[known terrorist] walked in and out of the country

We still need to ask some relevant questions here.

Why would he have been allowed to escape to Pakistan and South Africa when the CIA, who are not noted for their altruism in desisting from hunting wanted criminals, also seemed to have stepped back and allowed him to do as he wished?

Surely it's not so much whom he knows as what does he know?

Where is he now?

[solar minimum] lower than ever

Click on this pic to play the movie.

The solar wind, which originates in the Sun's corona, gusts and calms with the star's familiar 11-year cycle of activity ... but the entire Sun is blowing significantly less hard [now] - about 20-25% less hard - than it was during the last solar minimum 10-15 years ago.

The charged wind particles also carry with them the Sun's magnetic field, and this has a protective role in limiting the number of high-energy cosmic rays that can enter the Solar System. More of them will probably now make their way through.

This is not so bad where we are, as we have the earth's natural shields but it might be best not to take that space trip to Pluto you were envisaging.

How much do you know about the sun anyway?

1. How many earths could fit inside the sun, in round numbers?

2. What is the name given to the surface of the sun?

3. In Celsius and in round numbers, what is the temperature of the sun's core?

4. How many days does the sun's orbit take?

5. In which country is the hottest average temperature?

Answers

About one million, photosphere, about 15 million degrees, 27.4 days, Ethiopia [Dallol, 34.4 degrees]

[britain] atmospheric beauty

Rob of The Broadsheet Rag and Cherie both made comments which, if you read between the lines, amount to: "Stop moaning about Britain - surely there's something good there."

Both the last posts show that that has been on my mind too. Yes, there are wonderful things to Britain. For a start, the friendliness despite the system, the acceptance, the sense of humour and not forgetting the landscape, let alone the life routines.

Some foreigner recently mentioned a population of 60 million in these small islands and surmised that they were evenly spread out, as in Los Angeles, which of course is not how it is. Instead, there is almost a corral of houses crammed together in one place, then miles of beautiful open countryside [see the pics above] and then another village.

Personally, I love that and the expression "green and pleasant land" is very, very relevant. Couple that with roads which are almost leafy laneways and there are the makings of a country in which a person could retire quite happily, were it not for the system. If that land is deeply embedded in the soul, then nothing is going to drag you away or if it does, there will always be the hankering to return.

So please don't get me wrong about BT, the trains and so on. Despite them, Britain is still a magical place and we're just coming into autumn now, my second favourite season.

[55 minutes] fulfilling conversation with bt

I know I promised a happy-clappy post next but I’m sorry – this one is crying out to be told. There’s a single mother I know who found herself with a problem this morning. She phoned up from a friend’s and basically, her internet has been cut off.

Well it happens, doesn’t it? At least it does until you look into it in detail.

Part 1 The Direct Debit

Basically, she had the internet set up via BT last year and she had a direct debit. OK so far. Then, one month, BT tried to take the money early and she had not had her money put in by that date. Don’t forget she’s a single mother here and is not au fait with these things.

All right. BT now refused to accept money from her via direct debit, as she was a debtor and so she had to go to the Post Office with baby in tow and skip her full time course she’s doing to get a job to get enough to pay people like BT.

She did that, paid and then tried to get back onto the direct debit. BT refused because she had a bad record. Then the worst thing possible happened. There was an issue with the baby or whatever, she did not pay the next bill at the PO on time but she did pay in the end and all seemed well.

Suddenly, months later, her phone line has been cut off because of her debt from last year – one payment [at the PO] which had not been on time.

Part 2 The Phone Conversation

I didn’t actually make the call but was privy to it and was given a blow by blow description as it went along. It went roughly like this:

09.48 Ring ring. Hello, all our operators are busy just now, would you hold? Piped musak and then someone comes online. “BT supports Woodland Creations, planting trees all over the damned place – aren’t we green?” Then back to the queue.

09:55 Recorded voice comes on – press 1 for this, press 2 for that. N1 is pressed, it rings and then a recorded voice says: “All our operators are busy just now, would the sheepnik hold?” In the meantime, they inform him that all conversations are being recorded “to provide a better service” and sent to KGBHQ for later use against him.

10:03 A man does eventually come on and my friend says he wants to pay first then complain. “Oh yes,” say BT, “would you care to tell us about the complaint?” “No, no, pay first,” the benefactor says. BT immediately switch him through to a number where someone actually does come on and speak. Success! “I’d like to pay by card number UR . …”

“Sorry sir, we can’t accept any payment with a card starting with that designation. I’ll switch you back.”

The queue begins again as my friend murmurs something along the lines of them being a bloody telecommunications online money receiver and they can’t accept payments?

10:12 A man in India comes on line, speaking some Indian dialect, doesn’t get the required response and then hangs up. The phone goes dead, meaning no signal at all, not even a cut off signal. Not a sausage. I mention that that happened to me yesterday with the government but that someone did eventually come on line.

