Saturday, April 19, 2008

[thought for the day] saturday evening

Treaties, you see, are like girls and roses - they last while they last.

[Charles de Gaulle]

[saturday quiz] crossing the line


1. Sailors who have already crossed the line at the equator are nicknamed (Trusty) Shellbacks, often referred to as Sons of Neptune; those who have not are nicknamed (Slimy) _______ .

2. In 2006, a school teacher crossed the line with her 14 year old pupil. Her name was _______ .

3. Julius Caesar crossed the line by crossing the _______ River with his army in 49 BC, supposedly on January 10 of the Roman calendar, to make his way to Rome.

4. On October 27th, 1962, a U2 spy plane was shot down over Cuba. This was the point where many consider the line was almost crossed but in the end, both Kennedy and Kruschev agreed to pull their repsective _______ out.

5. Many consider that Hewlett Packard crossed the line to near oblivion when in 2002, _______ rammed through the controversial merger with rival company Compaq.

Answers, as usual, are in white and need to be highlighted below:

Pollywogs, Debra Lafave, Rubicon, Missiles, Carly Fiorina

[primitive] when it's preferable


Given the recent gay mafia references, this might surprise.

When I was part of the gay scene some years ago, we had some interesting parties, usually starting late evening. There were always three groups - the gays themselves [with accompanying girls] occupying the plush pile living room and bedrooms, the potheads floating around wherever and the beer swillers who occupied the kitchen.



One of the iconic groups were the Velvets, led by genuinely subversive Lou Reed and John Cale. The Velvet Underground were groundbreakers in just about everything, considering when they operated at full force - up to 69 but they were raw and the production values were primitive. Contrast that with the slick Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music.

And of course there were Warhol and Nico to add to the mix. In this clip, you really do need to have a good system or use the headphones to catch the creative bass lines - ordinary speakers won't cut it:



For me, the rawness and simplicity were absolutely vital to the sound, an integral part of other later groups as well, such as the Stranglers - wait for the second half of this clip "Something better change". You can see Jean-Jacques Burnell as a prat bouncing round like a young punk or you can see him as a punk. A genuine one:



And the singers.

The Velvets without Lou Reed were not the same; the Stranglers without Hughie Cornwell were pointless. In both cases, it was the not always smooth flowing chemistry of these particularly dangerous singers with Cale's insane arrangements and Burnel's creative bass which made the sound - which made the groups uncopyable.

Put that together with either Warhol graphics or those of Anne Taintor, courtesy of Ivyology and it's a hi-primitive retro world I adored and still love to smithereens.


[slow saturday] wouldn't want to be any slower

[economics 101] what's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture? Don't answer if you understand economics:

The Bank of England will next week unveil a plan to swap £50bn of government bonds for British banks' mortgages, the BBC has learned.

The government bonds would have a maturity of up to a year, but would be rolled over for up to three years.

These would meet banks' demands for longer term loans, while escaping being accounted for in the national debt.

The Bank of England hopes the scheme will encourage banks to lend to each other again and also to homeowners.

The banks have been asking for longer term finance from the Bank of England to fill their funding gap following the collapse of the market for mortgage-backed securities last August.

The disappearance of this market deprived banks of tens of billions of pounds of finance for mortgage lending and is one of the main reasons why the cost of mortgages for many homeowners has been rising, even though the Bank of England has been cutting its base lending rate.

We start with a hugely overinflated price for a house, out of all proportion to income, fuelled by the banks' willingness [greed?] to lend at all costs, even to sub-primes. By this massive influx of funds to the banks now, the process will continue.

Shakespeare wrote:

Feeding on that which longer nurseth the disease ...

But there's no such thing as a free lunch and the big slug is on the government itself, i.e. in its bonds. How far can they be trusted, especially considering the slump of the pound sterling and the jittery markets?

Maybe it's the turnaround everyone was hoping for, especially those involved in the game but it looks very much to me a game of double or quits here with quits the more likely outcome.

[putin answers] about alina kabaeva


Nunyaa
's Babel translation here.

Various denials - here's one.

