Saturday, September 05, 2009

The delights of rooting around in vintage Hansards, by The Croydonian

I'm delighted to be able to welcome back to posting duties The Croydonian, one of the major bloggers of the Britsphere and his piece on the pleasures of Hansard. Those who know The Croydonian note his to-the-point and sometimes even quirky selection of vignettes from France in particular and of course, at home. He was the Britblogger who kept us up to date during the Segie-Sarko saga.

The Croydonian:




James shares my interest in parliamentary archives, and at his request here is my attempt to justify it.

Some years back I was introduced to the pleasures of raking around in the web edition of the previous day’s Hansard, and have found plenty of things to blog about from reading written answers and so forth.

Apart from a few set piece debates – Iraq, fox hunting etc even the serious newspapers dismiss an entire day's parliamentary proceedings with a parliamentary sketch. Some of those are very good, but it does mean that any sense of what is going on in Parliament, particularly away from PMQs, can only be derived by going to the source oneself.

Presumably this reflects an utter lack of interest in proceedings among the public. Sad nevertheless. Apart from the opportunity to make sarcastic comments in blog posts, I have developed a rather greater appreciation of quite how much activity there is involving the less glamorous aspects of parliament and how very assiduous some MPs are in wheedling out answers from a reluctant executive.

Anyway, the blighters are all in recess and are unlikely to re-appear until the middle of October, having broken up for their hols in July. Doubtless much constituency work will be going on, and I would not deny our parliamentarians a week or two of vacation. However, this had left me rather stumped for daily material, but fortunately some kind souls have digitised the entire run of Hansard going back to 1809, complete with a reasonably efficient search engine.

As such, I have been making hay, starting off with digging up the maiden speeches of sundry noted politicians (Mr Tony's is blogged here), before moving on from Class C to the hard stuff – debates, questions etc from the starting point dates of 1859 and 1909, the attraction of the symmetry being too great.

Here are some jewels dug up from 1909 and 1859 sessions, so as to give a flavour of what is out there:

An 1859 debate on divorce
- John Hennessey (Con) “but believing also that the Act thus to be rendered more powerful is the worst Act of Parliament which Her Majesty has ever sanctioned—believing it to be an Act which, on political, social, moral, and religious grounds, should never have been passed".

The generosity of the Daily Mail in 1909: "The "Daily Mail," working in conjunction with the Parliamentary Committee, have made the generous offer of a shed. The War Office has provided, with the assistance of the London County Council, a site at Wormwood Scrubbs, and the shed is in the course of rapid construction". Said shed was an airship hanger.

The same debate on aviation featured this sadly incorrect observation – “Mr Mond (Lib) I do not think that nations in the future are going to conduct their battles by scattering explosives over houses. That is very unlikely to take place. It would be the very reversal of the rules of war which have now existed for a long time".

Quite a quote from an 1859 debate:
The Member for Birmingham expressed fearlessly what he held consistently, and he had a perfect right to believe that there was not a Zouave in the French army who would not prefer a remission of the wine duties to the sack of London".

I am going to continue rooting around in the 1909 Hansard - they had no summer recess that year, by the look of things - although in 1859 they stopped dead in the middle of August and did not resume until 1860. If anyone else fancies regular Hansard trawling, perhaps we could start up a web ring or somesuch.

[late evening listening] hgf presents jazz singing



... and my contribution:

Prisoners and the media (Part 1), by The Jailhouse Lawyer

Below is a post by the Jailhouse Lawyer and I won't go into the content - that's for you, the reader to consider. As well as the issue considered below, there is the issue of whether there are some topics and some bloggers who should or should not get space on this blog. It was suggested by a fellow blogger recently that they shouldn't.

So I'm left with a dilemma. If I restrict this blog to only "respectable" people, as seen by the respectable, then my own reputation is protected and I can be reassimilated into the blogging club but at the cost of this blog's prime directive - to pursue truth with neither fear nor favour.

Or I can let any point of view get an airing - the Imams', the BNP's, the cultists, whoever's - and having been put in writing here, it can then run the gauntlet of you, the readers. Anything put up for consideration can either be embraced or torn down. It's fair game, once posted.

Ad hominem

I'd like to specify more clearly this blog's policy. It's not so much attacking another person that's out but the utilization of incendiary, non-specific phraseology when applied specifically to a reader/blogger. I can call Brown the most gutless, arrogant, incompetent and destructive PM this country has had because there are instances to support that contention but if I say he's a piece of excrement, then that crosses the line, being neither verifiable nor to the point of the political issues. I was once called out by a reader for calling Merkel "vermin". You get the idea.

Thus to the post:

Writing blogs

NOEL ‘RAZOR’ SMITH - HMP
BLANTYRE HOUSE


The prison system has strictly forbidden me to write for publication or have any contact with the media therefore my query for the prison service (or whatever bunch of initials they are calling themselves these days) is this: according to Standing Orders and Prison Rules, convicted prisoners are not allowed to write for publication for payment, however there is no mention reference prisoners writing a blog on the internet; for which there is no payment but merely a chance to express an opinion.

So as a serving prisoner can I write a blog? And if not, can they point out the rule or Standing Order which forbids it? Obviously I do not have direct access to the Internet, but I have someone outside who will convert my typed words for the web, so I am anxious to find out what the objections might be.

I believe this is an important issue which may open up a new avenue for serving prisoners to express their opinions, so I look forward to hearing their reply; though they'll probably draft a new rule forbidding it as soon as they are asked the question. Cynical? Moi?

The Ministry of Justice writes:

There is no specific Prison Service policy on prisoners using or posting blogs, as they do not have direct unregulated access to computers or the Internet. However, in terms of the restrictions placed on the contents of prisoners’ correspondence, PSO 4411 Prisoner Communications Correspondence, paragraphs 7.1 (10) (a) to (e) specifically covers the issue of publishing or broadcasting material by newspaper, radio or television transmission. Whilst the policy does not explicitly mention publication or broadcasting on the Internet, such activities would be viewed similarly to any other form of media outlet, as previously mentioned.

Therefore, if any part of a prisoner’s correspondence on a blog contained material which fell under any of these paragraphs, appropriate disciplinary action could be taken
for breaching these restrictions.

As for the setting up of a blog, by a third party on behalf of a prisoner, paragraph 7.2 of PSO 4411 states that ‘a prisoner may not ask, in writing or otherwise, another person to make on his or her behalf a communication which he or she would not be allowed to make directly, or which would contravene this Prison Service Order’. While this has often been interpreted in the context of one prisoner asking another prisoner to write/send something out illegally on their behalf, this could be applicable to anyone outside of the prison.

