started taking an unhealthy interest in Denmark, I've been following a series of blogs that at times help me feed this need and others help me cure what my Danish partner calls insanity.
Among these blogs is this one, where I can follow the impressions of a long-term non-Dane resident of that small but ner-perfect nation (here I go again, I can hear someone complaining from the kitchen...!).
The blog's latest entry, "Lamentations", broaches the issue of the rate at which spoken and written language have changed over time, and points out, at the beginning, "the incredulous stares of one Erik Hansen, then chairman of the Committee for the Danish Language (Dansk Sprognævn), when I predicted that there would come a time when Danish would be nothing but a series of indistinct sounds accentuated by a glottal stop".
I thought this remark interesting because this has been a major topic of dicussion at my Danish language lessons (and anything else that generates debate and helps us keep motivated against giving up on the face of the hardships of this damned niche language...!).
It's also definitely something of a concern for people like me - and anyone else who dares dreaming of one day being able to get by in Danish - because the rate at which the spoken langugage is changing is making it a lot harder to learn (for instance, vowels and consonants are dropping faster than gravity in the spoken language and English words are increasingly replacing the vernacular - turning kids into a sort of a modern, hip-hop Danish version of the British bobby in "Hello Hello")
(I introduce here Nik & Jay repentantly because I have been known to tap my feet and hum along to their music...)
It is fascinating to observe and study the ways people use to communicate change over time, although the rate at which this change occurs today may at times be slightly overwhelmeing.
Among the reasons the author of the blog accurately blames for these changes is the widespread use of automated spellchecks and the decline in the attention given to grammar at schools - where the focus tends to lie on effective ways of communicating.
And although I agree that a lack of emphasis on grammar teaching and a focus on communication may be responsible for the way in which people write today (and this is certainly is the case in the UK as well), I could name different examples in southern Europe, for instance, where teaching methods are still very different in form to those in northern Europe, and where grammar teaching (also due to the nature of the languages there I guess) is still very much part of the curriculum.
In those cases, however, reading and literacy rates tend to be a lot lower than in northern Europe and this may have a huge toll on the way people write, spell and speak - not least on the confidence with which they write and communicate.
Having said this - and despite actually having secretly enjoyed the many spelling exercises I was given at primary school by my disciplinarian teacher - I've since been striving to pay more attention to substance rather than form. Some of the brightest things I've read recently come from people who don't give a toss about their far from perfect spelling (which is saying a lot since I'm usually derided as a sometimes over-perfectionist...)
I'm not that old to start resorting to recollections of upbringing, but if I may, I do remember my mother at home often correcting my spoken language, not so much due to mispronounciation but for laziness of speech - which, especially in a child (less so in an adult...) is more or less something one should expect. I'm not so sure kids are under the same sort of mentoring these days at home.
I guess parents will probably be equally less motivated to exert that sort of pressure, partly due to the pressures of the outer circles of the home.
Another thing the author of the aforementioned blog rightly points out is that Danes were perhaps not prepared for the recent exposure to regional dialects and accents that mass media allows these days. Thus the shock of hearing someone talk differently from one's own ways.
This reminds me too of the difficulties some foreigners learning Danish feel when trying to make themselves understood. I say some because Danes are mainly used to Danish being spoken by fellow Scandinavians - Norwegians and Swedes - therefore having no problem at all picking up words which may be slightly mispronounced. Alas my fate and of others like me is a completely different one...
I don't know whether things are worse today than they were hundreds of years ago when it comes to changes we automatically tend to fear and dislike. I do find however that some languages do tend to change a lot more rapidly than others.
Here's an example. Denmark and Portugal are two countries with small populations. English terms pervade the spoken langugage of Danes at a rate otherwise totally unacceptable to a much more conservative country like Portugal, where language has evolved over the centuries at a comparatively snail pace - even with 200 million Brazilians and many other millions of Africans speaking - allegedly - the same language! (but this is a different debate altogether, and for another time!)
Many in Denmark may ask what is the point of being so precious with a language that is spoken by so few, but for me at least, I'd feel even more cautious and protective of my language (and just to clarify: this view doesn't automatically translate into the political fore - I thought I'd mention it before someone starts calling me names...!).
If nothng else for the immense pleasure that is hearing Guldhornene recited by Bodil Udsen (could only find this downloadable link - track 5 btw), even if I know I'll be struggling with the words and the grammar for the rest of my life!!
When I started at university at 17, I took up a part-time job at a call centre in a international communications company. We connected callers from all around the world; the job was fun, well-paid and despite the burden of studies allowed me to take a light interest in the business.
Sometimes in conversation with some of my acquaintances I used to mention how fragile the global communications system appeared to be, with cables stretching for thousands of miles under the oceans and all...
Nine out of 10 times I was met with incredulity and laughter. Hardly anyone believed cables were actually running under the seas connecting the continents (exactly what they thought made telephone calls happen is a mystery, but, hey, some people still think fishfingers is fish and spaghetti comes from a spaghetti tree...!)