10:18 My friend gives up, waits a few minutes and then tries again. “All our operators are busy, Woodland Creations etc.,” with one added touch: “At this current moment, there may be a delay in paying.”

10.23 A man comes online and my friend repeats what he tried to say at 10.03, making the payment now [which was not able to be made earlier because of the UK designation but obviously BT has now relaxed the stipulation] and now comes the complaint phase.

10.26 BT explain that my friend can’t complain to them because the problem was the Post Office’s for not sending the payment through on time. My friend hasn’t explained the situation yet so now he does … quietly yet forcefully. He demands to be able to complain and is told that what he is saying is being recorded anyway so he expresses dissatisfaction and exits the phone call, thereby granting him permission to contact Ofcom who are set up to handle this sort of thing.

10. 43 Three things came out of all this:

1. How quietly spoken, pleasant in manner and yet angry the whole thing was. It was not the call centre man who was at fault but the system and a certain lack of intelligence from the operatives;

2. There was almost an expectation that any exchange would automatically descend into a complaints procedure and they had therefore expended great energy in addressing this issue instead of getting the telecommunications issue resolved;

3. BT want £50 for reconnection.

[wordy wednesday] of trains, brains and the eye

Ian Grey makes some good points in his piece Kilts and Saris:

I find the whole happy clappy celebration of diversity stuff misguided and tedious in the extreme ... If I happen to meet people of different backgrounds that I find interesting, I may choose to find out more if they are willing to tell me. The last thing I want, however, is the Council telling me what to be interested in. I’ve now found out about a Demos pamphlet by Liam Byrne called A More United Kingdom, but by the amusing way, through post-publication blogger ridicule.

Demos, of course, is a most interesting group and you can read an abstract about Mulgan and the boys and girls here - just the sort of people to be dictating to us. However, this is not the main point of this post.

The main point is that, by buying Private Eye 1219 yesterday, savouring the idea of a good laugh after the jobsearching was done, I found it anything but amusing. In fact it was depressing in the extreme. This is not a commentary on the Eye itself which, despite the generally held opinion that it is going downhill, is still a fine publication but rather on the material it was writing about.

Yes, I know that "the incompetence of the FSA, the government and the banking sector" [p13] makes good copy and that Salford Council's allegedly mindless squandering of money on sacrilege [p11] is a ripe issue for castigation but somehow, with the British winter coming on and some of us having to actually be out on the street sometime late October, the tales of appalling wastage by Demos type people or the classifieds, pleading:

"Lady in financial distress - any help appreciated," or "Made redundant - 4k would help immensely in the coming winter,"

... have a certain depressing edge to them and lead me to paraphrase Richard Thompson/Fairport Convention:

The storming wind cuts through to my skin
But they cut through to my blood.
I would not be asking, I would not be seen
A-beggin’ on mountain or hill
But I’m ready and blind with my hands tied behind
I’ve neither a mind nor a will.

So, if I'm flinching when the Eye touches on these things in their witty way, what of my own daily dose of unwitty doom and gloom here on this blog? Hmmm - perhaps this blog should turn escapist and post on happy clappy topics instead.

One article in Private Eye did grab the attention though and that was "Signal Failures", on p10:

"The rail industry has had enough of passengers spoiling punctuality statistics."

Oh yes, oh yes. I've already had a taste of this with the changeover in Manchester, which was like something out of a Python episode. As the Eye points out, trains are allowed to be 10 minutes late but passengers daren't be even 30 seconds late or else that train is gone, mate.

In a sense, you can't blame it on the train, which has to run on aging tracks and uses a rickety infrastructure to hobble along, so it is no surprise that trains must remain stationary for lengths of time outside the main cities, for both those reasons and also to get an available platform which no one on the train, apart from the trolley boy, can inform you about ahead of time:

"What, am I a bleedin' mind-reader?" thinks officialdom, whilst actually telling you, in the sweetest voice and with a big grin on the face, "That's in the realm of speculation, sir."

The great joke, of course, is that the Man-Behind-the-Window at the ticket office in Hull [and they still do have men and women, real ones, doing that in a remote place like that], told you, in good faith, that you had 32 minutes between trains, more than enough to make the changeover.

What he did not tell you was that you would arrive at a platform on one side of the station, which then involved asking three officials [if you could catch them] on which platform your train departed, receiving three different answers and then having to rely on the TV screens which happen to have broken down that day until a little old lady tells you it always goes from Platform 13.

Thank you and where is that, perchance, as the platforms only go up to 12 in this part of the station?

"Well, you see that archway on the far side of the station over there, like? You go over there and you'll need to go up those stairs, along the moving walkway, down the stairs second on the left but mind you don't go down the right hand stairs and then you'll find it."

At this point, there are 15 minutes left.

