[blogfocus saturday] mainly britsphere this evening

Only one non-Brit this evening but this situation will be reversed on Tuesday.

1 It's very, very difficult to access Lord Nazh's blog but it's worth persevering a few minutes for he's always unpredictable and to the point. Besides, a man who heads his blog with an ever changing toon, [such as the one I've swiped above, which you can't read, as the print's too small here and thus will have to go to the site], is OK by me. Here he reports that recent, dangerous, international incident few might have been aware of:

What began as a routine training exercise almost ended in an embarrassing diplomatic incident after a company of Swiss soldiers got lost at night and marched into neighboring Liechtenstein. According to Swiss daily Blick, the 170 infantry soldiers from the neutral country wandered more than a mile across an unmarked border into the tiny principality early Thursday before realizing their mistake and turning back.

2 This wonderful curmudgeonly piece from The Man from Islington had me falling off my mobility scooter:

I do not like young people much. They have far too good a time. I shuffle to work everyday like a miserable Monk, being harvested by the State for my life force, while they skip and cavort with sexy new media projects and have "vibrant" web communities of smarmy Conservative Future members. I see them laughing in that revoltingly carefree way and the bile rises in my throat, the bitter acrid fumes sting my nostrils. I crush a paper cup with silent disgust. “Oh bugger off and have a Craveor whatever it is you do,” I shout, waving an imaginary stick and expectorating …

And so on.

3 The intriguing, enigmatic and sartorial Benedict White [born in march 1968 in a small village in Hertfordshire, just north of London.] has this to say about an event to be held this coming Monday:

The Adam Smith Institute (as in the free market think tank named after the author of the Wealth of nations, rather than the Sith Institute) has an event organised for Monday March the 5th, in London, with Stephan Shakespeare [founder of 18 Doughty Street] and Fraser Nelson [Political Editor of The Spectator] as speakers. Should be good. I will be there. If you are wondering who I am, I will be the twit charming man with the beard and ponytail. Possibly handing out business cards as well as cards with my blog address on it as I am as always a shameless self publicist!

Another nine bloggers here.

[james elsewhere] gone over to annoy lady ellee

I've done a little piece on the former Soviet Union and my reasons for staying there and Lady Ellee has kindly invited me to post it at her site. It might be of some interest to you, particularly the comments by Newmania and Tom Paine, which add to the overall picture.

If you like the piece and if you'd like more, then maybe one day Ellee will invite me again.

[airbus] a camel designed by a committee

Airbus is a troubled monster.

French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has revealed he'd talked with Chancellor Angela Merkel about the problems at Airbus and confirmed it is seeking to cut 10,000 jobs, saying, "This company is largely Franco-German, very European and there needs to be an equitable distribution of efforts between the countries."

Translated, that means that while profits need to be slanted France's way, job losses must be equitably distributed. Germany's Financial Times Deutschland has said that German carmaker DaimlerChrysler was responsible for halting the planned restructuring because it was worried France would keep too much of the manufacturing work and had concerns over the cost-cut targets.

American Thinker says that Reuters notes:

Franco—German friction is at the heart of a management feud that has gripped parent firm EADS and stalled appointments of a new Airbus chief executive, new EADS co—CEOs and a boss for its defence business.

The BBC notes:

Sad but true - the news of yet more delays to the Airbus A380 comes as little surprise. In recent weeks there has been widespread speculation that the problems revealed by the company in June were just the tip of the iceberg.

AM goes on to say:

Airbus has always been an odd entity, cobbled together from formerly—autonomous aerospace manufacturers in France, Germany, and Spain, with additional participation by British Aerospace. Airbus headquarters remain in Toulouse, France, Sud's former home base. It may be a European company, but to many it looks quite French.

Therein lies the squabbling plus one other factor - the French obsession with glory. A glance at my own field of sailing reveals that the French are at the heart of speed records, new concepts such as variable geometry trimarans and so on. For the French, it is shining glory which counts, rather than structural integrity and thus the A380 monster was born:

Because the new airplane is both massive and extensively employs state—of—the—art composites in its structure, the nightmare scenario would involve threats to its structural integrity. The smaller Boeing Dreamliner also employs composites, but its smaller size means that stresses due to sheer mass will be less of an engineering obstacle.

If you have only two major players in world aviation, namely Boeing and Airbus, then it is logical that the statistically few crashes around the world will be down to one or other of these. And yet, in Airbus' case, it is the nature of the structural failure which garners such attention. Not pilot error, not airport difficulties - structural errors. It has always been so. Look at some of the continuing disasters:

New York, leading to this Federal directive, Jamaica, Irkutsk, the Persian Gulf, Moscow, Canada, the list goes on.

The best way I can summarize it is Alec Issigonis' comment that the camel is an animal designed by a committee. When design and construction teams must comprise politically acceptable elements from the various nations, the result is not a think tank but a mish-mash.

[homelessness] as far away as your sanity

Some years ago I had a lady friend who was into Tarot, palm reading and the whole biz. Together with the Chinese birth years, these things pointed out that I'd likely die old, alone and in pain. I ignored it.

Now that I'm closing in on those years and have lost my entire family infrastructure for various reasons, most of them through my own fault, through my own stubbornness, the prospect of sleeping rough on the streets fills me with dread. It really does.