Having read geography, many of my digressions into explaining weather systems and natural phenomena were often met with the same disbelief (for example when I happened to mention sharks in the Atlantic shores, near most of Europe's beaches, most people laughed at me - albeit nervously in this case...).
Interesting how often we get to hear politicians and civil servants these days telling us to "let the government get on with the business of government".
And what a business it has turned out to be...
Funny too how we thought to be living in a democracy, but suddenly - boom - the veneer breaks off, right on our faces.
For instance, Director General of Resources for the House of Commons Andrew Walker (who has been cross-examined for his running of the Fees Office - which journalists and freedom of information campaigners say, rightly, "effectively allows Members to 'self-certify' the majority of their claims. In fact Mr Walker conceded that "MPs could legitimately buy an iPod from a supermarket and claim for it under the food allowance, since receipts are not required for purchases of less than £400"; for those who didn't yet know, on top of their 60 grand wages and their astronomical allowances, MPs do not have to provide receipts on individual items worth less than £250 or food claims of up to £400 a month - great for that special mobile phone or the latest Ipod...)
- The Commons authorities are resisting because "it would distract them or lead to additional questions which they have to defend, even if they have (acted) perfectly sensibly, because there is a great desire to look at the private lives of public individuals";
- "Publishing more details of MPs' housing expenses could 'damage democracy'";
- And finally, Mr Walker said "he feared MPs' personal information might be abused by the media or others and such levels of disclosure might put people off becoming MPs" and questioned the public interest of the Times' story on Tuesday revealing that the refurbishment of the Clerk’s house cost £100,000, arguing that it fed 'public curiosity' rather than fulfilling 'public interest'".
....Let's thus hope (although in vain, I fear) that MPs of such calibre - like Derek Conway (who believes "an MP is paid less than the sous chef at the Commons" - which is not surprising since he rewarded the son he employed at Westminster with £40,000 for filleting post, scrutinising emails and stuffing envelopes... - If I were Peter Hain's 80-year-old mother I would have complained since she was being paid only £5,400 of his Commons expenses for the same type of work) will indeed be put off by the profession.
And has some people have pointed out; do we need any more clues to where the priorities really lie?
The report ends with the question: "Can Peru's gift to the world now be used help those who gave it to us in the first place?"
The ideas put forward are great: make bread with potato flour, promote the Peruvian potato in the Western markets with a penchant for new, exotic varieties.
But how do these reports (I'm only beginning to learn not to get too worked up about it) reconcile their alleged concern with the plights of others and their own personal little fights, such as "food miles"?
Inevitably not very well (a bit like spineless politicians who pretend to act on the environment and taxing the rich, when what they are doing is penalizing those on the bottom end of the scale - like those drivers who have no other option than drive their cars out of London to work in areas badly served by overpriced, substandard public transport and are priced out of the roads because of Red Ken's congestion zone - because, honestly, what is £5 or £10 for someone who drives a Mercedes into London and leaves it in private parks for a minimum £20 daily charge?)
Anyway, back to the potato plight and what about the British potato.
I honestly only started to pay serious attention to the potato since I moved to Britain (and started spending long periods of time in Ireland in my former partner's holiday home), and since the potato has been a feature of the European table since the 1700s, I believe the British isles can duly and rightly claim ownership of the starchy tuberous crop.
The colours of the exotic Peruvian varieties may look indeed appealing, but how can anyone beat a plate of Maris Bard new potatoes with a rosemary or pesto sauce? and my favourite: a plain baked King Edward drenched in olive oil... yummy!
Searching The British Potato Council (yes, a British institution "supporting the British potato industry"!) I found out this year is the International Year of the Potato! (and for those who like theirs greasy, apparently next week it's National Chip Week - which, I'm sure, it's not going to go down well with the government...)
...and their web site has great recipes! which are going to come in handy since I'm having a friend round for dinner tonight.
It doesn't surprise me that given the amount of press global warming has received of late, some nature sections might want to jump on the bandwagon and cash in on the unusual levels of attention.
However, the one item that really caught my imagination was the news surrounding the shipment of the "doomsday" seeds to the "doomsday vault" on Svalbard, roughly 600 miles north of mainland Norway (read BBC report here).
This shipment consists of 21 boxes containing 7,000 seed samples from 36 African nations and "is intended to act as insurance so that food production can be restarted anywhere on Earth after a regional or global catastrophe".
Since everyone is so obsessed with branding, and given the pitfalls of aid policies - even the modern zeitgeist of debt pardon - couldn't Africn countries package a selection of these seeds and sell them to the scared middle classes of the world? I can see them already strategically placed on the shelves of Planet Organic and such like: "doomsday seeds", "freedom seeds" or "save the world seeds" you choose (I can even see myself tempted to buy a pack).
"The seed vault has been built 120m (390ft) inside a mountain on Spitsbergen, one of four islands that make up Svalbard. The site, roughly 1,000km (600 miles) north of mainland Norway, was chosen as the location for the vault because it was very remote and it also offered the level of stability required for the long-term project."
...I've always said Norway was the future! (since Denmark will eventually flood...)
