Saturday, December 30, 2006

[blogfocus saturday] simple, homespun prose for the festive season

As the title suggests, in this more mellow 'tween Christmas and New Year period, these are some of the softer contributions from our bloggers, sometimes understandably so but sometimes quite a surprise indeed.

1 To get the ball rolling, let’s fly to Canada to have some tea with our margaritas:

I just love this tea pot from hubby. He said he trolled the antiques mall and there it was! It`s my favorite of all my teapots. Says Chelsea Gibson England on the bottom. Not sure if that`s a company or a person. It`s definitely been well loved and will be again. I like it so much that I keep it right on the table along with my traditional Christmas rose. Isobel especially admires that! This makes a nice pot of tea too :). He also gave me a new flat screen monitor. Wow....what a difference it makes. Now everything is in true colour rather than sometimes too dark to see. I think I did good this year!

2 Jack Kemp reflects on the religious or PC compulsion to wear this bit of clothing or to not wear this other one:

It seems there are two major schools of thought about unusual people with odd hats. One is that we should all learn about other cultures and be tolerant of them. The other is that we now in America have the Guaranteed Right not to be made uncomfortable by anything that doesn't suit our fancy, be it a person with an unusual hat or a with only one leg or who is obese or doesn't wear designer jeans - or is obese AND wears designer jeans.

3 Talking lifestyle [the making more leisurely of], this man is disillusioned and bored by it all:

A recent stunt [reported here at the BBC] was an effort to drum up publicity. The big idea: make Mondays part of the weekend. What a crazy, mad cap idea. I would love to meet the comic genius that came up with that one. Surely there were a million better ideas. In fact, why did they choose an idea that has already been adopted by most socialist governments in the EU?

Eleven more homespun pieces here plus the famous mystery blogger

[fireworks] pretty displays or kaboom kaboom

Around the world, fireworks displays will be set off to mark the New Year but in Britain, of course, Guy Fawkes is the biggie. This, in my opinion, is a better festival because until recently, one could buy personal kaboom thingies and I used to love setting them off – great strings of the things.

To be honest, I never set them off in letter boxes:

Employees of postal service Íslandspóstur are busy locking all outdoor mailboxes in Reykjavík and nearby towns to prevent people stuffing live fireworks into them on New Year’s Eve to get an extra explosion, damaging the mailboxes in the process. Morgunbladid reports. This New Year’s Eve the mailboxes in the capital area will be locked so that only one letter at a time can be put into them. Bigger letters have to be taken to the postal office. The mailboxes will not be unlocked until mid-January.

... and never stuck them up ... well ... read this. And yet we had mammoth fun. However, not everyone is so rapt in the tradition:

I would personally favour a system them allows the sale of fireworks only to people with a certificate issued by the local authority stating they are running a legitimate professionally organised display. This would cut out 95% of illegal sales almost immediately.

But there are some supporters of the old ways.
John Wilkes said...

I'm not sure about this. There are plenty of people who are miles from a licensed, professional display and would probably prefer to have a family display at home. One of my best childhood memories is my dad doing a fireworks display for us in the back garden - it was great fun.

Another recent worry is that the British fireworks industry has been steadily losing out to Chinese incursion and to some, that’s a pity. Personally, it seems to me like market economics.

[saddam] may the viciousness stop

Romans

17: Recompense to no man evil for evil. Provide things honest in the sight of all men. 18: If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. 19: Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. 20: Therefore if thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink: for in so doing thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. 21: Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.

I don't know what to think. I need to sit down for a moment or two.