"The only blog by a serving British prisoner. Looking stupidity and ignorance in the eye whilst attempting to inject some neurons into the criminological debate. As British prisoners are denied internet access, I post via the Royal Mail and the kind efforts of friends".

Should prisoners be allowed to blog?

By Lifer Ben Gunn

That's the wrong question, really. As long as I don't identify staff or cons, charge money, or rabbit on about guns, bombs or escape plans then the law allows me to inflict myself upon you for as long as I want. Some would find this objectionable.

Whilst I appreciate that view, my response is - tough, deal with it. As a matter of law, my punishment was the loss of my physical liberty; not the loss of anything else. And you need to endure that to appreciate its weight. Having a Blog or a TV doesn't quite make up for loss of liberty. But we are not really talking law here, but more a sense of morality. Should a convicted murderer ever intrude into the public arena?

I blame you that I feel the urge to. I don't write this to feed my giant ego. I write this because there is a total absence of genuine, informed debate around imprisonment. The ether is swamped with trite opinion, fuelled by a mixture of bile, anger and ignorance, and some occasional thoughtful interjection may be useful. Who better to offer that than a serving prisoner, whose life's work has been the study of prisons? On a wider point, don't forget that I remain a part of society.

I may be tucked away in an obscure and dull corner, but nevertheless prisons are part of the whole. Every law, every social obligation and each cultural and politico-economic shift falls as heavily upon me as it does the free person. As a sovereign individual in a liberal democracy I assert an untrammelled right to voice my views. There are those who will instantly argue that my first post should be a profound apology to my victims. And that I should stop at that point. Patience, my enemies, I will of course discuss these things. And my lifetime’s effort to live a non-¬violent life may suggest that I do recoil from my crime and intend to try, no matter how futile it is, to repair some of the social harm that I have caused.

But I refuse to be defined solely in terms of my crime and my past. In the meantime, I hope to inform, provoke and entertain by offering insights into imprisonment that our Glorious Leaders and media fail to deliver. Imprisonment should be a perpetual discussion; the human suffering that follows from crime should be carefully considered, and not relegated to atavistic headlines. Isn't it rather pathetic that it is left to a prisoner to call for this debate, rather than political leaders?

[the instability of canada] yet another election in fall

The beauty of Canada - click to zoom


It's more than a question of definitions:

The first priority for all three of the opposition parties is to define Ignatieff. While he appeared to start strong as a leader, he has been seen to stumble recently. More importantly, he has not clearly established the answer to two critical questions: Why do the Tories need to be defeated now? Why does Michael Ignatieff want to be Prime Minister?

The Conservatives expose Ignatieff's naked greed:

Watch for Harper to suddenly offer Ignatieff a deal on EI. He'll publicly propose a set of reforms that, while not quite what the Liberals sought, are indisputably seen as a compromise. Of course, he would make this gesture knowing that Ignatieff has crossed the political point of no return and will be forced to reject any offer.

And what Ignatieff's about:

The leader's ambition and the ever-present Liberal Party sense of entitlement seem to be the proximate cause of Ignatieff's election fever, rather than any rational plan to break the deadlock that has delivered five years of political turmoil and precious little constructive policy.

So we have a man who has naked ambition to be PM, he is pushing hard for a fall election, quite against the wishes of Canadians and to justify himself and get people onside, he promises this sort of thing:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff pledged Wednesday to erase the projected $50-billion federal deficit if elected into government -- and to do so without raising taxes.

Canadians might like to look at the way the socialists over here sold off our gold at firesale prices and plunged us into debt to finance both the blunders and the policy breakdown. They might like to look at trillion dollar Obama and his plan to cripple the States.

It will be interesting to see how Harper plays Ignatieff. IMHO, Canadians should avoid Ignatieff like the plague.

[cricket short game formula] why not 40-40 in four halves?


This blog is biased towards test cricket over the multi-coloured clowns and always has been. In the days when Yallop led his men against Brearley in that press-on-regardless series of tests at the time of World Series Cricket, when the national teams were deserted in the interests of money by the so-called stars of the time - I was at the test matches, not with the clowns.

However ...

The idea of the 50 over match did grow and it was an"all right" formula for some time as a light counterpoint to the long game.

But ...

There were problems with the formula and circles, fielding restrictions and over restrictions notwithstanding, the 50 over format began to pale a bit. Twenty20 had a much greater chance of success in that it could all be over in an afternoon and didn't suffer quite so much if time was lost to rain. This is also the case with test cricket - there's always tomorrow if one day is rained out.

Having played 20 over cricket, might I posit that it's also too short as a national spectacle. OK for schoolboy matches but the inducement to play rashly within that timeframe is not entertainment, certainly not for those who love the game. I can't see what the pleasure is in seeing blasters and slashers the whole 40 overs. Where's the intrigue, where's the drama?

Tendulkar says 25 x 2 x 2 is the way to go but it lengthens the one day to an awfully long time for the spectators, let alone the players. If it goes to two days, then what's the point? Might as well go the whole hog and have a proper test. 40 over is nice and brings it back to just about the right length.

30? 35?

Why not 40-40 in four halves? Right length for the day in terms of total over numbers but here's my idea - instead of a brand new start in the second innings, it carries on from where you left off at the end of your first twenty. So, if you were 124 for 5 at the end of the first innings, you'd come back for the second at that point and go from there. If you were bundled out during that second half of your innings, that would be the end of it, so spectators would get a shortened entertainment time.

On the other hand, it would encourage teams not to play the slash game, in order to preserve wickets for the second innings, on the basis that the maximization of the number of balls bowled leads to a greater chance of aggregating runs, however slowly [natch]. The emphasis would then be on staying alive for the full overs.

[match tricks two] try before you check

Lay out 18 matches to form 6 triangles.

Can you move 2 matches to make 8 triangles?

Give up?

Try these as well:

Matchtricks 1
Matchtricks 3

[the great disaster of 2011] commemorated in parliament


One of the best bloggers going is North Northwester and this is one of the posts which make him what he is.

Set in 2015, it's the tale of the Great Disaster of 2011:

The Queen opened a joint session of Parliament , leading the surviving 230 Peers and 173 UK Members of the Commons in prayer for the dead of London and Birmingham.

The Leaders of the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Speaker Sir John Redwood, the Prime Minister, the Leader of the Opposition Sir Frank Field, the leaders of the Liberal Democrats and also the six MPs of the Patriotic Front, along with the leaders of the newly-formed Royal Celtic League consisting of most of the formerly nationalist parties of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland all joined Her Majesty in hoping that the civilian rescue workers, returning armed forces, and survivors would continue to bring ever greater order and security to the blasted and still burning areas of the Home Counties and Midlands.