Путин ответил на вопрос о Кабаевой
18.04.2008 14:05

"В том, что вы сказали, - ни одного слова правды ", - сказал Владимир Путин на совместной с Сильвио Берлускони пресс-конференции, отвечая на вопрос журналистки о том, что он якобы собирается сыграть свадьбу с российской гимнасткой Алиной Кабаевой.

"Вы упомянули статью в одной из наших бульварных газет, где упоминается Алина Кабаева - олимпийская чемпионка по гимнастике и упоминается телеведущая Екатерина Андреева. В других публикациях подобного рода упоминаются другие красивые молодые девушки и женщины, и думаю не будет неожиданным, если я скажу, они все мне нравятся. И все российские женщины", - продолжил Путин.

"Я лично считаю, что наши российские женщины - самые талантливые и самые красивые. Конкуренцию им могут составить только итальянки", - продолжил российский президент.

"Мне конечно известна избитая фраза, что политики живут в стеклянном доме, и общество вправе знать, как живут люди, которые занимаются публичной деятельностью, но и в этом случае существуют какие-то ограничения. Есть частная жизнь, в которую нельзя вмешиваться", - заявил Владимир Путин.

Российский президент отметил, что Россия в последние годы демонстрирует быстрый экономический рост, сокращается число людей, живущих за чертой бедности, реальные доходы граждан растут, "никто не задает вопросов про Чечню".

"Я всегда плохо относился к тем, кто с каким-то гриппозным носом и со своими эротическими фантазиями лезет в чужую жизнь", - сказал Путин. "Но, если в связи с отсутствием интересных тем, кто-то хочет покопаться в личной жизни, то и тут надо соблюдать определенные приличия", - заключил он.

Friday, April 18, 2008

[thought for the day] friday evening

Two opposed views:

A lover without indiscretion is no lover at all.

[Thomas Hardy 1876]

A time to embrace; a time to refrain from embracing.

[Ecclesiastes 3:1-8]

Hear part of this here:

[rubbish day] nice evening

Maybe it's just us, JMB and myself but we didn't know Dr. Michelle was back to blogging. Delighted - a fine blog she had [has]. We missed her and were so glad to see the avatar here.

Today started awfully and the wind was so strong here that it almot blew out the balcony windows - had to do some reinforcements and then the traffic buildup and pile-ups had to be seen to be believed. Russia doesn't do things by halves.

The Kabaeva/Putin story is doing the rounds, the uni girls were a bit cranky and then a nice little interlude ensued in the evening and home to some nice surprises. It's going to be an early one tonight.

I wish the peace of the night to everyone I corresponded with today - everyone.

[net neutrality] euphemism for control

The analogy is not far-fetched at all


First the news about "net neutrality"

Silicon Valley high-tech entrepreneurs told the Federal Communications Commission yesterday that there needed to be more oversight of phone and cable companies at the agency's second off-site hearing on broadband Internet rules.

However, none of the largest service providers -- Comcast, AT&T, Verizon and Time Warner -- attended the hearing yesterday, despite requests by the FCC to participate, according to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin.

At issue is whether the Internet needs rules that mandate it remain open and unfettered by network operators.

It seems to this blogger to be the thin end of the wedge. I'd like to see pornography thrown off the web altogether but to place the net under governmental agency control seems something that is being angled for.

This is the standard tactic - create a malaise so that the public demands something be done. In step the regulators to address the problem - voila, the government now controls it.

[eurovision] chanson sung in english

Marianne feels Sebastien Tellier should not perform "Divine" at Eurovision -- unless it is in French.

"A song represents the soul of a country," said Marc Favre d'Echallens, who heads a group dedicated to defending French against the growing use of English.
"It appears logical that a song representing France be a French song sung in French," he said, denouncing cultural "uniformity" and the "hegemony" of the English language in the world today.

It's the latest battle in a war France has waged for decades to defend French against the encroachment -- some call it the invasion -- of the English language.


The televised May 24 Eurovision contest, with entries from Andorra to Russia, drew some 100 million viewers last year -- when France placed 22 out of 24 finalists, with 19 points.