[george bush] misunderstood and maligned [2]

If you missed Part 1 of the tribute to George W. Bush, it’s here. Now, here is the second batch of ten, with 30 still to come. The idea is to vote for the three best from these ten, with a view to eventually finding an overall winning excerpt:

11] "There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again." - Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

12] "First, let me make it very clear, poor people aren't necessarily killers. Just because you happen to be not rich doesn't mean you're willing to kill." - Washington, D.C., May 19, 2003

13] "As you know, these are open forums, you're able to come and listen to what I have to say." - Washington, D.C., Oct. 28, 2003

14] "The ambassador and the general were briefing me on the - the vast majority of Iraqis want to live in a peaceful, free world. And we will find these people and we will bring them to justice." - Washington, D.C., Oct. 27, 2003

15] "Whether they be Christian, Jew, or Muslim, or Hindu, people have heard the universal call to love a neighbor just like they'd like to be called themselves." - Washington, Oct. 8, 2003

16] "We've had leaks out of the administrative branch, had leaks out of the legislative branch, and out of the executive branch and the legislative branch, and I've spoken out consistently against them, and I want to know who the leakers are." - Chicago, Sept. 30, 2003

17] "We had a good Cabinet meeting, talked about a lot of issues. Secretary of State and Defense brought us up to date about our desires to spread freedom and peace around the world." - Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2003 [Perhaps not so much funny as worrying in that last line]

18] "Security is the essential roadblock to achieving the road map to peace." - Washington, D.C., July 25, 2003

19] "My answer is bring them on." - On Iraqi militants attacking U.S. forces, Washington, D.C., July 3, 2003

20] "I'm the master of low expectations." - Aboard Air Force One, June 4, 2003

[metaphor] raiders of the lost reason

Marion: What’s happening, Indi? All these flames and ghosts and things?
Indi: Er … I think G-d is just zapping the Nazis for stealing the Ark.
Marion: Couldn’t He do it, you know, a bit more quietly?
Indi: And let the denialists ascribe it to hallucination?
Marion: I’m happy in my humanistic denial. It’s up to each and every one of us stubbornly not to look at the evidence. That way we stay happy, you see.
Indi: Sort of like the ostrich, eh?
Marion: You know, Indi, I’ve been thinking and I’ve come up with a doozy of an idea. What if G-d is just a metaphor?
Indi: What if He just happens to exist?
Marion: Oh no, I wouldn’t like that.
Indi: Well let’s see the Great Metaphor get us out of this one.
Marion: Indi, man can do anything. He needs Nobody and Nuffink else. Can’t you get us out of this?
Indi: Er … not at this exact moment, Marion.

Friday, December 29, 2006

[george bush] misunderstood and maligned

This blog thinks you’ve all been terrible to poor Mr. Bush so in an effort to restore the balance, below are presented 10 of his most famous lines and I’d ask you to rate your top three from this batch. But don’t think it ends there – oh no.

There are another 148 of them and over the next few weeks I’ll present 90 more, in 9 relatively painless doses. Then we’ll draw the threads together and find GWB’s top utterance ever. Here are the first 10:

1] "Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love with women all across the country." - Sept. 6, 2004, Poplar Bluff, Mo.

2] "Secondly, the tactics of our - as you know, we don't have relationships with Iran. I mean, that's - ever since the late '70s, we have no contacts with them, and we've totally sanctioned them. In other words, there's no sanctions - you can't - we're out of sanctions." - Annandale, Va., Aug. 9, 2004

3] "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

4] "I believe if you want to be negative you always can, no matter how hard you try." - June 15, 2004

5] "Karyn is with us. A West Texas girl, just like me." - May 27, 2004

6] "I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." - May 25, 2004

7] "More Muslims have died at the hands of killers than - I say more Muslims - a lot of Muslims have died - I don't know the exact count - at Istanbul. Look at these different places around the world where there's been tremendous death and destruction because killers kill." - Washington, D.C., Jan. 29, 2004

8] "I love to bring people into the oval office...and say, this is where I office." - Jan. 29, 2004

9] "There may be some tough times here in America. But this country has gone through tough times before, and we're going to do it again." - Waco, Texas, Aug. 13, 2002

10] "The illiteracy level of our children are appalling." - Washington, D.C., Jan. 23, 2004

[glacier adrift] do you understand what's happening

I’m adrift on this issue – I just don’t know what to think.