They also praised the Welsh and West Country Shire Civil Contingencies Divisions managing the diminishing but still dangerous levels of airborne fallout.

Well worth a read, North Northwester.

[wireless nation] disconnecting with planet earth


Australia is not a bad litmus test for trends of the future, as long as one takes one's own national specifics into account:

About 2 million people are considering ditching their fixed-line home phones, as Australians move closer to becoming one of the world's first wireless economies. For the first time this year, the communications giant Telstra has had more mobile phone subscribers than fixed-line subscribers. Mobile phones now outnumber fixed lines by more than two-to-one.

There are 105 mobiles for every 100 people, making Australia one of the most saturated markets in the world behind South Korea, with 114 mobile phones for every 100 people.

Although research has shown the decline of fixed lines has been relatively slow, declining by 1.7 per cent a year since 2004, research by the Australian Communications and Media Authority shows as many as one in five consumers have considered dropping their fixed line subscriptions to save money.

In Britain, the giant BT has just about got the landline game sewn up and their advantage is pressed in that a BT line is one of those tick boxes which helps you to credit and really groovy things like that, which converts you from a non-person to a person. A DVLA full licence is another. However, BT is so bureaucratically hopeless that many react agaisnt it, go for Virgin or whatever and pay the price later for things which don't dovetail quite as easily as before.

And let's face it - mobiles are expensive to run, the hidden charges outweighing the benefits. So what Australians seem to want is the flexibility and convenience, at a small cost. The good life, in other words. On top of that is the way mobiles are now so much more - cameras, organizers and so on and so on.

I phone springs to mind.

With Ms Fox pushing hard for everyone to be connected to the net, with Obama intimating he can take over the net as and when he wants and with people connected in phonespace and cyberspace through the ubiquitous Facebook, command and control is looking shipshape and full steam ahead.

[japan's first lady] interesting former life

Good thing or bad thing?


Miyuki Hatoyama is a free spirit who likes to 'eat the sun' and says she's been to Venus
in a triangular spaceship. Oh, and she met Tom Cruise in a former life -- he was Japanese. The 66-year-old Hatoyama, a former singer-dancer in an all-female theatrical troupe and the ex-wife of a Japanese restaurateur in California, met the new prime minister, now 62, while he was studying engineering at Stanford University.

Right, right, fine. I wonder what colour the spaceship was? Also, I've been thinking - if Tom Cruise was Japanese in a a former life, that might explain a lot about him and about vampires.

[ronald reagan] might as well have been today

This one is via HGF. I'm amazed how sharp he was and on the ball but that was the image projected on him to be forgetful in later years. What a topical speech for today:

Friday, September 04, 2009

[fireside chat] at the end of the evening


This is a Night Post. It could not see the light of day and tomorrow I'll most likely look away. Tiberius Gracchus said he didn't like people getting personal about themselves on their blogs because he doesn't know those people.

That's fair enough but about a year ago I ran an extensive survey on this site as to what people liked and didn't like. It might be time for another survey soon because the reader base has changed somewhat. However, at the time, many liked the first person singular posts of mine the best, especially about my Russian experiences.

Personally, I like personal tales now and then with other people. I get uneasy about someone who never reveals anything about himself. Also, in a music vid, it's nice to see interraction either between the band members or between the band and audience. I don't mean the excruciating sing-along and clap-along thing where the singer pauses to let the audience sing out of tune. No, I mean real interaction, often impromptu.

Age

There was an article I saw in the MSM, in passing, on the topic of being too old over 35 and I had to smile. 35 too old? Anyway, the author was worrying about why he was still single when all his friends had paired off or married and they, naturally, considered he had a problem, which made the situation worse. There's no one more callous than a couple who care, except perhaps for a happy couple who care.

So he was set up on a blind date and the talking began - all the self-justifications, all the sweepings-under-the-carpet, all the ego-protection:

Then poker came up in conversation, and my date said she loves to gamble, but she’s having a bad year. “How so?” I asked. She said she’s down $19,000. Nineteen. Thousand. Dollars! I thought, Wow, so you don’t want to work AND you’ve got a gambling problem? You’re quite the catch.

Hopeless with money, creditors after her, probably highly opinionated and quick to take offence, I'd warrant. With the years under the belt now, I wonder why I ever thought it OK to team up with someone who was as much of a liability as I was.

Most people in the family situation have their own problems - let's not dwell on those - a blog visit is to escape from those things for a while. The people outside of a relationship - while it is nothing like the problem it's made out to be and can actually give peace and quiet, can, if left too long, result in a certain eccentricity or weirdness creeping in to the person alone, something not really possible in the day to day running of a family.

Corners are cut, functionality can become the norm, diet suffers, whilst at the same time, choice of clothing suffers, a self-sufficiency takes over, a compact sort of enclosed, eccentric existence begins and the focus turns in on the self. At best, a sort of self-deprecating resignation finds its way into the voice.

I saw a man of about fifty in the street a few days back who was a bit different to the average person rushing about his business or a pensioner sitting at the bus station.

This man was not exactly blocking the way but he was visible, let's say and his attitude was friendly. Neatly turned out, seemed fine but for some reason I wanted to avoid talking to him. Why? Was it because he clearly seemed as if he wanted to talk? If he'd been having a coffee at the coffee point we might have spoken but not this way. These are the times I think I'm cruel. Would I have spoken to him if his wife had been hovering nearby? Quite possibly. A wife is a passport to acceptance, isn't she?

Singles are shunned

Once, in Narbonne, I went to a cafe by myself, a hungry traveller en route to Florence where a lady was waiting or so she'd promised.

The moment I entered the space, a waiter came up and shunted me straight to a table for one. Trouble was, there were four or five of these tables along the wall of the entrance way, all with men of my age or older sitting there, eating or sipping whilst waiting for the food, some of them trying to act as if they were busy - ferociously reading newspapers, taking slips of paper out of inside pockets, reading them and putting them back again ... and I just couldn't sit there with people coming into the cafe, quickening their steps just a little to get past all these single men, especially the women, on their way to the proper zone de bonhomie further into the cafe.

All the lonely people - where do they all come from?

Keep yourself in good order

All the single men or the divorced or the escapees from the tyranny of home and sometimes the difference seems apparent. It's almost as though the veneer of civilization corrodes when you've gone back to the single state, especially with men. The women I've known in this situation often keep house even more immaculately now that there's a bit more time on the hands but that's more rare in a man.

Like a person seeking work - it's best to keep to the old routines, to wake up early and work, to think of the things you were castigated for in your hitched days, to keep the place clean, to stay positive because the alternative is too terrible to contemplate. Even if you have no intention of ever getting caught again in a partnership, it's stil better to act as if you are keeping yourself eligible because life has a tendency to drop something on you when you least expect it.
How much space do you need?