And the French are less than amused by the British attempt to mock them:
Les journaux britanniques qui ne manquent pas une occasion de se moquer de la France, s'amusent beaucoup en ce moment. Le Times en tête, ils racontent avec délectation comment la France envoie au concours de l'Eurovision, un candidat qui chante en… anglais. «Après des décennies de scores très embarrassants, la France a trouvé une étrange parade pour remporter le concours à Belgrade, le 24 mai prochain» , écrit perfidement le Times.

This blogger feels that the song should be sung in the native language by a native of the country to a reasonable number of generations.

English is a big enough language to accommodate that - there's hardly a need for this fixation for everything to be in English.

This blogger also feels that people should perhaps be a little less over-sensitive about some things and that good relations are more important than imagined slights.

Sebastien Tellier: "Divine"

Thursday, April 17, 2008

[thought for the day] thursday evening


Each man has found himself in the situation, somewhere along the line, where a woman is not speaking to him. How many have been in the situation where three women from different parts of the world are simultaneously not speaking to him? Interesting, huh?

A misplaced line here, a regretted word there - that's a situation which clearly calls for Shakespeare, for example, from Othello:

O! I have lost my reputation. I have lost the immortal part of myself and what remains is bestial, grrrr!

[He scurries back to his lair.]

[настоящая любовь] может ли это быть правдой?

Update from the western press

А новой избранницей президента России якобы уже стала олимпийская чемпионка, дважды чемпионка мира и обладательница громких европейских титулов Алина Кабаева. 12 мая молодой красавице исполнится 25, она младше Путина на 30 лет.


Московский корреспондент утверждает, что среди московских компаний, занимающихся организацией корпоративных праздников, уже объявлен закрытый тендер на право проведения свадьбы Путина и Кабаевой.

Сама же свадьба якобы состоится на Троицу, которая в этом году приходится на 15 июня.

Местом проведения торжества выбран Константиновский дворец под Санкт-Петербургом.

This is sweeping Russia today but no one knows if there's anything in it or not.

There is a video montage below of her career.

She's always been my favourite gymnast along with Nadia Comaneci. Music in the clip is by HiFi.




Mой весьма информированный источник, пожелавший остаться неназванным...

кроме того, было много слухов по поводу того, что путин неравнодушен к Анне Нетребко - оперной примадонне и не зря он наградил ее званием народной артистки и гос премией. кстати, она гораздо лучше обеспечена деньгами - звезда!

I'm also told she is Ukrainian but born in Russia, with two citizenships - Russian and Austrian.

Still, I feel Kabaeva's the one.

[32 years on] where is she now


Fine looking woman, yes? Would you believe she's 47 years old? Here's an earlier shot of her:



I sometimes ask the Russians if they've heard of her - almost no one has. In Soviet days her name was never mentioned.

[city cars] clever privo might be the answer


Nunyaa got me thinking about city cars. She mentioned the Nissan Privo:

The car is run by lithium-ion batteries and has ZERO emissions. The entire cabin of the car swivels which makes parking in tight spots a breeze. While the word Pivo means beer in Russian and several other Slavic languages, the car design has nothing to do with beer cans or keg barrels.
Perhaps it's based on the Russian "privod":

привод I м. тех. (передача) drive, driving gear

Earlier, in 2006, the Clever concept was also unveiled:

... a three-wheeled car that, at a metre wide, is designed to squeeze into the tiniest of parking spaces, funded by the European Union and backed by BMW, called Clever (for compact low emission vehicle for urban transport, and a possible swipe at the Smart car brand), launched at Bath University in south-west England.

Its developers hoped to see it on European streets within five years at a cost of as little as £5000. Clever's most striking feature is the way the chassis tilts, like a motorcycle, when the vehicle rounds a corner. The tilt system, designed by the engineers at Bath, is controlled electronically to make sure the car is balanced at all speeds.

The vehicle emits about a third as much carbon dioxide as conventional family cars, with fuel consumption equivalent to 2.17 litres per 100 kilometres. It has a top speed of 100 km/h and takes seven seconds to get from zero to 65 km/h. It can carry one passenger in a seat behind the driver.