The news: The 41 square miles Ayles Ice Shelf, one of six remaining in Canada's Arctic, broke clear 16 months ago from the coast of Ellesmere Island, with ice that is more than 3,000 years old. Within days of breaking free, the Ayles Ice Shelf had drifted about 30 miles offshore before freezing into the sea ice.

Issue 1: The obvious question is about global warming and there are opinions for and against.

Issue 2
: So, having read the above document, - if scientists can’t agree, then why do laymen use the expression: “It’s been scientifically proven?” It seems less and less has been proven as we go along. Stephen Hawking might also agree with this.

Issue 3
: I’m confused. How does an economic and political fisking of the Stern Report translate into the statement by certain bloggers that there is no global warming when it is as plain as the noses on our faces?

In an effort to understand, I came up with this:

After dropping for about 15 years, the amount of sunlight Earth reflects back into space, called albedo, has increased since 2000, a new study concludes. That means less energy is reaching the surface. Yet global temperatures have not cooled during the period. Increasing cloud cover seems to be the reason, but there must also be some other change in the clouds that's not yet understood.

The explanation continues here ...

[friday afternoon] new year weekend is upon us

Cartoon by Pritchett

From the 10th floor you can get a magnificent view of the four laned road below with the dividing strip. From my flat, a short time ago, I took a look from the balcony and a number of things were interesting.

Firstly, there’s been more or less constant light snow today and the roads, houses, trees and everything else is covered in white. Secondly, there is total gridlock at 6.30 p.m. as far as the eye can see, in both directions, both service roads, the main artery in the distance and all connecting roads.

Total.

To give you an idea, I just saw my own car, which should have been safely in the carpark a kilometre away, down below instead, attempting to go past. Winter jacket donned but still shivering on the balcony, I wished I had binoculars. Everything appeared to be the same, even down to the spoiler on the back.

Then I realized the one down below didn’t have the rear window spoiler and I breathed a sigh of relief and got to the toast in the kitchen just in time to stop it burning [for once]. Some time later I went back to look at the traffic and guess what – that car was still there. That’s gridlock.

Time to do the blog rounds in order to gather for the Blogfocus tomorrow.

[film] the 100 greatest films of all time

Let’s make a start on this thing.

The problem is, essentially, that the Brits and Yankies look at these things from different sides of the pond. While critics try to be unbiased, national interest still creeps in.

I took four lists – two American and two British and even then, we are leaving out the French and other Europeans; plus Asia and local areas such as Australia.

Then we have the problem of ‘what’s a film?’ There were some fabulous Czech anti-war animations on celluloid many years ago. Do they count? What about Bond, James Bond?

Full text here.

[may-december] for and against

Sean Connery and Catherine Zeta Jones faced the question in Entrapment.

Much has been written against and some for the chances of May-December:

1] I speak with authority. I spent 41 years of torture with a man 20 years older than I did, because I did not believe in divorce. Older men have their mind-set established and the wife can either follow or be miserable. I have yet to see a happy May - December marriage.
2] Almost half the couples in the United States divorce, and most of them are close in age. It is love that is the center of everything, not the number of years since your birth. It is love which creates alignment and balance between two people.
3] More reasons against and a fairly dispassionate view here.

Given, for argument’s sake, a 20 year old difference, that neither was a cheat, an egoist nor had personal problems, it seems to me it might work if:

1] It was 55-35, not 40-20 and her children were late teen;
2] They were both drawn together, [as in Connery-Zeta Jones in Entrapment], by some common thread or through some joint work or passion;
3] The love came more strongly from her, he wasn’t a sap for her and was a bit of a catch anyway;
4] She already knew his limitations and he was as honest with himself ;
5] They agreed to let go and review it every, say, five years.

I think it would have no chance if:

1] Her motive was for money, a father figure or a ticket to ride;
2] He lusted after her or loved her far more;
3] Their interests were quite different;
4] Their body language vastly differed e.g. her bouncy, he ponderous;
5] She was too young.