I enjoy solitude far more than is meet and acceptable to a woman - it lets me get things done. However, not completely. My ex-accountant had an arrangement where they met for two days a week and both scheduled things around it. That seems extreme to me for the whole idea of a partnership is to relate. Myself, it's not how many days but whether time can be found in each day.

That's impossible with a family but in a one-on-one, it should be possible to achieve and therein lies the problem - the level of neediness of each person. Like space bubbles and how tactile you are - we have different needs.

No matter what the attraction, this sort of thing can drive two people apart, as you know.

Bad habits

Not so much picking your nose or silent-but-deadlies - hopefully we've moved past that but in other mannerisms. Some mannerisms can drive a person out of his brain and I'm one of the most sensitive to them. This habit of consciously touching parts of your own face and getting it to your satisfaction or kicking when sitting or whatever - it can be impossible to take.

People who like windows open at night, people who smoke, people who leave things lying about - gee, it's a wonder we can stand being with each other at all. I'm not as critical about it as the post suggests and there's such a thing as talking but it would need to be done sensitively. Done too sensitively, it can be worse.

Food tastes, side of the bed, one partner wanting to stay up half the night blogging and the other hoping for some nooky, one eating very, very late and the other used to 16:00 and a small snack at 20:00 - those two are going to clash.

Which leads where?

Just this - rather than go out to find someone, with its consequent disappointments, it might be better to allow a meeting to happen and then starts the process of likes and dislikes. Some can be compromised on but some can't. Someone who wants the windows all closed and taped up in winter and the room like a furnace - I'm afraid I have to sleep in the coolest room - the bedroom? You enjoy the boiling bed and good luck.

I've always thought it is the small issues which have to be sorted out first because the big issues are less emotionally charged and can find a solution or end the relations in one go. But a small annoying habit can nag and nag and kill the feeling over time. That's worse.

[match tricks one] try before you check

Arrange 12 matches to make 4 squares.

Using all the matches, move 4 matches to make 3 touching squares of equal size.


Give up?

Try these as well:

Matchtricks 2
Matchtricks 3

[late evening listening] is dearieme being serious here?



Am I?

[taliban] supplied indirectly by the u.s.?

Now here's a more than interesting one:

In support of the official United States assertion that Iran is arming its sworn enemy, the Taliban, the head of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), Dennis Blair, has cited a statement by a Taliban commander last year attributing military success against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces to Iranian military assistance.

But the Taliban commander's claim is contradicted by evidence from the US Defense Department, Canadian forces in Afghanistan and the Taliban themselves that the increased damage to NATO tanks by Taliban forces has come from anti-tank mines provided by the United States to the jihadi movement against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Anyone have anything on this?

[fragile friday] beware of the rain

[mindless vandalism] no joke when it was your livelihood


It's a very small incident and a short post. I go to McDonalds on a Friday for breakfast because it's near the office and today, the lady who runs it came over and asked if I'd heard what was just being said about some man's bike.

What it came down to was that last night he left his bike chained to the porch pillar of his house [why he didn't take it in I don't know - maybe rule of the house]. He came out this morning and the wheels had been almost torn off and bent over, they'd bent the frame and all the spokes had been kicked out.

This was more than vandalism, which tends to be hit and run. This was a concerted attempt to put the bike into a completely irreparable state. He apparently uses it to go to work in a nearby town and for everything else - shopping and so on.

It scarcely needs comment from me.

[macintoshes] sheer class, detested by pc users


It's smooth, it's beautiful and as the review begins:

Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard has landed. This time around, Apple goes light on the glitz in favor of some heavy work under the hood.

I have the Tiger:

In June of 2004, during the WWDC keynote address, Steve Jobs revealed Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger to developers and the public for the first time. When the finished product arrived in April of 2005, Tiger was the biggest, most important, most feature-packed release in the history of Mac OS X by a wide margin.

Yo! Sheer class! Now, the new Mac with ... wait for it ... no new features. Ummm - pardon?

That's right, the next major release of Mac OS X would have no new features. The product name reflected this: "Snow Leopard." Mac OS X 10.6 would merely be a variant of Leopard. Better, faster, more refined, more... uh... snowy.This was a risky strategy for Apple. After the rapid-fire updates of 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3 followed by the riot of new features and APIs in 10.4 and 10.5, could Apple really get away with calling a "time out?" I imagine Bertrand was really sweating this announcement up on the stage at WWDC in front of a live audience of Mac developers. Their reaction? Spontaneous applause. There were even a few hoots and whistles.

Don't forget that this is a complete look at the new Mac, 23+ pages of it, in fact. Check it out.

So many PC users pooh-ppoh the Mac and detest Mac users, the serene lot of bstds. They say it's not what the real techie uses. They might even concede that it does what it does. What the PC users don't see is that Mac users love their Macs.

Surely that's enough recommendation in itself?

[global warming] no, it's not happening, really truly it's not ... please?


Verbatim:

Arctic temperatures are now higher than at any time in the last 2,000 years, research reveals.

Changes to the Earth's orbit drove centuries of cooling, but temperatures rose fast in the last 100 years as human greenhouse gas emissions rose.

Scientists took evidence from ice cores, tree rings and lake sediments.

Writing in the journal Science, they say this confirms that the Arctic is very sensitive both to changes in solar heating and to greenhouse warming.

The 23 sites sampled were good enough to provide a decade-by-decade picture of temperatures across the region.

The result is a "hockey stick"-like curve in which the last decade - 1998-2008 - stands out as the warmest in the entire series.

"The most pervasive signal in the reconstruction, the most prominent trend, is the overall cooling that took place for the first 1,900 years [of the record]," said study leader Darrell Kaufman from Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, US.

"The 20th Century stands out in strong contrast to the cooling that should have continued. The last half-century was the warmest of the 2,000-year temperature record, and the last 10 years have been especially dramatic," he told BBC News.

Kaufman is wrong? Doesn't know what he's talking about? Will someone please provide the data refuting the claim Mr. Kaufman is making? The charts and the scientists who are interpreting them please. Is he a government spy or working for Them?

[icesave] and the principle of taxpayers subsidizing the speculators

Thank you Iceland Review for pics and info

As in the UK, so in Iceland. The tab for ineptitude and corruption is picked up by the taxpayer.

On August 19th, the Icelandic Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurdardóttir, announced plans for Icesave:

“Once the Icesave agreement has been approved by Althingi the dispatch of the loan from the International Monetary Fund can be worked on,” the PM told reporters. “When these matters have been completed we can step across a large threshold which has stood in the way of the restoration [of Iceland’s economy].”