Naturally the conveyor belt is broken but you make the platform in good time all the same and then the little matter of which part of the endless platform the train will actually stop at starts to dawn. Knowing you have a millisecond to catch the destination on the front before the train sweeps past, [there being no indication as to destination on the side and with the TVs being down], you take the chance to leap on and ask the passengers around you.

Suddenly, One Above sees your misery and miraculously provides a young lady in uniform to stick your head out of the door and ask if this is the right train, to which she replies:

"You could do ... but then again, I wouldn't risk it, if I were you."

... at which point you leap off the train and rejoin the jolly frenzy and anxious looks about you on the suddenly population-swollen platform, causing someone in prime position to join his train to snarl at you, which in turn causes you to gently caress your Beeching Axe, secreted in your jacket.

Of course, anyone in Britain reading this would know it already. So, let me think - happy topics? Happy topics? Now what can I dream up?

[britishness] the illusory definition

This, from Deogolwulf, has to be close to brilliant:

I am not sure what Britishness means, but, from what I hear, it has something to do with celebrating diversity, embracing and empowering communities, and working together for a vibrant society of respect and equality and democratic values — from which ugly rash of words I am led to imagine that it is some frightful disease engineered and released by a committee of sociologists, Fabians, and women with “ethnic” earrings.

[phone camera] thence to bluetooth and here

Well all right - you've all been doing these things for the past few years, along with your Black Berries et al but I've been in Russia, don't forget.

So today, when I stepped out of the car close to the Wales /England border and took a happy snap, little did I know how easy it would be to bluetooth it to the Mac and thence into the post. Wonders of modern technology.

[deed poll] puts them out of their misery

Many surnames came down from occupations, as you know - Thomas Cooper, Thomas Brewster, Thomas Tucker.

So from where was the surname Crapper derived?

[hyslop] let off the leash

Courtesy of Theo, one of the best in a long time:

[artificial conflict] beloved of the politicos

Beauty is beauty and home is home, wherever it is.

"The new generation, the new Russians who indulge in the consumer society remain very hostile to the West. They still see things through an East/West prism. They still believe that Nato is an offensive bloc surrounding Russia, they truly believe that one of these days one of the military exercises they organise will turn out to be real. They think very differently."

I think I'm in a position to say I know the Russian way of thinking and the above is true in some aspects, except that it is not as hostile as the quote makes out. In fact, the following is closer to the mark:

In the epic struggle between capitalism and communism, the ultimate winner is consumerism.

Like every citizen in every country, the Russian and the Brit want a slice of the consumer pie.

That is modern Russia in a nutshell - shop at all costs and buy the best brands on the never-never, with the most accessories possible . When you wake up, you might have to go to work, an irksome thing to many Russians but the spin-off is that you can shop in your breaks and after work. The palaces of glitz have sprung up everywhere and even if you can't afford to buy, you can pretend you are buying, the shopgirl helps you try on those new tops and skirts and you feel you're part of the jet-setting Gucchi and Armani set, the dream of most Russians.

Whereas the west has become gradually weaned off the Christian social mindset, the new god being consumerism, the Russians bypassed that Christian social mindset, having emerged from the godless communism of the USSR and something had to step into the breach once nanny had gone.

It wasn't going to be Christian compassion and sane values, especially as The Church had done zero to help the ordinary Russian during the totalitarianism. So politically, the average Russian has inherited his parents' and grandparents' prejudices, the media has told him what America is up to now, he prefers to leave it to Moscow to take care of and hopes Moscow leaves him in peace to get on with the shopping.

No one has rejected democracy - it's just not interesting.

Here in Britain, there is deep dislike of Russians at the official level but I've noticed the ordinary Eastern Europeans, at ground level, seem to be tolerated in the society. However, this is soured by both what is happening above and in the immigration conundrum. The attitude of both Russians and Brits worries me as it has been whipped up by these factors and plays on the natural fears on both sides.

I am in daily contact with both Russians and Brits, ordinary folk and I can vouch for the fact that neither have horns, neither wish the destruction of the other as they have other things on the mind like jobs, homes and family. In this confusion over what the politicos are telling us, there is a great danger that each of the peoples will be isolated from the other more and more, to the point where, if the politicos say the other side has done something dastardly, the common man will gladly spring to arms and march off to slaughter his hated foe.

It's the old, media fed illusion all over again. Apart from the scramble for rationed resources, there is no deepseated nationalistic reason for conflict whatsoever. It's all been whipped up, artificial. Take this one and this one. They say "Russia" did this, "Britain" did that. Since when did the discredited ones at the top earn the right to be called Russia or Britain?

People are people the world over. They are proud of their ethnicity, they think they're the best people in the world, they're nationalistic, they welcome visitors from abroad to stay with them, they like to travel, they have foibles, they are human.

That's all there is to it.