I don't see anything current on this vehicle on the web so we'll ahve to look out for the Privo.

[blog notes] patterns of visitors


To look at this, you could be forgiven for thinking this is a U.S. blog. Look at mid-evening, London time though and the story is usually so different. Last evening I had my best Brit stats in a long while - 55% of readers were from the U.K.

I never planned the blog to be that way and yet it's a delight and I now try to plan the posts with the target readers in mind.

Days of the week is another very consistent thing. There've rarely been weeks, except with a major holiday, where it varies. Saturday is usually my shocker for visitor numbers, Sunday picks up, Monday and Tuesday peak, Wednesday begins the slide down to Saturday.

What's your pattern?

[boris] still leading the race for mayor

I want to be Mayor for all Londoners


I wanted to run an analysis rather than a eulogy. In today's Telegraph, Iain Martin says about Red Ken:

He is now really up against it. The payola machine Livingstone built for partially reconstructed Marxists at city hall is seamlessly interwoven with his network of activists across the city, giving him real reach in campaigning terms.

Livingstone may well be tired, but he still has a very good chance of sneaking back in.

Johnson has to hope to persuade Tories in outer London to care enough to vote this time. The bad news for undecided voters is that a flirtation with the Liberals or the Greens is pointless.

The electoral system means that the top two candidates' names will first be identified and then only the second votes cast for those two are added to their first vote totals. If a voter wants it to count, their second vote should be cast for either Boris or Ken.

Johnson's campaign is showing signs of faltering as the winning post comes into view. The problem has not been that he has avoided playing the clown, rather it is a lack of grasp of detail. He needs to work out a series of coherent answers to questions such as: how much will his new Routemaster buses cost? Who will be in his team if he wins?

Beyond policy specifics - and there is much in his promises on knife crime, policing, open spaces and recycling that is worth commending - ultimately this is a set-piece battle in a culture war.

Johnson is the Cavalier fighting Ken's politically-correct Roundhead forces whose grip has been strongest in municipal government. In office his natural inclination would be to do a bit less, "don't just do something, stand there," as Ronald Reagan put it, rather than spraying money at friends and quangos.


In the end, I suspect a weary London will see the two names and opt for the fresher voice which seems to offer some hope for London. Boris is that fresher voice.

Not greatly relevant but here was a quick poll I ran last October on my site:

Ken the Newt………………….27%

Boris the Beefy………………73%

15 votes total


Well, all right - not all that scientific but some real indicators show that Boris, on balance, is still the best choice.

[twilight zone] america in chartered territory

["Chartered" is not a mistake in the title.]

1. The U.S. economic downturn


Take your pick of sources on this issue and this is happening just as the the second factor below comes into play.

2. The SPPNA

From the SPP site:

"The SPP does not attempt to modify our sovereignty or currency or change the American system of government designed by our Founding Fathers […] The SPP is a White House-driven initiative."

It only regulates these areas:

a. defense

b. the judiciary

c. education

d. social security

e. opens the borders and creates access and egress via the state constructed NAFTA Superhighways

f. creates a free economic zone within NA shores

g is advised by the North American Advisory Council [CFR appointees - p53]

In real terms, NAFTA has had this effect already:

The big beneficiaries of NAFTA and the application of the neoliberal model have been the transnational companies in the U.S. and the sectors of the Mexican oligarchy whose wealth has increased substantially. The world’s second-richest man is no longer Warren Buffet of the U.S.; it is Carlos Slim of Mexico. The big losers have been the farmers and the working people, who have seen a substantial drop in their wages and standards of living.

... and ...

[T]here is an additional detail, not to be sneered at. As Alberto Arroyo, member of the Mexican Action Network Against Free Trade, said at the Sixth Hemispheric Conference Against the Free Trade Area of the Americas held in Havana in early May, [2007], the SPPNA’s objective is "to strengthen the military and security schemes to deal with the resistance of the people." The idea "is to try to create a close coordination (with plans concerted among the governments) to improve schemes of security that serve to confront social movements as if they were criminals."