In a nutshell, the Icelandic government, in their ignorance and greed, offered investors in the UK and the Netherlands a nice return for their money. Councils across the UK, for example, invested in Iceland's Landsbanki and then the whole thing went pear-shaped.

Most people know the story of the fiasco and all those out of pocket. Where councils invested, they were, by definition, investing our money. The UK and the Netherlands, naturally, want their money back but how to get it? Simple - force the Icelandic government to take a loan from the IMF.

Interesting how the IMF keeps popping up all over the place, isn't it?

Now, for the Icelandic government to do this, they must commit to stringent conditions and who pays for this for several decades? Of course - the Icelandic people. So the people here and the people there all pay. And what of the criminals themselves? They get away with rap over the knuckles.

The parliament, Althing, colluded with this of course and so a series of squabbles over amendments took place, to make Icesave [if ever there was a misnomer, this is it] more acceptable to the people:

The disclaimers that were added to the agreement between Icelandic, British and Dutch authorities on Icesave include that economic growth determines the annual down payments of the loans from British and Dutch authorities and that no payments will be made if economic growth is halted.

... and here:

The Icesave agreement, signed by Icelandic, British and Dutch authorities in June, states that the Icelandic Depositors’ and Investors’ Guarantee Fund will not start repaying the loans until 2016.

The Budget Committee also discussed how it could be implemented that the state guarantee would only be valid if British and Dutch authorities agreed to the disclaimers introduced by the Icelandic parliament.

The committee referred to this item as the “InDefence-disclaimer” after the InDefence campaign group, which has presented ideas in relation to the Icesave case.

Naturally, the Icelandic people take a dim view of this and here is the result:



The Icelandic way of demonstrating is quaint:

Frosti Sigurjónsson, managing director of travel search engine Dohop, has promised to reward the loudest protestors at today’s demonstration against the Icesave agreement with ISK 1-2 million (USD 7,700-15,400, EUR 4,900-9,800).

But it turns nastier:

Sigurjónsson explained that the purpose with all the noise is to protest the fact that the Icelandic nation will have to pay for the debt of gamblers and their private banks.

“We have suffered enough already. It is in breach of all laws and ethics to make us pay. Both native and foreign specialists have pointed that out. The nation should not accept such injustice without making noise,” Sigurjónsson writes.

And so to the call for a referendum on the proposal, which will put every Icelander in hock for the rest of their days:

Representatives of the website kjosa.is, where more than 8,500 people have signed a petition demanding a referendum on the Icesave legislation passed by parliament on Friday, will formally hand the petition over to President Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson today. In the petition, the president is challenged to enforce a referendum by vetoing the legislation, Fréttabladid reports.

Now, contrast this situation with my portrayal of Iceland in my earliest posts. Let me quote from one of those posts:

The heatwave from Europe may not exactly be here, but the weather in Reykjavík has finally turned sunny. It was rainier this June than it has been for many decades. July has been worse, that is until today.The heat is now 17 degrees centigrade, which is excellent for Reykjavík.

Many people have taken the day off.
This explains why not much is happening in the country, as you can see from the lack of news.

... to which I received the reply, from EU Serf:

In the middle of a hectic day of a hectic life, Iceland seems somehow peacefully inviting doesn't it.

Oh how that innocence has been lost.

Small bikkies, peanuts too, you might say, compared to the massive losses in Europe and America but Iceland is such a clear country, in the sense that the dirt in Europe is hidden beneath all the otehr things going on there but in the little island of the north, the dirt shows up in stark relief, for all to see.

A bunch of greedy people saw a chance of a massive killing on both sides of the sea. Result - the people pay for that greed. Same story wherever you go. Question? Will the greedy really get away with it?

UPDATE: September 8th from Iceland Review:

I like your post but there is one thing I think you misunderstood. Icesave was Landsbanki's online savings scheme in the UK and the Netherlands and at the time of its launch, Landsbanki was a private bank. It was only nationalized after the economic meltdown of last fall, which is why the Icelandic tax payers have to suffer the consequences. Therefore it isn't fair to say that the government is to blame for Icesave's blunders, although the Icelandic, British and Dutch governments should probably never have allowed Icesave to operate the way it did.

What's her future now?

[bitch, i have no mercy on you] neither should we


The NY Times contrasts the British and Californian way:

California is not Scotland. That’s the message one British newspaper took from Wednesday’s decision by a California parole board to turn down an application for compassionate release submitted on behalf of Susan Atkins, who is serving a life sentence for her part in the 1969 killing spree carried out by followers of Charles Manson.

In London, The Daily Mail contrasted the decision with one taken two weeks earlier by the Scottish regional government to free Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, who was convicted of murder for his role in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The Mail’s headline suggested “Scotland Take Note” of the fact that Ms. Atkins lost her bid for parole “DESPITE Being on Her Death Bed.”

Quite right too.

Of those who took part in the killings, certain of them were beyond the pale and certain of them went along with it. Leslie van Houten was one who was told to "do something" and stabbed someone who might have been already dead and her degree of guilt is no less for that but she always struck me as being into the other aspects of the family more than this gruesome thing.

Again, it's not excusing her but when she's placed beside Susan Atkins [Sadie Mae Glutz] and Tex Watson, there is a stark contrast. Those two not only initiated the murders but added embellishments and Atkins pursued a fleeing victim, already stabbed, across the lawn and finished her off. Her words at the time are in the title of this post.

There is a distinction and in a state with no capital punishment [they were lucky it changed], then "for the term of her natural life" is the correct decision. Heat of the moment, crime of passion - this was not. This was planned, cold-bloodedly carried out and most importantly ... with relish.

Thursday, September 03, 2009

[late evening listening] cherie presents ravel and grieg

Ravel trivia:

Ravel is perhaps known best for his orchestral work, Boléro (1928), which he considered trivial and once described as "a piece for orchestra without music."

I'm not sure if Cherie means the 2nd movement of the string quartet but this is the 1st movement:



This is the sung version of Solveig's Song, with [possibly] Solveig Kringleborn. The vid itself is superb:



The orchestral version is here.

[music programme] so much for laura norder


This music listening programme - I made a comment to Cherie [whose selection comes up this evening] that I was going to try to get some order into this thing.

Fat chance. Already it's booked solid until Sunday, none of it mine although I do reserve the right to respond to your piece with one of mine beneath it. :)

If you have a favourite piece you'd like to see played and you don't plan to run it on your blog, send it along - you have my email. In the meantime, here's an especially poignant vid I saw today around the blogs.

[sequence quiz] put them in order


1. Can you put these in the right descending order: straight, one pair, highcards, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, three of a kind, flush, royal flush, two pair?

2. What points do you get in Rugby Union for: try, penalty goal, field goal, conversion?

3. GDP per capita - put these in descending order, as agreed by the WB and IMF: Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden, United States, Germany.