On a more serious note, the reason why I found these stories interesting is that, with all the hype the environment is receiving, development theories are increasingly less shy in picking up on the old geography economics and ecological factors of a few decades ago - and the funniest thing is that the louder voices of today would have been the first to condemn the theories of the past.
For instance, in its last edition the Economist argues that population growth is partly behind the violent squabbles in Kenya and the Gaza Strip. "Quick tempers come with quick population growths", it says.
Too many young men with no jobs or prospects work as sources of discontent and lead to the creation of bands of warriors. Having increased about 5 times in 5 decades, and with a birth rate of around 5 children per woman, Kenya and the Gaza Strip are well above sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. These young, jobless, well fed young men (let me make this clear; this is not my assessment - it's the Economist's, which stresses that some of these young men are well fed by aid) inevitably exchange rural for urban poverty, and instead of a job end up with a machete in their hands.
No wonder China has for decades enforced a strict internal visa system for those wishing to leave the provinces toward the cities...
Since I mention China, the biggest economic worry for the government - despite its steady growth - is inflation. Food prices in particular have shot up drastically.
As a new middle class grows and people get richer, their needs, habits and aspirations change.
The chinese no longer want wheat. They want the same vegetables that we in Europe have access too. These crops also mean higher returns for farmers, who as a result replace wheat plantations, for instance, with tomatoes and lettuce - thus, in turn, adding to the food shortage woes.
Until pretty recently, to say the world was overpopulated (the bogey man of human geography) was still tantamount to being ridiculed.
It is true that Japan seems to manage, so places like Sudan should be able to cope too.
It is true also that population growth predictions were hugely overestimated.
So was Space 1999.
But overpopulation has nothing to do with numbers.
However, now that the Chinese, Russians and a few Africans have started to eat like we do (although thankfully we haven't started eating like them yet) - and apparently can't have enough of champagne and watches - it looks like the world has suddenly got smaller...
(Pretty small in fact as I might well be about to verify this story for myself - since the China trip this Summer may well materialize - hooray! - I just hope the champagne story is true tough... I'd hate to end up as I did in Russia a couple of Summaers ago, when the government cleared all wine from the shelves, leaving us only with the local vodka...)
"The UK today assisted Liberia in taking a big step towards poverty reduction by helping it clear the arrears on debt it owes to the IMF and African Development Bank" (more here)
The Chancellor, Alistair Darling said:
"I want to congratulate Liberia on having secured the necessary financing to clear the country’s arrears to the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank. The Liberian Government’s sustained efforts over the past year to achieve this outcome have been an excellent achievement; these efforts have been crucial in mobilising the necessary support from the international community and placing Liberia firmly on the path to comprehensive debt relief. I am also pleased that the UK has been able to promote and contribute to these financing solutions, a clear demonstration of our ongoing commitment to helping the poorest countries find a comprehensive solution to their external debt problems."
Not such good news (especially for Alistair Darling, and above all the UK's taxpayers): "The number of people whose homes were repossessed last year rose by 21 per cent, but repossessions are just one indication of the UK’s deepening debt crisis" (more here)
"The scale of individual debt, both through mortgages and other debts such as credit cards and personal loans, has increased sharply over the last ten years. By the end of December 2007, total lending to individuals reached £1,409 billion, figures from the Bank of England show. Of this £1,409 billion, £1,185 billion was mortgage lending with the remainder £224 billion consisting of consumer credit including credit cards. This compares to the £419 billion of secured debt and £84 billion unsecured in May 1997."
"The debt advice firm Debt Free Direct estimates that between one and two million households are 'permanently indebted' — meaning that while managing to juggle their debts and meet minimum interest payments, they will never repay the principal."
Anyone out there to bail us all out?
"The Office for National Statistics said it would include Northern Rock in the public finances from Oct. 9, 2007 because of the levels of support and control the government has over the struggling mortgage lender."
"The decision will lift the Treasury's debt burden by about 100 billion pounds ($194 billion), or 7 percent of gross domestic product, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That will breach Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling's pledge to keep government liabilities to 40 percent of GDP."
I meant to rant a bit about MPs expenses, but have only time tonight for a special request.
A feeling I'd already signalled here, but which apparently thousands more in the Continent decided to set in motion before it's too late:
STOP TONY BLAIR from becoming the President of the European Union!!!
(I promise - as opposed to some who want to stop him based on the idea Tony Blair does not believe in Europe and therefore will inevitably end up causing some serious damage to it - I haven't got any special European interests at heart)
You can sign the petition here (which, unluckily and - more importantly - irritatingly looks like a EU guideline form and almost put me off altogether...), although - as I've just heard someone say - I suspect the job just isn't grand enough for him...
...and to paraphrase a disgruntled MP dissatisfied with his modest salary: a sous-chef is probably paid better, so I put my money on Blair keeping his city job...
(which by the way reminds me I've bet Egypt will win this year's African Cup of Nations - so fingers crossed!)