Thursday, December 28, 2006

[wal-mart] opens communist party branch

Wal-Mart has set up a new branch of the Communist Party at its China headquarters in the southern city of Shenzhen after allowing unions to operate in its stores earlier this year. Chinese law makes it compulsory for any company or institution with 25 or more staff to set up its own trade union if staff request one.

Its first Chinese store was opened in 1996 and now employs more than 35,000 people in more than 60 stores in 34 cities across China and plans to open dozens more.

Difficult to see them destroying local retailing in China or creating poverty as they seem to have done back home.

[russian hijack] silly season demands sensation

So, it was a beat up. The headline proclaimed: Aeroflot Flight Hijack Attempt Foiled by Passengers. But the text said differently:

A Russian Aeroflot A-320 airliner with more than 100 passengers onboard was en route from Moscow to Geneva but had to land in Prague shortly before 11 a.m., after a hijacker tried to attack the crew. Reportedly the plane's passengers subdued the would-be hijacker. The Itar-Tass news agency said an unidentified man who was drunk picked a fight with two other passengers, threatened the crew and demanded the aircraft alter its course.

In other words, a drunken Russian acted in character. Subdued? Fell over more like.

[presidential debates] discussing real issues or cardboard cutouts

Dalek Duet

Tiberius Gracchus has been reflecting on Presidential Debates in American elections and says they “have assumed an importance over the years that makes them a key part of any campaign.

Famous moments like Lloyd Bentsen's I knew Jack Kennedy, you're no Jack Kennedy quip in the Vice Presidential Debate of 1988 or Ronald Reagan's "There you go again" in the Presidential Debate of 1980 have become part of American history. Not to mention of course the most famous debate of the lot - between Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy in 1960 which supposedly won a tight election for JFK by showing him at his youthful best as opposed to what seemed to be a tired Vice President.”

Interestingly, listeners on the radio thought Nixon had won the debate but the television audience say it the other way. Some other debates:

In 1980 Reagan closed his debate with incumbent Jimmy Carter with a simple question: Are you [the American people] better off now than you were four years ago? Faced with inflation, high interest rates, a continuing energy crisis, and low American prestige abroad, many Americans felt that they were not better off, and Reagan won election.

In 1988 Dukakis had referred to himself as a "card-carrying member of the ACLU", which Bush picked up on and painted his opponent as a liberal who would sell America short. Gene Weingarten, of the Washington Post, spoke of a time when a group of journalists met Dukakis and felt he was "terrific, impressive, commanding, Presidential. We were falling all over each other to find adequate superlatives." Nieman curator Howard Simons heard us all out, then shook his head and said: "Won't win. No sense of humor."

[In an earlier post, Vox’s two principles for winning debates are argued.]

[gift giving] the imbalance of expectation

We were having a little discussion about presents and I came over as a bit curmudgeonly about it all. I felt that the Japanese had the right idea in writing everything in a book – the date, who gave it, to whom, what category it was, how much it cost [roughly], what the occasion was. That way the gift was always appropriate and never created an imbalance of expectation.

Not so, said one lady. A present is a spontaneous gift, an impulse of affection. Yes, said my friend but if one friend is richer and one poorer, then an imbalance is created and the poorer feels awful that he can’t respond in kind. Oh what’s it matter, was the lady’s response. Reply - it matters a lot to the person who is the ‘lesser’, shall we say.

My friend and I had a gift exchange this morning and with one or two exceptions, the gifts were roughly of the same nature. Why to do it at all then, is the obvious question. Answer - because it took effort to get the gifts, to think out what the other wanted and in the exchange, each went home with something more than before and it was to his taste.

Of course you have your own opinion on this, no doubt.

[blogfocus saturday] 21:00 london time

This computer was hit by a Trojan virus about midnight Monday which took it over and reconfigured everything in the name of a Spanish or Portugese host.

Update

Though it is now supposedly back in working order, I had the Blogfocus half ready when the computer suddenly crashed then rebooted itself and the auto-saved text and urls had been wiped.