4. Put these in order of speed: backstroke, freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly.

5. What is the generally spoken of order of the importance of pieces: rook, king, pawn, bishop, queen, knight?

Answers

Royal flush, straight flush, four of a kind, full house, flush, straight, three of a kind, two pair, one pair, highcards; try - 5 points, penalty goal - 3 points, field goal - 3 points, conversion - 2 points; exactly that order - Luxembourg, Ireland, Sweden, United States, Germany; freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke [at world record level]; king, queen, rook, bishop, knight, pawn

[thoughtful thursday] from on high

[rogue bankers] and old photographs


1 Quite important article, by Nick Drew, over at CAW, on the bankers. Check it out if you haven't already done so. Just how to stop those who are wrecking it for everyone else? I say we can't until we execute Them - they will keep our noses to the cycle of ups and downs which simply perpetuate their world agenda.

Harry Hook says we are in a special time right now:

We are living in what the Greeks called the right time for a "metamorphosis of the gods," i.e. of the fundamental principles and symbols.

2 The photo above is by Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, one of my three favourite "artists", the other two being Shishkin, from Russia and Millet, from Barbizon. I'll steal another of Cherie's shots for a post soon and include some of those other two as well. All of their stories are interesting - how they went about their art, what they faced, their life and times.

3 He's retired once already and he's too good to retire. Please put him back on your reading list.

4 Tread carefully at Scott's Thesis because he makes fine distinctions and you have to read carefully if hoping to refute the assumptions. I'm still reading.

[discrimination with a smug smile] against the indigenous people

England, to me, follows this map and doesn't include Wales and Cornwall although if they get nasty about it, then it does.


Excellent piece over at CfaEP [you'll remember Toque who set this site up] on something which gets my blood boiling, not least because I was in education. Wonkotsane takes it up:

A month ago a concerned work colleague showed me a copy of an EY2 form issued by the English education standards office, OFSTED, which included an ethnic monitoring form. The options included White British, White Irish, White Scottish and White Welsh.

"Bearing in mind that OFSTED only operates in England, the exclusion of White English from the ethnic monitoring form is inexcusable and when White Scottish, White Irish and White Welsh are included, it is almost certainly illegal under the Race Relations Act.

I'm going to break in here and get all petulant - yeah, it's a measure of the effing hypocrisy of these people, the utter gall to say they're arguing for equality when it is really discimination against targets they don't embrace and boosting groups who are their little pets. Prats!!

OK, I've taken my tablets and back to the topic. Oftsed replied:

We are most grateful to you for pointing out that the EY2 form does not include the category ‘White – English’. This was an oversight on our part and we apologise for this.

We have recently reviewed the way in which we monitor the ethnicity and nationality of those with whom we have contact. As a result of this, we have developed a revised monitoring questionnaire which includes as separate categories under ethnicity a person’s national group and their ethnic group. I can confirm that the national group will include the following categories

British or Mixed British
English
Irish
Scottish
Welsh
Other (specify if you wish)

Oh yeah, very good - mixed British - but it still doesn't answer these questions in the first place:

1. Why do you and other government agencies run such clearly discriminatory and according to your own rules, illegal policies in the first place? Why do you need to discriminate? Whose business is it what ethnicity or religion I am? Why should I be discriminated against on that basis?

What really galls is the smug, self-satisfied way in which it is presented to us on forms and in any other dealings with officialdom. As my mate did the other day, I'm putting "other" next time.

2. Why, in the name of England, do you continue to run such blatant discrimination against the English and think you are being fair? What sort of rank hypocrisy has diseased your minds to the extent that you think this is quite OK to do?

One could go on and on, muttering about West Lothian et al [and by the way, I wonder how the Scots will enjoy being placed below the Irish and how the Welsh will enjoy being bottom of the heap but that's another question] ... however the blood pressure is a bit much and it's best to get off the topic now.

Bloody hypocrites!!!!!

[good blogging guide] what makes a top blogger


As people always tend to make quick judgements, I've shied away from this topic until now although it's been on my mind since 2006, when we set up a blogging group over the issue.

At that time, a few of us were p---ed off by how the American Awards ignored good bloggers over this side of the pond. One of my detractors [the stalker] has put it about that I set up that group to get people to come to my site.

Like all spin, it took a kernel of truth and put a distorted skew on it. Of course the five of us were hoping that by visiting one another, we'd up our reader levels and that's why we had so many join for that purpose, including him by the way, and to be part of a new "scene".

Who doesn't want to be where the action is? Then, when bloggers I highly respect come and leave a comment at my site, it's very nice. Euroserf, Chris Dillow and Johnathan Pearce were my first commenters, with Stephen Pollard, Tim Worstall, Mr. Eugenides, the Pedant-General-in-Ordinary, Clive Davis, Oliver Kamm, Melanie Phillips and DK coming in and I tell you - that blew me away. That's one of the reasons these guys are top bloggers, not because they visited me per se but because they really do care about the blogosphere and about helping someone along, even nobodies like me.

When I go over to any blog and the person actually answers me, that's double nice. When that person adds me to the blogroll, even if he/she adds many people to the blogroll, that's triple nice. Hell - why not? Why not feel good about that? High profile, low profile, whoever it is - if that person rolls me for the right reason, then that is very nice.

So let's not be hypocritical and put on the false modesty. We know what feels good and we also know, each in his/her own mind, what makes a great blog, a top blog.

For me, it's:

1. They have a product. They have a particular thing which readily identifies them and I mentioned one such blog yesterday. It's something which makes us come back again.

2. They have authority. I don't mean from the number of readers, which Technorati and other engines use to determine this. I mean from what the person writes. They do their homework and know their subject.

3. They blog consistently. All right, there might be pressure of work now and then but they'll bounce back. They might have a hiatus but we know they'll return. They blog at least daily and sometimes with more than one post. It's not necessary to go beserk, as I do but consistent is the word we're looking for.

4. They give what the people want, the issues people are concerned about, as distinct from it being just a string of comments on the MSM news. Don't get me wrong - some bloggers comment in such a way that the anger and the wit come through and that makes us come back to their blogs too.

4a. There is a subset here who don't give the people what they wish to hear, who say quite the opposite of the accepted wisdom and that's a dangerous game, blogging wise because unless you're known for it, you might be marginalized and passed over forever. But if you do become known for it, then that comes back to Point 1 above.

5. They care for their readers. This is highly debatable as a criterion but it does seem to me that when the blogger does not engage with his readers, not necessarily mentioning people's names but at least acknowledging the argument brought by his/her readers and joining in his/her own discussion, then that is fulfilling and gets people back.