The reactions to the Archbishop of Canterbury's comments that some Sharia law in the UK seems "unavoidable" - and apparently even "desirable" - have been coming in so quick, and, unusually, criticized by practically all, saves me a lot of ink - because Rowen Williams' comments are total tosh!
The archbishop - whose role, I was under the impression was winning souls into the Church of England (and speak without vested interests, since I was brought up a Catholic) - appears (and I say appears because this story should nonetheless be taken with a pinch of salt, since Mr Williams has been known to indulge in some obscure monologues, the meaning of which remain a mystery to the wider public) to believe that "an approach to law which simply said there's one law for everybody and that's all there is to be said, and anything else that commands your loyalty or allegiance is completely irrelevant in the processes of the courts - I think that's a bit of a danger" (read more here).
So we maintain social cohesion by legislating especially for some, differently from the rest of society? Does that mean that anarchy, for instance, may also be taken into account as something our society can accomodate without fear of being prosecuted or ostracized?
Dr Williams also says Muslims should not have to choose between "the stark alternatives of cultural loyalty or state loyalty". I don't understand this idea. First of all, any Muslim - scholar or common believer - will tell you Islam is not a culture; and even if they were to choose between any of the two, I wouldn't be surprised if a majority chose their religion.
Ibrahim Mogra, of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "We're looking at a very small aspect of Sharia for Muslim families when they choose to be governed with regards to their marriage, divorce, inheritance, custody of children and so forth"...
...well, that's quite a "small" list, don't you reckon?
This debate is not exclusive to the U.K. In Canada, for instance, attempts at introducing (apparently "through the backdoor") certain aspects of Sharia law have also made headlines (read more here - it's from The Globe and Mail although I could only find it free on Richard Dawkins' web site...).
A lot of this nonsense has multiplied under the aura of "multiculturalism" - the vapid word used by politicians to cushion their ulterior motives; the same politicians which, when the word turned against them, trashed it on the public arena, as if the concept had been someone's creation altogether.
Total tosh too for a home secretary to say she feels insecure walking the streets - she IS the home secretary for Heaven's sake!!!
Total tosh also for a government that says that someone who has been on long-term unemloyment and living in social housing should have the house taken away from them.
It's not the first time weak politicians come up with this sort of policies to make themselves sound tough.
Not least because not only are these people unemployed, they will also become homeless.
This government has now spent 10 years pretending to do some for those at the bottom of society - and with this I mean those struck in the wrong end of the class system, on the wrong side of law, poorly-educated and with no choice of improving their chances of success.
It's like complaining about declining birth rates, give vocal incentives to the poor to help revert those rates and then not creating the conditions to support these families, with proper housing, education, opportunities and actively qualifying people.
Under this government opportunities have always stood alone in politicians' mouths, as a noun, unaccompanied by a verb.
But back to point: the Archbishop's comments - the divisive, obscure comments which a Tory MP has appropriately described as "pseudo-theological appeasement"- just another reflection of the merky waters of the growing interference of religion in politics.
The country's law should be allowed some degree of ethical and moral wrappings - particular group, religious, or ethnic habits, attitudes and traditions should be taken into consideration -, but what we cannot have is is a situation where there is one law for one person and different laws for another.
This has been the fight of many who feel disadvantaged in the eyes of the law and simply desire better terms of equality - and the archbishop has often spoken out in their defence.
Until recently, gay couples, for instance, did not enjoy rights such inheritance tax and couldbe prevented from visiting their partner in hospital in case they were ill.
Why should he now want to to introduce different laws to different people and allow certain individuals to excuse themselves from the rule of law?
Wouldn't that just reinforce the idea that he who shouts louder, gets his way?
I was shown wonderful archive footage of Bernstein conducting, in his typically jolly fashion, Carl Nielsen's Sinfonia Expansiva in Copenhagen . Couldn't find a link to share this footage with you but as you can see here (in his jolly Candide), they don't really make them like this anymore... (apologies for the cliche, but it is the truth).
On top of everything else - conducting, playing, composing - Bernstein was also an educator (excerpt of a great documentary).
And since I'm on that fancy-free mood... here is someone else unique too:
That very time I saw, but thou couldst not, Flying between the cold moon and the earth, Cupid all arm'd: a certain aim he took At a fair vestal throned by the west, And loosed his love-shaft smartly from his bow, As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts; But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon, And the imperial votaress passed on, In maiden meditation, fancy-free.
(Oberon, from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream)
"We know that what began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus that cannot be ignored, that will not be deterred, that will ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest."
"Yes we can! Let's go to work! Yes we can! Yes we can! Thank you Chicago let's get to work, I love you."
At 34 minutes long, a little endurance is required for this viewing (amazingly though, views of this video run at an impressive 632,000...) but, at long last, the reward comes at the end with the answer to all our questions - Can We Do It? and We Want Change!
So there you are: the walls of Jericho will come tumbling down!
And for those who thought "change" came after "hope", here's when "change" began to assemble at the gates of Jericho:
For those who thought Bush was too basic, here's a complex man with a simple message; a message apparently so strong that is capable even of shaking the non-believers (even the other non-believers often derided by the aforementioned non-believers).