Update on the update

It will have to be Blogfocus Saturday now, I'm afraid. Tuesday seems to have been a washout. So - 21:00, London time, Saturday, December 30th, New Year Edition.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

[sydney to hobart] maxis playing out of their league

The Sydney to Hobart race has always been dangerous because it travels through some of the roughest waters in the world, it is held at an unpredictable time of the year with weather which can become extremely violent very quickly and concentration on the boats is usually on ‘win at all costs’ rather than ‘batten down and play safe’, especially with race leaders.

In recent years, the rise of the ‘maxi’ has been very worrying. In the interests of pure boat speed, the old deep draft traditional lines have been revamped into flat, sleek torpedoes with highly complex systems and immensely strong synthetic fibres and other materials which can suddenly fail. It's not the first time Skandia, for example, has had centreboard trouble.

The result is a fleet of danger machines doing what they shouldn’t. Monohulls are great for safety, seaworthiness and 'slow but sure' when in traditional form but the new plastic fantastics are simply trying to play out of their league and be 'something they ain’t'. Thus Maximus’ crew had to be rescued today by helicopter and the two leaders lost their masts. If you truly want speed and safety, then the only really seaworthy boats are these.

For the record, Wild Oats XI, Skandia and Ichi Ban were leading the fleet across Bass Strait on Wednesday evening after the retirements of early leaders Maximus and ABN Amro One, who both lost their masts in the early hours of the morning. Ichi Ban was also the handicap leader.

[acronyms] pedantry or right on the money

I don’t mention Oliver Kamm’s posts nearly enough because 1] they’re usually so tightly written, it’s difficult to do anything other than post the whole thing and 2] he doesn’t like being quoted [his debate* with Norm over this issue seems to indicate that]. However, this one demands posting - here he is annoyed by an article in the BBC News magazine and he’s right. P-G – you might also be interested in this one:

You can make a plausible case that JPEG is an acronym. DVD-RAM is half an acronym. None of the rest is an acronym; they are abbreviations. MP3 is an abbreviation of an abbreviation. An acronym is a word formed from the initial letter or letters of a group of words. Unicef is an acronym; UNHCR is not an acronym, but an abbreviation. Acronym is a useful word, with no convenient synonym. I fear that its indiscriminate use by journalists who think it sounds modish may be irreversible.

*I reason that as he doesn’t like to quote others, the same would apply in reverse.

[vatican bank again] new profile of one of ‘them’

Martin Kelly’s blog is one of the best going and here he has come up with a piece about one of ‘them’ that I’m always on about, except that I don’t name them from the lists, given my position. Lists, for example, like the 1972 meeting of the Bilberbergers and its eyecatching cast. Like the lady who moved from Tesco to Fitch. Like Marc Ladreit de la Charriere. It doesn’t even start to address the interconnectedness of it all. Instead I rabbit on about the agenda, to almost complete blog-silence.

So here are some excerpts about Mr. Vatican Finance from Martin:

The man whose picture appears above is one of the most well-connected people on the planet; yet although few outside his homeland might know what he looks like, his career path has resulted in him probably wielding more influence over the lives of more people than many elected heads of state. His name is Peter Sutherland, and he's an Irish national.

Born in 1946, the last director of
GATT and the first of the World Trade Organisation, chairs both BP and Goldman Sachs International, on the board of the Royal Bank of Scotland, Mr. Globalisation, the cosmopolitan elitist incarnate, adept at moving from place to place and job to job with consummate ease, his name and face largely unknown to the world public but his work still leaving a huge footprint on their lives.

He is reported to be an avid member of the
Bilderberg Group and is European Chair of the Trilateral Commission. Globalisation is a policy, not a process, which depends both on mass migration in one direction and the sending of remittances in the other for its success. In a November 2006 interview with the Inter Press Service News Agency … Sutherland was quoted as saying that ''remittances are private funds whose use should be determined solely by those who have earned them.''

The punch line though is that he has now been appointed: 'Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See'. Who said that the Vatican Bank died with Robert Calvi in the Blackfriars Bridge execution?