One of the harshest criticisms of my blog in past years was the lack of debate on key issues. That stung and today I feel there is quite good debate here, more on some issues, of course, as the subject matter is diverse. On the other hand, debate is not everything and those who have fabulous shots of gardens and food and places they've been aren't looking for debate - they want to put something they loved and hope others will too, a more than legitimate reason for a blog, even though I've been less than charitable in the past on this.

6. They're human and concerned with things we humans are concerned about. They're personally approachable [at times] and when they're not, then that is a known known, like Ann Robinson in that appallingly masochistic programme I've forgotten the name of. It might be that their blog product is to tear strips off any who differ but even that is a product in itself, if it's a known known.

7. They have detractors and its the nastiness of their enemies which reflects them, the aspiring bloggers, in a good light. It cuts both ways. If my three or four closest blogfriends were universally against one particular blogger, my first reaction would be arrogant - well maybe I can see something they can't. But almost always I'd be forced to concede, in the end, that the guy was a prat. Similarly, a blogger quite a few of my friends are mentioning in a positive light will get a visit from me and that's one more reader for him.

8. The blog is well arranged, you can see who the person is without necessarily knowing name, address and shoe size, the navigation is clear [or at least followable] and you can find your way around.

Now your not so humble blogger finally comes to what does NOT make a top blog:

a. Stat porn lovers who always trumpet how many readers they have and whose whole blog experience seems to be to aggregate more and more readers for the purpose of aggregating more and more readers.

b. Sheer visitor numbers. I'm adamant about this. There are some damn good blogs out there and I'm going to name names here - Lord T is the one I have in mind - who have the product, who have the inventive ideas and have a good looking, well arranged blog. He himself said that his ideas don't appeal to all but I'll say this - whenever I go over to his blog, I'm always challenged by new ideas. Hell, what does a person want from another blogger?

c. Lazy bloggers who rest on their laurels, casting a small royal comment here, in lieue of an actual post, a throwaway line there. Again don't get me wrong. Certain bloggers have this as their intellectual product [Point 1 above] and that's fine but it takes skill to be laconic and not all can get away with it. One of these who can do it is a blogfriend of mine.

d. The inconsistent blogger who quite rightly pleads pressure of work, being called away and yes, we can all sympathize with that but the simple fact is - when we click into his/her blog, there's no new post we were hoping to find there. Yes, sympathy, sympathy. I know how difficult it is and of course we put family first, then work, then blog but still ............... ?

You have your own criteria, no doubt and I'd like to hear them if you'd care to leave them here.

This post was motivated by Angus Dei but Angus, I take issue with you on one point. You say I write better. No I don't. I have a way of writing, that's all and it's too smooth for many people who prefer a more cut and thrust, almost a more "honest" approach. I'm too close to rhetoric but I can't help it because it's the way I write.

You, on the other hand, consistently come up with vignettes day after day and your "product" is becoming known. Keep at this because it's good. It takes more than a smooth talker with pretty colours to make a good blog and you've got what's needed.

That's about all I wanted to pontificate on today, folks.

[crashes] and things lurking in the night

# Judging by Letters from a Tory's Mybloglog, he had the same problem I did - Mybloglog seems to have crashed last night. It looks like it's recovering now.

# I had another crash yesterday - my sitemeter crashed between 10:30 and 20:00. This was more than annoying because of why - it was that I'd put a calendar in the sidebar. It was OK as a calendar but for some reason it twisted everything else on the site. As I don't have much java on this blog, it only attacked the java I have, e.g. sitemeter.

Maybe we should be very careful which widgets we run in the sidebar.

# Why do Blogger insist on running "p" in the html whenever we try to paste a quote? This doubles the workload, as we go throught the html, carefully deleting all the "p" references.

# You might like to check out Libertyphile, whose statistics seem to cinfirm what we thought the other day about Islam but he argues for Sharia Law.

If anything else comes up, I'll add it here, as and when.

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

[late evening listening] dearieme presents mozart

On Valium:



... and I present Saint-Saens Piano Concerto N4 [2]:

[rainy day] bike your worries away


There's a spiffing new way to do a blog post - I call it "doing an Angus" and it involves describing one's day, hopefully in a manner conducive to a wicked chuckle. Of course I could "do a Cherie" and include fabulous shots of the garden I just managed to slip out and visit but the lady has no peer in this so I'll leave it to her [did that get me enough Brownie points?]

So here goes:

On the way to the station, thence to my mate's place, it was Big Payout Day today. This involved going to a certain society and getting out half the pittance I have but heck - I'd prefer to have the gas, electricity and water than not have them, if you see what I mean. So, it was Big Payout Day today.

As the woman-behind-glass and I were joshing about how we don't even see our money these days - no sooner do we get it out than it goes on a utilities bill - she stopped and asked me, "So what exactly can I do for you, sir?"

"Er, £300 please."

"There's nothing outstanding here though."

"Well, that's a relief then."

"Pardon?"

"Well, I don't owe anything, as you say."

"No, no, there's nothing here next to your name. There's nothing in the account."

The next forty minutes were spent asking that if there was nothing in the account, why did a different woman give me some money in May when I came in to take some out? Why do I have this card if it doesn't mean anything?

She went out back for a coffee for twenty minutes. When she came back, it was, "Sorry 'bout that, Mr. Higham, how much was it for again?"

"Hold on. Please explain to me what just happened and if it's at all likely to happen to me again. " The latter question was, naturally, unanswerable.

"No, just a glitch in the system - it wasn't coming up. I've just been talking to the manager - he was here when you set up the account."

"You mean he's not here now? Who's manager now?"

"I am."

"So, let me get this right, Madam -"

"Rita."

"Rita. Let me get this right. If that ex-manager hadn't been there, if he'd left the company, if he'd been on holiday [and it is summer], I wouldn't have been able to access this money, which is miniscule in your eyes but for me is part-payment for two utilities? Correct me if I'm wrong."

"It just didn't come up on screen at first. Now how much were you needing, James?"

Back on my bike again, reflecting on our new friendship, next stop was the bank. As a multinational conglomerate from the land of the free, there'd be no glitches there.

"I'd like to pay in £100 please. There's a direct debit coming up."

"Er ... they've taken that already, Mr. Higham. There was £75 you'd left in the account and the direct debit was for £114."

"Well why did you pay them then if I didn't have the money?" Twelve years of Russia, where you don't get anything without the readies, caused me to say this.

She didn't answer that but informed me that there was a £40 charge on that, eight pounds a day. "Don't you have an overdraft?"

"No. I didn't even know I could on this account."

"Oh yes, you can, up to £400. You were probably told that when the account was set up. It was in the brochure you were given."