Just thought I'd mention Rev. Obama's earlier stake on the separation of Church and State:
"I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country, so I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and, at night, you'd hear the [Muslim] prayer call. My mother was a deeply spiritual person. Her view always was that underlying these religions was a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself, but also for the greater good. I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I'm a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law."
More recently:
"Doing the Lord's work is a thread that runs through our politics since the very beginning and it puts the lie to the notion that separation of church and state in America means somehow that faith should have no role in public life".
"My faith teaches me that I can sit in church and pray all I want, but I won't be fulfilling God's will unless I go out and do the lord's work".
(Lastly for those who would like to see change - but up to a point - here's the degree of change they will probably get, and if they're lucky they might even get to bomb Iran.)
Nothing wrong with God. I was just beginning to feel a bit bad about taking the mickey out of Tom Cruise and felt I needed to make amends.
"Police, saying they were responding to citizen complaints, carted away two large promotional photographs from the Abercrombie & Fitch store in Lynnhaven Mall on Saturday and cited the manager on obscenity charges" (read more here).
Adam Bernstein, a police spokesman, said one picture "depicts three shirtless young men from the back, walking through a field. The man in the lead appears to be about to pull up his jeans, which have slipped down enough to reveal his upper buttocks".
The other is of "a woman who is topless and whose breast is displayed with her hand covering just the nipple portion".
"You could still pretty much see the rest of the breast", Bernstein added.
When I was in New York last year these giant Abercrombie posters could be seen everywhere.
When I arrived back in the U.K. I noticed, on the way back from Heathrow that the chain had put up a similar poster on the elevated section of the M4, as you enter London (here though, I could actually see the dangers posed by the poster - this time however to the most easily distracted drivers...); I wasn't quite sure what, but somehow, even though the picture was the same - the typical young man with pubic pants sliding down his buttocks - was slightly different from the one in the States. I only found out what it was when I read later that the US version had been doctored to hide the "upper buttcoks"...
According to an Abercrombie & Fitch statement, the company said "the marketing images show less skin than people see any summer day at the beach". Fair enough; however, adding "certainly less than the plumber working on your kitchen sink" is probably a bit fr-fetched. I guess someone has been watching too much Desperate Housewives...
As I write this I am listening to BBC reporters in America (all 5 of them...) asking what really must have been going through voters' minds today, as they decided on whom to vote in these primaries.
Unfortunately we won't know what the outcome in Virginia will be tonight (since they're only voting on the 12th), but at least we know now some of what goes through their minds.
Did anyone tell these upset customers that most of their stores in America employ just as or more scantily-clad models to stand outside the shop an work as bait to the most suggestive passer-by? but I guess the law only covers pictures when it comes to obscenity charges...
Well, nothing surprises me anymore, especially after we learnt that a Mississipi lawmaker said he wanted to ban restaurants from serving food to obese customers (and although he admitted he wasn't expecting his plan to become law, "Republican Rep. John Read acknowledged that at 5'11'' and 230 pounds, he would probably have a tough time under his own bill...).
Back to Abercrombie; apparently the company had already been forced to withdraw catalogues for sexually suggestive photographs and in 2004 it agreed "to pay $50 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of promoting whites over minorities and cultivating a virtually all-white image."
...and as I write this I hear Cristopher Hitchens' harangue on Super Duper Tuesday and the pitfalls of the US party voting system. Somehow the conversation got to Obama's ethnicity, but did I hear him say white is not a colour? Surely he got the colour (or lack of it) wrong?
Anyway, I thought results were going to be out at midnight, as fast as in Brazil, which apparently has the most sophistcated and fastest vote-counting system in the world; and I guess I'm not so interested in who's going to be the next Democrat candidate to maybe lose the next election.
So bed it is.
...and sorry guys, couldn't find the breast picture anywhere, only the buttocks.
I got home to yet another Thames Water letter (the fourth since moving to my new address a month and a half ago) with my name mispelt, the adress imcomplete and the information on it incorrect - which will force me to ring them for the 6th time, simply in an attempt to set up a new account.
A similar story happened with British Gas and a lot worse with BT (a record 12 calls!).
At work today I heard pretty much nothing else but bad news from around the world, and extremely depressing ones about the state of politics in this country... and in Chad, and Kenya, and Italy, and France, etc.
...and with celebrities, and every other public figure.
I've stopped watching TV (apart from a few selected programmes downloaded from the Internet), have run out of options in terms of serious newspapers and online news are tantamount to reading a poor version of the free rubbish they give you for free on the underground (the main story on one of the BBC's online service was the news that Sarkozy and his brand new wife Carla Bruni are filing suits against Ryanair over a picture the airline used of the couple).
Only solace: the wirless, some of it, and some strokes of genius:
This for instance (with the help of this amazing and helpful piece of online democracy), or anything here, sometimes tender, often capable of leaving you in irrepressible fits of laughter, but always honest and very much sane.
A quality very much undervalued and increasingly threatened with possible exctinction:
We learnt yesterday that a "Tory MP has broken ranks to become the first to publish a complete breakdown of his Commons expenses claims".