As stated by them, nothing was signed by Bush, Martin and Fox on March 23rd, 2005 and yet this "advisory role" is set down to begin in March, 2009.

3. Barack Obama

Ross Fountain observes:

Obama has been lucky so far that his novelty as the first serious black candidate for the office of President of the United States has caused people to overlook just how wearisomely familiar his brand of faded radical chic mixed with elitism is.

Which is not to say Obama will get in - there's a long way to go and the McCain factor of course. One of the commenters at The Swamp wrote:

What Mark Silva won't tell Swamp readers: Republican John McCain is leading both Clinton II and Obama in the latest Gallup Poll. And the LA Times/Bloomberg Poll. And the Rasmussen Poll. Guess the Democrats at the Swamp only cite Gallup if the Gallup numbers look bad for Republicans.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

[thought for the day] wednesday evening


Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.

[William Morris - 1882]

[fish quiz] feeling peckish?

If you click on the fish, you'll get an idea which it is - but can you guess before you do that?





Highlight the white below for all names.

Barracuda, salmon, herring, cod and minnow

[housekeeping] blogrolls and reader

A glance at my Blogrolls shows a not unsubstantial list of top bloggers and it's been problematic how to deal with the list, given real life, et al.

I've almost finished transferring from the Reader [don't know if the link works] to the roll and vice versa but to bring them into line has been a one by one job, including renaming. Already some bloggers have noticed more visits and that is only going to increase now the Reader's working again.

Can't wait for the day when I'm able to get round the whole roll every day but that can only be with the Reader.

What cunning method do you use?

UPDATE: 18:50 London time - just been to every blog on the roll via Reader. Good stuff.

[podcast] first today from charon qc


A chicken owning carpet salesman in Wyndham St., Somerset has had an ASBO served on him over complaints about the screeching and smell.

This and other gems on Charon QC's first podcast. As he puts it:

Here is the first daily news podcast direct from my blawg.

The plan is to publish the short 4-5 minute podcast by 9.00 am each weekday day.

I will also be writing a short review on REDUXlaw - with the first review tomorrow, or, perhaps today.

Daily News podcast.

Podcast update

The 65+ podcasts I have done over the last year are now being uploaded to a server and I will be creating a single page (and updating the old pages) to categorise them under various headings. I hope to complete this work by Friday.


Really like the idea, especially if the voice is good, which you'd expect from a silk anyway. Do check out his first from his "blawg". I'd really love to see it in video form. This should particularly appeal to the expats among us.

[strange] are they spanish or portuguese


[independent travel] let's go get a new guidebook

Independent travel started rather late for me.

I was on a Thomas Cook Oberammergau tour to see the Passion Play [the last before they had trouble finding virgins in the village] and had noticed something quite interesting.

Whenever the bus stopped, two of our fellow passengers, Jim and Beckie Wheeler, disappeared up the road whilst the rest of us were decanted into the hyper-plastic buffetmart.

Watching other Brits speak their Pidgin French at the checkout counter, buying their supplies for the next leg of the journey, observing the checkout girls' absolute refusal to speak English and seeing the bile rise all round, I thought I'd follow the two 'independents' next time we stopped.

Thus they invited me to a little cafe/store up the road from the hyper-plastic buffetmart next stop and the passport to success seemed to be to attempt to speak French, be mercilessly ribbed by the French for five minutes, at which point they'd relax and drop into English.

Worked a treat and independent travel had begun.

The Grand Tour of Europe [or extended eat-a-thon] followed the latest marital disaster and that's the point where a not quite middle-aged but jaded, faded youth, humping round a red and grey Travelpak complete with straps, padding and clips all over it, found himself at innumerable rail stations, too snooty to use the hostels and too lazy to go beyond the square for a hotel.

In later years I realized I'd been doing a Bill Bryson but without the sense of humour and lucrative book deal to accompany it.

Travel Guides

There's been much in the news lately about these works of fiction called travel guides and Bryson himself drew attention to one he called Let's Go Get Another Travel Guide and it's true.