[mick jagger] driver tells all

If you scan the posts you’ll see that only rarely does this blog post the MSM’s article lock, stock and barrel and only when it’s a goody and would suffer by being abridged. Thus I post this piece by Helena de Bertodano:

Most taxi drivers have at least one story about having a celebrity in the back of their cab. Keith Badgery can trump them all. He had Mick Jagger in the back of his car for 14 years. And Michael Jackson for four-and-a-half months. Not to mention Madonna, Rod Stewart, Barbra Streisand, Naomi Campbell, Julia Roberts, Jack Lemmon, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Gloria Estefan and many, many more.

For years, people have told him, "You should write a book." Now he has. In Baby, You Can Drive My Car, he reveals the antics of his clients, in particular Mick Jagger, whose famous womanising Badgery often witnessed. In fact, the book opens with Badgery tactfully getting out of the car while Jagger says his farewells to Sophie Dahl. "This took some time. By the end of it, the car was actually rocking slightly," he writes.

I meet Badgery at his home in Carshalton, Surrey. His wife Jane, also a chauffeur, collects me from the station in the black Mercedes limousine Badgery used for ferrying around his clients. It is very comfortable, with a beige leather and suede interior and tinted windows. As we cruise along the streets of Carshalton, I almost convince myself that I am famous.

Badgery, 53, used to work for a company that supplied cars to celebrities and became so popular that they would vie for his services. For the past five years he has worked independently, and only stopped driving Jagger two months ago. Jagger used him so often that Badgery had to drop his other commitments. "I basically lost all my clients through Mick because he used me every day of the week," he says.

But Jagger has recently hired a new minder, who also acts as a driver, and Badgery had found himself increasingly sidelined.

Therein lies the juiciness of this article, continued here …

[love profile] some of this was too close for comfort



The Keys to Your Heart


You are attracted to good manners and elegance.

In love, you feel the most alive when things are straight-forward, and you're told that you're loved.

You'd like your lover to think you are stylish and alluring.

You would be forced to break up with someone who was emotional, moody, and difficult to please.

Your ideal relationship is open. Both of you can talk about everything... no secrets.

Your risk of cheating is zero. You care about society and morality. You would never break a commitment.

You think of marriage as something that will confine you. You are afraid of marriage.

In this moment, you think of love as something you thirst for. You'll do anything for love, but you won't fall for it easily.

[death clock] let’s get morbid for a change

According to the death clock, I had 596, 789, 786 seconds left to live a few days back on Christmas Eve. Now what was the most disturbing thing about this was that when it was converted into years and days, it came to almost exactly the number of years and days my father was on this earth.

Another neat little statistic was that my BMI [body mass index] was almost exactly the same as Cityunslicker. Isn’t that neat, to employ an Americanism?

See how you go with yours.

Monday, December 25, 2006

[kissing] how good are you

I didn't say it - they did:

Your Kissing Technique Is: Perfect

Your kissing technique is amazing - and you know it. You have the confidence to make the first move. And you always seem to know what kissing style is going to work best. Sometimes you're passionate, sometimes you're a tease. And you're always amazing!


Now, where's Ellee, WCL, Bel, Liz, Heather, Margaritas, Beachgirl and my other blogfriends?

[peace oil] small start, great hope

Jeremy Jacobs refers us to Peace Oil, which I posted on earlier in December but I’m glad that he reminds us of it again and a more appropriate Christmas post would be hard to find:

Peace Oil is produced in Israel by Jews, Arabs, Druze and Bedouin working together. Grown in the foothills of the Carmel Mountains, the olives are pressed within hours of picking, to produce this prize winning extra virgin olive oil.

An initiative of registered UK charity The Charities Advisory Trust, Peace Oil encourages co-operation between communities. By helping to market their produce it hopes to bring economic prosperity to such enterprises, encouraging others to follow their example.