The Times tells us that "in a move that will challenge the secrecy surrounding MPs’ allowances, Ben Wallace has released detailed information about how he spends more than £152,000 of taxpayers’ money".
Among the more than 200 claims we find "how much he claimed for a second home in Clapham, south London; how much 'petty cash' he withdrew; how much he spent on mobile phone calls and office furniture; and how much he paid his staff. It includes his wife, Liza, who is employed as a part-time parliamentary researcher".
The move follows the suspension (yes, "suspension") of "Tory MP Derek Conway from the Commons after he was caught paying his two sons more than £80,000 as researchers despite there being no evidence of them doing any work."
Conway says he is no crook. More, he is unhappy at the fact MPs are paid "less than the sous-chef at the Commons" and argues their salaries should be raised to £100,000 a year from the current £60,675.
Now, Mr Conway's comments on how much MPs should be paid may still raise some eyebrows, but this is pretty much an opinion shared by most, if not all, MPs. I've come across it before in the media and have heard it from the mouth of actual MPs.
The degree of hypocrisy that pervades the contry especially since Labour came into power shouldn't cause surprise.
There is also a degree of moral corruption that seems ever more evident in politics and a lack of accountability in government that would have the power to shock but seems to leave everyone apthatic. That is perhaps the reason why this government appears to think they can get away with anything and to believe the law doesn not apply to "them", only "us" - because it looks like that is the way today.
So, although one could argue that moral corruption is nothing new in politics (perhaps it is only more evident since politicians seem to show no shame in the face of it), active corruption has always been regarded as lower in the UK than in southern Europe, for instance, not to say in comparison with Latin America or Africa.
I have always thought the U.K. was more or less immune to the dangers of active corruption than other countries, and thought the erosion in standards was a more or less recent phenomenon.
But I wonder...
Perhaps my perceptions have been wrong all along, and in Britain politicians have simply been a lot better at keeping it under wraps.
Perhaps too I've been looking up to Scandinavian countries for far too long and lost sight of what can really be achieved in a society that is essentially very different in nature and fabric, in spite of shared lifestyles, goals and dreams.
But what still leaves me confounded is the number of congratulatory reactions to Ben Wallace's decision to be the first to open the can of worms and tell all about his mishandling of the public purse.
"Well done, old chap"; "let us hope others will follow were Wallace led"; an example of "moral courage"...!!
I'm perplexed.
So, this man has been squandering public money to sustain his lifestyle and that of his relatives and just because he had the "courage" to out himself (supposedly before he himself was outed by the media or someone with a "grudge" against him - which is was Conway has said to have been behind his donwfall...), and still he has shown "moral courage" to admit his faults and therefore should get away with it?
Surely, if we were to suspend every MP for all their mistakes and mishandlings we would probably end up with an empty House...
...But only a little while, in Belgium, where Flemish and French speakers couldn't agree on a governing deal, the country was left without a govenrment for six months.
- And it self-governed itself!
That's how much MPs seem to be worth... (£100k cheaper than advertised...! depiste being often told that at an average £135 600, on top of their salaries, MPs are "excellent value for money"...)
The reason I was in Cannes for the second leg of my French break was because my partner was working at the Midem music industry fair and I was given the chance to tag along.
It was good, not least because our stand had flown a D.J. a chef from Norway for music and canapes during the days of the festival. I could easily get used to this lifestyle, something which I soon found out others already had to (some a looong time ago, perhaps as long ago as 120 years ago, but you wouldn't be able to tell due to the amount of surgery and heavy make up...).
This discovery helped me learn a new expression: "le pique-assiete", or the freeloader.
There were many. They would pop round the stand earlish, sit down at the makeshift bar when no one was looking, chit chat a bit to the hostesses, gulp two or three glasses of fizz and half a tray of Norwegian roast beef and fish eggs' canapes.
A couple of hours later, they'd be back with their pals for another round.
Not that I minded too much; I couldn't anyway, since I felt like a pique-assiette myself for the simple fact of being there in the first place.
Thus my commitment to bringing as many people into the stand and on board the business.
I'm not quite sure how I fared, but at least managed to get a few contacts for my own job, get a rucksack full of free CDs and a free subscription for a well-known British music magazine!
I also managed to be dragged into the seediest restaurant/bar in the whole of the Cannes/Antibes region, named something that sounded like scum - with live music played by a duo formed in the 70s and a Spanish guitarist who played over a karaoke album and the best collection of luxury prostitutes in the South Coast, all looking as if they hadn't got any sleep for a fortnight and ready to skin you alive (which, rumours have it, is precisely what they did to a few in my party, after they were taken to our hotel, rubbed in baby oil and then, at the right time, discreetly left with mobile phones, computers and credit cards - which should help explain why they looked so sleep-deprived - but don't ask me for more details, I insisted on not beng told more...)
I digress... what I meant to say is that after Cannes, my partner's company is setting up camp in Beijing for the Olympics, is going to put up a great show, and it would be great to be part of it. I was amazed at the amount of money there is t be made of entertainment, including music.