After wasting good pack space lumping that thing around I took someone's cunning advice and cut the guide into easily handleable sections which then got lost at different points in the pack along with the remains of yesterday's cheese sandwiches and underwear.

Bryson quotes Joseph Raff, in Fielding's Britain, 1996 [from Notes from a Big Country, Black Swan, 1999, p201]:

Be affable and cooperative but don't be overly conversational. Hold your passport casually in hand - don't flaunt it!

He quotes John Whitman's:

Get the clerk's name when you check in ... read all materials closely so you know your rights.
Uh-huh.

Independent travel for me came to a shuddering halt in the early 90s when I took a Brit reg car over to Northern Ireland midway through a three week IRA campaign and found myself at the wrong end of six SA-80 assault rifles on the outskirts of Newry, following a checkpoint bomb blast two hours earlier, which itself followed the pub I'd been sipping at in Cookstown some hours prior to that being blown to smithereens about the time of the Newry debacle.

It wasn't so much the rifles but the 20 year olds on the other end of them and those boys were very, very nervous as to why a Brit reg Sierra should pass their checkpoint, stop 200 metres away, turn and slowly make its way back to them. While they searched the car, my eyes were fixed on those twitching trigger fingers and the mouth was dry.

Well, I was lost, wasn't I? The Travelguide had let me down yet again.

From that little experience and that of taking the wrong turn-off in Belfast and finding myself in the Falls Road, vainly hoping to see flagpoles every hundred metres sporting the Union Jack, I concluded three things - I needed a new guide, a new brain and a new way to travel.

I don't know which method JMB used to get to San Diego Zoo but she certainly gets around and thankfully posts about the experiences.

Maybe she could also post her thoughts on Travel Guides. Finally, here's one travel guide you really can trust.

[wordless wednesday] my best post yet

Thank you.

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

[thought for the day] tuesday evening


The great nations have always acted like gangsters and the small nations like prostitutes.


[Stanley Kubrick]

[u.s. and europe] in good hands

Berlu's back with a vengeance.

Sarko, George and wife appear to be on the same team.

Let's look at that salute one more time.

Wonder who their leader is?

[tibet] one small piece of the chinese puzzle


There are some bloggers one must respect.

While people like myself make references to matters of importance and even offer some detail in passing, it takes someone like Sackerson and his comments on China and Tibet to bring it home and make one determined to run a better post on the matter.

Here is some of what Sackers said:

Tibet is important because of timber, minerals, extra living space for Chinese - and it houses up to a third of China's nuclear arsenal. A major interest is water, because Western China is very dry; among other plans, one is a hydroelectric plant exploiting the Brahmaputra River, which further down flows through Bangladesh and ultimately joins the Ganges.

The Chinese claim it will have twice the output of the Three Gorges Dam. "Work is tentatively scheduled to begin in 2009 but has been described as a 'declaration of war' against India and Bangladesh. One of Tibet's most sacred lakes, Yamdrok Tso, has already been mined, tunnelled and used for hydroelectric development."

My own angle is the fixation of the Chinese with the Silk Road [esp. the Karakorum Highway] so this week I'm going to try to draw all these threads together in the light of the new material on Tibet and try to cobble together a halfway decent post.

[male pattern baldness] ten legends tall or true

Click pic for video of Michael Parkinson interviewing Patrick Stewart


The legends



1* "You inherit baldness from your mother's father."

2* "Intellectual activity or psychological problems can cause baldness."

3* "One's ethnicity can increase the chances of going bald."

4* "Baldness can be caused by emotional stress, sexual frustration etc."

5* "Emotional stress has been shown to accelerate baldness in genetically susceptible individuals."

6* "Bald men are more 'virile' or sexually active than others."

7* "Frequent ejaculation causes baldness."

8* "Standing on one's head alleviates baldness."

9* "Tight hats cause baldness."


To these I'll just add one of my own:


10* "Acute hair loss has been known to cause baldness."

The effect on the female is an interesting study. Certainly the female who judges by Adonis standards [the vast majority, despite the denials] will be turned away by a receding hairline. But to turn this round, perhaps baldness attracts a better class of female.