Profits from Peace Oil are used to support peace and reconciliation work in the Middle East.

www.peaceoil.org

Peace Oil
Radius Works
Back Lane
London
NW3 1HL
0207 435 6500

[Interesting to me that this is set in the Carmel Mountains because my fourth book is set there, the hero and wife living in among the Druze for the most part. It is fair to say that the Carmel Mountain area and the north, as distinct from Haifa, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, seem to be better able to get on than their neighbours. Still, it’s a great start and any start is a hope.]

[recipe] for disaster, that is

Ingredients

1] An ambitious, aspiring, upwardly mobile couple on bog standard salaries;
2] A shopaholic who knows the price of everything;
3] A society which has been weaned off cash-in-hand and onto credit;
4] Cynical setting [by the financial sector] of the unit cost of goods higher than the unit hourly value of labour;
5] Households in hock with the house, car, refrigerator, television and everything on finance.

Method

Stir the mixture, serve up a la divorce court and voila – this is what you have:

One in four workers in the UK has a second job to help pay off debts or keep up with the everyday cost of living, according to a survey. More than half of those questioned worked for an extra 10 hours a week on top of their regular jobs, friendly society Liverpool Victoria reported.

Paying off debts, saving for a holiday and paying household bills were the main reasons for holding down two jobs. The study investigated the work patterns of 1,000 adults across the UK.

Workers in the south-west of England were the most likely to have a second job, followed by those in Scotland and the English East Midlands, Liverpool Victoria said. By contrast, workers in the east of England were the least likely to have two jobs. In total, more than one in six of those questioned said they worked at least 21 hours a week on top of their regular occupation.

"With an estimated savings gap in the UK of at least £27bn, it is concerning that so many Britons work extra hours in a second job, yet still don't save anything for the future," said Nigel Snell, Liverpool Victoria's head of external affairs.

[Once again, sorry but this came out before my blogging days and therefore I have no link. It’s entitled Workers Turning to Second Jobs and is from BBC News from Monday, February 20th, 2006]

Update and hat tip to Martin. Article URL:

[downwardly mobile] clever move for professionals

A prestige job gets the girl

When the Thunderdragon came out with his post on shelf-stacking, it caused much mirth:

Thus, over Christmas, the busiest time of the year in supermarkets, I shall be spending most of my time stacking shelves for not enough money.

Shelf stacking really is a horrible job. It is boring, uninteresting and monotonous. You could probably train an ape to do it... though I doubt most people would be willing to buy their fruit and veg from them... Something I have never understood is how some people can be willing to spend their entire working lives stacking shelves in a supermarket.

I say:

Not so fast. I am in a job where brain fatigue is the greatest danger. My consultancy work has me preparing 10 to 30 minutes for each hour face to face and as the preparation needs to be done during ‘non-working hours’ and as it is intensive and as it clashes with Blogging, which is also intensive, the result is burnout. So the idea of doing a shift, driving a train, say, clocking on and clocking off and not having to think the whole time, well – it looks to have its merits.

To do shift work stacking shelves doesn’t seem too bad then, saving one’s brain for the other working hours. We’re talking sanity and lifestyle here and it seems I’m not alone:

Bankers, teachers and chemists are leaving their professions to become train drivers, research has found. Flexible hours and a salary which can top £35,000 a year were among the main attractions, drivers union Aslef said. A life in the cab traditionally drew applications only from those already working on the railway.

More here …

Sunday, December 24, 2006

[japan] twins are 30th panda birth

Time to acknowledge the source of some of my best material – The Age. Does that make me one of the ‘ragtag bloggers hanging on to the MSM’s coat-tails’? Perhaps but still, the news is good.

A panda has given birth to twins at a zoo in Japan, raising the number of artificially-bred pandas born this year to a record 30 in a mini-baby boom, a Chinese news agency reported. The panda Meimei gave birth yesterday at Adventure World in Wakayama, Japan, the Xinhua News Agency said.

The number of surviving panda cubs born this year is the highest to date, Xinhua said, citing Zhang Zhihe, an expert at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in China's south-west. "The record number of cubs in this year shows the captive breeding of giant pandas has entered a golden age," Zhang said.