Obviouly with the CD industry about to evaporate into thin air, virtual entertainment, mobile content, online gaming and such like are all the rage; and my partner's company knows it.
I was amazed at the amount of interest people had showed for the product they were offering - a machine for donwloading music and other audio/video content. The reason why they should do well is explicit in the Economist's latest edition:
At 210 million, "within a few months, according to Morgan Stanley, an investment bank, China will have more internet users than America, the current leader. And because the proportion of the population using the internet is so low, at just 16%, rapid growth is likely to continue for some time".
Obviously, with censored news, a tightly state-controlled TV, a scarce number of cinemas and bookshops (the wonders of the "Cultural Revolution"...), users (mainly under 30 - the opposite of the most developed countries) find gaps on the Internet to fulfil their entertainment requirements. Internet users in China use the Internet in a completely different way from us, but essentially feel the same need to communicate with others through it.
For my partner's boss, the good news is the fastest way of making money from the Internet is via downloadable mobile content to celular phones (there are half a billion of them in China - no wonder "the ringtone from a hit song - Mice Love Rice - generated over $10m in sales in 2005").
The other good news is perhaps we'll be able to put in our pique-assiete costume, tag along and get a quick tour of the Great Wall of China!
不入虎穴,焉得虎子
(which allegedly means: "if you don't go into the cave of the tiger, how are you going to get its cub?")
So a few days turned into a long few days; but blue skies, peace, nature and 20 degrees as opposed to storms, stress and blizzards should make for an obvious choice.
Before I elaborate any further on my break in France I should make it clear now that I love France unrequitedly and have met many wonderful people that differ in many ways (and agree in many others...) with the traditional stereotype of the Frenchman (otherwise I wouldn't have chosen to buy a house there...).
However, La France, well.... "Elle na marche pas".
Nothing we haven't heard before (in fact I've always heard France is a bureaucracy disguised as a democracy), but since the rumours emanate from Britain, I feel I owe at least some evidence to corroborate them.
In the past in France, I've held angry exchanges with rude people behind the counter (where, I'm beginning to learn, such skils are a prerogative); I've shouted and been shouted at by drivers while performing the tricky art of driving in the unmistakeably French roundabout system (which - and there is a little taste of it below - puts drivers in Nairobi, whom I thought were the most creative in the world, to shame - needless to say that I'm always also the slowest car at any time anywhere in French motorways, even when driving at the maximum allowed speed, but was immediately fined, on the spot, by two motorbike policemen the minute I broke that limit, on an empty motorway, on a Sunday morning!);
I've also been slightly put off by the way foodstuffs are handled without gloves in shops - but then again, we are probably safer in France than in Britain since, I don't know why, these days everyone, everywhere - on the street, in shops, work and public transport - have no qualms sneezing right on your face (turning me into the idiot who can always be seen sporting a vicks first defence spray on the street...), while in France the wireless often airs public announcements telling people to cover their mouths when they sneeze, to stay at home and keep their germs to themselves; and I've always been perplexed at how little work French people do to the wages thy earn and the size and sustainability of the economy (for instance, it is inevitable that sooner or later - and a lot sooner than later - one will find oneself struggling to find an open supermarket, a "tabac" - the word every smoker must know and learn to spot at a distance, as these are the only places in the country that sell the damn drug -, a bakery, a bank or pretty much everything else; but I'll bet you pretty much everyone too will be able to tell you the opneing times of the nearest supermarket and every other shop, for they are just as confounded as we are and were forced to develop their surving skills).
(...Just had a little break for dinner and damn it was good!... great when one has a partner who can cook, and cook tremendously well. I am indeed spoilt, as myself and the kitchen are like two strangers who will never grow to appreciate each other's company; which proves that I'm easily won over by the mouth - and again a bit of a challenge in France, where simply refusing a meat dish or worse, being a vegetarian, is not just an almost impossible lifestyle but a direct affront to local customs and feelings...)
Anyway, back to why France doens't really work and why I'm glad to have a house but not to work there.
In addition to the aforementioned, here are a few more fresh examples, fresh from the experience gained trying to get a holiday home up and running:
Try (or rather don't; you will save up a great deal of time and resentment) pay (let alone change) with a 200 euro note - it will take you a significant part of your shopping trip, your patience and everyone else behind you in the queue, who eventually turn against you rather than the cashier, because why on Earth would anyone come up with the stupid idea of paying with such a highly denominated note that no cashier in the whole of France thought he should have enough change to accept it!?
This is the country that has been at the heart of every European integration idea, and although the design of the euro currency originated with a Belgian, one could argue it is pretty close anyway (which by the way reminds me that I should point out that Sweden and Denmark will probably be holding referenda on joining the euro - a currency that I still find perplexing, not least because there are contries outside the EU which have unilaterally adopted the euro, such as Andorra - easy for shopping every time national football squads feel they need to show off with a tournament warm up -, Kosovo - admittedly not a country but quite keen on unilateral decisions - and Montenegro - how on Earth Europe manages to balance out the national mismanagements of economies and make it all look good it's still a mystery to me...)