One who sees it as part of the whole package.

Who knows?

We can only hope.

[morning sun] head on the pillow



If a prayer can put a notion into a man's head, it may be that this can be turned around.

Monday, April 14, 2008

[thought for the day] monday evening

Firth of Forth Bridge perhaps

When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.

[Conan Doyle]

[eyesight] in and out of focus

The old eyes are getting weary and out of focus from too much blogging - at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it - why I seem to be going blind at the computer.

If I didn't know the blogger in question better, I'd be concerned by the way the 2nd and 3rd letters in her label:

FLICKR

... keep tending to merge.

By the way, Scottish readers will have noted the significance of the time of this post, no doubt.

[truth] endangered species in writing


Don't know what all the fuss is about, tell the truth:

Author Thomas Kohnstamm said he had accepted free services, contravening company policy, and did not even visit one of the countries he wrote about. Lonely Planet says it has reviewed the books that Mr Kohnstamm contributed to but has so far found no inaccuracies. It also denied that the author's methods were common in travel writing.


Big deal. Nige, at Bryan's adds:

A recent example was H.R.F.Keating, whose Insepctor Ghote novels were widely praised for their vivid evocation of life in Bombay - even though he'd been writing them for ten years before he set foot in India. There must be many more such examples... Anyone?

Well yes, Nige. Astute readers wil have noticed I'm blogging from Athek in Western Gobi and that I'm an Eastern Potentate.

Confession time.

Actually I'm Jimmy Hughson from Scunthorpe, married with eight kids, shiftworker at the steelworks and I just wanted a little fantasy in my life. Is that too much to ask? The boss's daughter sneaks me water, every time her daddy's down the line and I get to use the office computer to blog from. Shhhh - don't tell the wife. The company and the daughter, you see - they're both gonna be all mine.

There - now I've confessed.

This talk of exotic girls in Russia and cloak and dagger government work is pure Walter Mitty. Nor am I a sportscaster. And the rumour that I'm descended to the eleventh generation from Sir Joseph Banks is pure eyewash - I have no botanic pretentions whatsoever although I do have the Banks nose. Anyway, that was on my mother's side.

Nor was my grandfather Henry Higham, Cobb & Co. rider from Blackwood, nor did my family hale from County Cork or even Lancashire. We're white rose anyway, from Keighley and you can put me to the test on this - I pronounce it "Keith-ley". Nor did we move to Love Lane, Bingley and I never wandered down and played by the Five Rise Locks, nor once went courting by Beckfoot Bridge nor do I have family in Trinity, Jersey.

Now we've got that straight, I'd just like to say I'm a veritable saint compared to Jason Blair:

Every newspaper, like every bank and every police department, trusts its employees to uphold central principles, and the inquiry found that Mr. Blair repeatedly violated the cardinal tenet of journalism, which is simply truth. His tools of deceit were a cellphone and a laptop computer -- which allowed him to blur his true whereabouts -- as well as round-the-clock access to databases of news articles from which he stole.

So that excuses me completely.

[you demolish] we demolish in return


This might be a tad late and you've no doubt seen it if you're a Brit but I just love this from the Quiet Man:

A grandmother from Merseyside has applied for planning permission to demolish the home of Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy.

Dot Reid is retaliating against plans to bulldoze her home and 71 others in Kirkby, to make way for Everton's new stadium and a Tesco supermarket.

The 58-year-old said Sir Terry, who lives in a mansion in Hertfordshire, deserved a taste of his own medicine.
Do read the rest of it if you haven't already caught it. We're talking here, of course, about the Arthur Dent Dilemma.

What do you do when you wake up one morning to find that the home you've invested yourself into for your retirement years is on the planning board at some local council office, scheduled for demolition?

Oh I love it and why stop there? Wonder where the unelected PM, Gordon Brown, technically resides, aside from N10? Maybe a community garden could be created on the site of his home too.

The thing is though that the demolition of Leahy's and Brown's homes would be a drop in the ocean for them.