Seventeen of the surviving cubs were born at the Wolong Giant Panda Protection and Research Centre and nine at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding, both in the south-western province of Sichuan, according to Xinhua. One panda was born in the south-western Chinese city of Chongqing and another at the Atlanta Zoo in the United States, it said.

The panda is one of the world's rarest animals, with about 1,590 living in the wild in China, mostly in Sichuan and the western province of Shaanxi. Another 180 have been bred in captivity.

So there. I have two questions: 1] Wonder why we love Pandas, Dolphins and Whales so much? 2]
Do they include both twins as one birth, as in the heading?

[bethlehem] first hamas christmas in ruins

This is the first Christmas that Hamas has hosted in Bethlehem and things are not looking good in the town where Jesus was born 2,000 years ago. "This is the saddest Christmas. As you see, Manger Square is empty," said Mayor Victor Batarseh, a Roman Catholic mayor who was elected last year with support from Hamas.

In the days leading up to Christmas, only a trickle of tourists visited the holy sites, half the shops were closed, and decorations were sparse. The foreign aid that once poured into Bethlehem has dried up, a victim of the international aid boycott imposed on the Palestinian Authority in March when the Hamas-led government took control of Gaza and the West Bank.

"I am pleased that Hamas is helping to make Christmas," [a Hamas official] said. "It is our duty to help with the decorations and congratulate our Christian brothers on their holiday. Muslims consider Jesus as one of the prophets, and we also celebrate his birth, but not as a major holiday."

Yet by Saturday, the promised money from the government had still not arrived. A municipal official said that even if it came, it would likely not be spent on Christmas lights. "We will pay the salaries -- that's more important," he said, on condition of anonymity.

After six years of the intifada and Israeli military incursions, the tourists have disappeared, and Bethlehem's economy is in ruins. The town of 30,000 is now almost encircled by Israel's separation barrier, which has strangled Bethlehem's livelihood, cutting off the town from Jerusalem and deterring all but the most determined visitors. Israel says it built the barrier to deter cross-border attacks, but Batarseh said it has transformed Bethlehem into "a big prison whose keys are in the hands of the occupier."

Only about 100,000 tourists have visited Bethlehem in 2006, compared to nearly 2 million annually before the intifada. Samir Qumsiyeh, owner of a local Christian TV station, has documented more than 90 incidents of anti-Christian violence carried out in the Bethlehem area in recent years and 140 cases in which Christian land has been taken over by what he describes as "Islamic mafia gangs."

Among the few pilgrims in town just before Christmas was Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, who led a delegation of British church leaders to Bethlehem as a sign of solidarity. The clerics prayed in the Church of the Nativity along with Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian and Syrian bishops.

[christmas eve] best to forget the world news

[blogpower] christmas day special radio 5 live

This is not strictly a nourishing obscurity matter and yet I felt this Blogpower issue should be brought to your attention.

I’ve just listened to the Tin Drummer with the BBC’s Chris Vallance and I thought, quite frankly, he was fantastic.

We blog to each other and never know how the other one would sound but surely you’d have to agree the Tin Drummer has one of the best radio voices imaginable.

I myself am deeply honoured to have been mentioned [a little too much I feel] and now I’m going back and am going to listen to it all over again. Well done, sir and you’ve done Blogpower a world of good!!

Don’t forget to download Tin Drummer’s Christmas Day special below. I’m currently exploring how to get the graphic onsite. Thanks Thunderdragon for the hosting and the work.

or Chris Vallance's own BBC copy:
2006/12/the_best_unsung_blogs

On another matter, fellow Blogpowerers, when the Christmas rush is over, after you’re back at your computer, could you possibly respond, as Cityunslicker has responded and compose a short summation of 10 other bloggers of your choice? It’s a bit like a Christmas present for them.

Meanwhile, to all of you, from whatever persuasion, this Christmas holiday, may only good things come to pass for you, as you would wish it on others. I hope December 25th will be a day of peace for you and for your family.