The problems with exchanging currency are also intimately related, I found out, with the fact that the French are increadibly parcimonious. They (most probably rigtly) hold some disdain for British consumerism but equally regret the amount of money British banks lend consumers and which are putting some people in rural France off the market. You will find, though, when at a till in the supermarket, for instance, some people will have no shame in holding the queue for a good 10 minutes while a team of 3 find out how to process a year-old voucher for a "50 centimes" discount...! (I was vindicated by applying for a loyalty card from that supermakert chain - a process that lasted over 10 minutes and a couple of signatures and one phone call! - where I bought a discounted TV which offered my as much in cash as its sale price for spending in the future; got out of the shop and in again and purchased a DVD/video player, a stereo and some foodstuffs with it!)
Banks, however, offer an even higher degree of potential emotional break-down: as with most utilities, any problems can only be dealt with in person, at the local branch of residence. That means travellings hundreds of kilometres to do soemthing as simple as withdrawing a slightly higher amount of one's money, from one's account.
For instance, most debit cards only allow withdrawls of up to 300 euros a week; being parcimonious mightpartly explain the phenomenon, but uselessness explains the greater part. Transferrign money from account to account is also subject to certain figures, something akin to a an expnesive dinner in London for a party of 20; one could almost try to find it reasonable, were it not for the fact that these limits apply even to accounts where one has thousands of euros! Which comes to prove that the image of the granny sleeping with her fortune under her matress is probably not only topical but pretty useful advice...!
I spent the first part of my trip sorting out my brand new "maison de village" (well, new not being exactly the appropriate word, since my current to-do list includes all sorts of work to keep the house standing) and the second winding down in Cannes before returning to London.
The last stretch of this journey proved to be the most problematic and the best example of why la nouvelle France, a la Sarkozy, is still the same old France.
We were suppose to drive from Cannes to Nimes in time for the 12h57m TGV to Lille, where we would jump on to the London-bound Eurostar. So far, so good.
We had left early, to arrive at least an hour early before departure to make time for filling the tank of the car hire, grab something to eat and not stress too much.
Just before we left we heard taxi-drivers had gone on strike that same day and, as usual, their favourite past time is to block roads and motorways and make everyone else's lives a nightmare.
One would think they woudn't be able to garner much support among the public... wrong: most people will tell you they understand their grievances, and a day stuck in traffic, is, hey, anoher day off work, and so a win-win situation.
Regardless of the grievances (in this instance taxi drivers were protesting against government plans to deregulate the sector and offer more licences, and thus turn the sector more competitive) I was pretty pissed off with the protest - aptly named "Operation escargot", or "Operation Snail" (which I am tempted to say will not be out of place describing all sorts of public service in France...) - as I got caught up in the traffic for more than 2 hours.
It is not unheard of post-revolution France pointing the finger at class-divided Britain, but let me point out that strikes of this sort will more often than not take place around Marseille (where the riff-raff lives) and clog up Aix-en-Provence (just round the corner and home to the filthy rich and their luxury flats) - precisley the route I was taking up to Nimes.
I managed to pass the blokade point (where the drivers had abandoned their cars to assemble at a safe distance from angry drivers keen to show them a very English inverted V-sign, and where they calmly read their newspapers and had lunch - because a strike may be a strike, but the customary 2-hour lunch is still a lunch break...!) just about one hour before the train's departure time - the necessary to race up to Nimes in time for the train; and race up we did.
We got at the station (without having filled the tank - and therefore soon in for a huge bill...) at 12h55m, just in time to drop the car hire at the park, throw the keys over the counter to the startled car hire employee, run to the platform, shout at the station manger to not let the doors of the TGV shut and almost loose half of the luggage on the platform.
Huge sigh of relief as doors close just behind us...
Next question to fellow passenger: Is this train going to Lille? (or better, in my best Franglais, "C'est a Lille?"), to which the answer was:
...no, this train is going to Montpellier....!
...which for those who have never been, is in the opposite direction, going South, instead of North... perhaps it was the magnetism of my little maison de village, missing me already...
So, Operation Snail became Operation Slug, Big Slug...
Anyway, for those who, like me, find generalizations amusing and an easy topic at the table but at the same time tend to disbelieve them, I can nevertheless say I have found many things in common between both sides of the bog:
Workers at bio-shops (the equivalent of Fresh & Wild in the UK, or as a friend of mine calls it, Wet & Windy...) are just as arrogant and rude as anywhere else in the world (even New York! probably the only business where people seem to get away with it);
There are as many broken down or out of service escalators and lifts at train stations as in the UK;
And drivers are just as annoyed at government plans to force the adoption of EU-style number plates on cars as they have alwas been in Britain.
The difference is that in the UK the source of the dislike is Europe and in France it has to do with the last two digits on the numberplate: the "departement" digits, i.e. the ones that tell where you come from in France and which might bring an end to the mutual distrust between aspirational, burgeois urbanite and simple-minded, paysan parvenu...