"I admit I didn't read the fine print of the brochure but then again, I was hardly expecting this little move to be made, was I? That's why I'm here today, to pay in £100 to cover it."

"Well, our manager is in today, he's over there." Second stroke of luck [or Whatever].

"Hello," I addressed the young man who seemed far too young for the role ... and I explained why I was peeved, concluding, "If you'd warned me about this, I'd have taken a small overdraft and set up a direct debit too. Will you set this up for me now please?"

Ten minutes later, out he came, the direct debit was set up and the penalty waived. What could I say? I gave him a big hug and kiss and skipped out of the door. Bicycling at breakneck pace round to the Paypoint, expecting the next chapter in the saga, I was into the place and out in 5.4 seconds, complete with receipt.

On the way back from the train station, fish and taties in my pack and all well with the world, the rain suddenly pelted down as I reached the top of our hill and was poised for the molecular fusion of the journey down the other side. A few metres down, pumping the brakes gingerly to see that they were working, I discovered that they weren't, that they, in fact, cease to function in the wet and it was only through the kind intervention of a lorry which decided to brake right in front of me and dazzle me with its yellow and black jaundiced zebra crossing paintwork that I managed to drop to an acceptable speed, though the face was slightly rearranged in the process.

So, all in all, a lot of fun was had by all today and we all lived happily ever after.


[crossbows] home defence weapon of choice


Yes, yes, Agincourt, when England's finest took out the Froggies with the noble longbows and so on ... the longbow is a wondrous thing but there's something about the crossbow I've always liked and when it comes down to it, as far as I can understand, it's still legal over here for home defence - correct me if I'm wrong.

Now, a number of these, primed and bolted to the bannisters and assorted woodwork around the house, strategically aimed, would be a quite effective disposer and disperser of the dreaded intruders - they wouldn't know where the next bolt was coming from as they ventured through the house and the best thing - they're near silent so you never have any ammo problems.

Of course, when we come for the Westminster pollies and the BofE chiefs, the longbow would probably be the better choice - more easily carried and quicker to utilize but I was talking about home defence really.

[when in rome] speak italian and mix with the locals

When in Rome ...

Anyone found to be regularly misusing the Slovak language in public office now faces a fine of up to $7,000 (£4,300), the equivalent of nearly a year's average pay in Slovakia, reports say.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has said the new law respects the rights of minorities, but has noted the concerns and risks related to its enforcement.

How precisely does the new law "respect the rights of minorities"? I'd like to see this spelt out. This is one issue where there's a bit to be said each way.

Thinking immediately of Russia and it's insistence that Russian only be spoken in its buffer states, there are a number of differences to the Slovak situation. The Hungarians who are complaining have come into the country of Slovakia, a sovereign nation, yet a new nation and a language is not something which can be suddenly brought into being, as a new country can, at the stroke of a pen.

Still, a country does have the right to demand that its own language be spoken as the primary language and there are clear benefits to it. There certainly were in Russia, where a foreign language was imposed on countries with their own languages already. Within the Russian Federation itself, it's an arguable point. Some of the fifteen states have their own language which was suppressed during the time of the Soviet Union.

For all the whys and wherefores of that, it certainly smoothed communication and infrastructure building and even today, ethnic minorities, no longer constrained by the enforcement of law still choose to use Russian, simply because everyone else does. Ardent nationalists insist the mother tongue of the region is used.

It's an ongoing debate. During the period of the waning of Soviet influence and consequently Russian influence, there was a stark reminder within the school where I taught some hours each week. The local government, emboldened, brought in a law where the teaching hours each child devoted to the local tongue were going to be 8, up from 3. Russian, in its various disciplines, was to be reduced from 8 to 5 and English was to be dropped from 5 to 3 in any week.

Naturally, the English departments [and remember that these were schools of extensive English learning] were up in arms but the big mistake was to reduce Russian. This was a very powerful lobby who'd always been locked in mortal combat with the English mafia, as our department was called.

I walked into the staffroom one morning and the Russian speakers clammed up when I came through but I'd heard someone say, in Russian, that English was only good for business but for literature, Russian was far more expressive and melodic. Well, that happens to be true in poetry and I said so, in Russian, to their surprise.

The upshot was that I was entered in the Pushkin competition for his birthday celebration [their little joke on me], local media came and videoed me speaking "Я помню чудное мгновенье: Передо мной явилась ты ...", roughly translated as "I remember the miraculous [fabulous, wonderful, magnificent] miracle [when] in front of me you suddenly appeared ..."

With its sybillant sounds and nuances, Russian in the hands of an educated person like the Russian lit teacher I fell in love with, can be a beautiful thing. I was told, by other Russians, that this lady couldn't even be understood by other Russians, so what my strangulation of the tongue did to her ears I shudder to think.

From all that, I learned that everyone was smiling that the local language was going to be upped form 3 to 8. "What are the children to do in lessons?" laughed the Russians. "Twiddle their thumbs?"

The result was, of course, that there were simply not enough good teachers about, qualified to teach the local language and the children were passively but with hostility, resisting it. This included children of local ethnicity.

That's a bit different to Britain and to Slovakia. Slovakia needs to establish its national identity and it can only be done with uniformity of language. Slovakia has the right to demand that in its own land. In Britain, the need is even more cogent and urgent.

To hell with minor ethnic moaning - if they're in this country, they speak the local language - English. How else are they to absorb the local culture and think more like a Brit? I'm sorry but I'm pretty intransigent on this - if they refuse to assimilate then what the hell are they doing here?

I never thought for a moment not to speak Russian over there. When I walked out of the classroom, I switched to Russian. Children were line ball as to which was their favourite language, with some adoring English and some preferring the mother tongue. Me? I preferred Russian - hell, I was using English on the blog every day and needed a break from it.

If you're just on a visit, well OK - most places speak English but I find it bizarre to go somewhere and not try out the local cuisine, the local sights and the local tongue. Besides, you get much better treatment from the locals. When in Rome ...

It was the greatest pleasure to learn some Cantonese and try it out on the Hong Kongers at one stage and actually see it work! That's such a buzz. It was a pity, in Sicily, not to have more time to devote to Italian but I loved to slip out to a cafe, talk to the people there and read the local newspaper. One cafe owner brought over an English language paper to me and I waved it away with a smile. His eyebrows went up. Well really, what was I there for, if not to immerse in the local culture?

In Paris, when the waitresses actually understood my French and when I could see they liked that I was trying to speak it, that when they were compassionate enough to drop into English but I didn't want to - call me strange but I think that's the way it should have been.

So I'm sorry if you demand that your own language be spoken over here. No, no, no, no, no! You speak our language please and not only that, you learn a high version of it too ... but that's another blogpost.