That's why, when I saw this first hand article, it needed to be read. It deals with how people get to that point and if I'm annoyingly self-focused here, please forgive me. Fleeing from domestic violence [not me], alcohol [not me], losing one's mind and reason [slowly, slowly] or losing one's family and friends. Ah, yes. And from pride. Most certainly.

When you sleep rough, your existence takes on an unequivocal fragility. You're exposed to the elements and frequently succumb to illness. Your blankets and possessions are often stolen. You stand a good chance of being physically assaulted, harassed or openly mocked just for being who you are.

A 70-year-old homeless woman I worked with told me how one night she woke up in a shop alcove to discover a man in a suit urinating on her. Is it any wonder that the homeless often conceal themselves from prying and judgemental eyes?

How can people live and die on the streets in a country as rich as ours [and] why do people live this way when there's help available? The truth is, the help is severely limited. People who are homeless and over 40 report being too frightened of using crisis housing because they've heard stories of younger residents' drug use or violence. How long they remain there often depends on their mental health and physical strength.

Our income depends on our mental acuity - in my case, I live on my wits. Once that becomes erratic, the cash dries up and when that happens, I'm out there. It's just a question of time. People might say, from kindness, 'James we'd never let you fall so far.' They're judging by the James they know. They might quietly slip away from the James of twenty years from now. They'll most probably not even be there by that stage.

Who knows when it will strike?

[lizard watch] hillary's not getting hollywood funds

Take the poll in the right sidebar!

"Clinton fatigue", voting for the Iraq war, losing the black vote to the very vanilla Obama, Hillary is not doing so well and her prospects against the likely Republican opponents have also grown bleak. The Rasmussen and Zogby polls taken last weekend have Giuliani ahead by as much as nine percentage points.

Pollsters place much significance on the favourable-unfavourable ratings and the Post-ABC News poll has her at 49-48, which means opinions about her are set in stone. For every voter who likes her, one detests her. Giuliani and Obama both have unfavourable ratings in the mid-20s with sky-high approval ratings.

Sherry Bebitch Jeffe says: "Her support's softened in Hollywood and there's definitely not that sense of inevitability about her being the Democratic presidential nominee any more. This is all important right now because we're in the middle of the primary fundraising season and Hollywood is a major fundraising engine for the Democrats."

The entertainment business rivals unions and trial lawyers as the biggest source of money for Democrats. Since 1989, Hollywood has given more than $US100million ($127 million) to Democrats for federal campaigns alone; this is on par with what the oil and gas industry has raised for Republicans in that time.

David Geffen, a former Clinton confidant who is now backing Obama said: "I don't think that another incredibly polarising figure, no matter how smart she is and no matter how ambitious she is - and god knows, is there anybody more ambitious than Hillary Clinton? - can bring the country together," he told The New York Times.

"Everybody in politics lies," he said about the Clintons. "But they do it with such ease, it's troubling. It's overstating it to say Hillary's lost Hollywood, but she's not winning right now," says Jeffe.

Still, it's early days yet.

[may-december] even with the best will in the world

Mention was made today of an older man with a 17 to 21 year old girl.

So much has been written about May-Decembers, mostly either the outraged morality of those who have never been there or the wishful naivety of someone who has been smitten. The old rule of half your age plus ten has much to recommend it: 30-25, 40-30 or 50-35 but 55-17 is something else again.

A seventeen year old girl can have a veneer of maturity, especially these days and especially if she's of a serious disposition. She can look and act the goods and he's the catalyst which instils confidence in her and makes her seem even more mature, just as he gets a new lease of life himself. By nineteen or twenty she's almost a different person and that is half the problem.

What he's dealing with is not a fully-fledged adult but a girl who's still 30 to 40% her mother, who lacks the experience to make a life decision of this magnitude, given the gulf between them and whose needs and directions are going to alter as she hones her purpose in life. He, on the other hand, knows where he is and what he's doing. It's just that he's smitten.

To shy away from a serious commitment with such a girl immediately raises other issues - just what does the older man then want her for? If he says: 'Do I have to want her for anything?' this is sweet and actuated only by the purest motives but how, practically, can they then relate? How does he deal with her parents?

If he says there's no sexual component, then what will he do in the long term? How can he keep her from that which comes naturally at this age? Is he being honest with himself or with her? And what of the state of play with his own sexuality?

With the best will in the world, even if he's in peak physical condition, has most of his hair and desire has still not outstripped performance, even if his musical tastes more than 50% coincide with hers, even if she loves him more than he loves her, it is still fraught.

She has a different rhythm, differing perspectives even if they agree on an issue and he can only take the mentor thing so far, can only show her so much of the world and give her so much of the earth. He'll believe that in his case it's different, that he has the flexibility and sensitivity to make it work; that she is also old enough to decide.

It still doesn't work, in the end. I've not only been there twice but two friends over the last two decades also did the same thing, one even marrying. I'm not being mean - it simply doesn't work. Sooner or later the question of children also arises and this now becomes an extended family affair. And will the broader community of relatives give the happy couple an easy time?

'So, we'll go to another country,' he or she suggests. But she doesn't know what it is to be cut adrift from her moorings and when the reality finally sets in, what then? It's a lovely ideal, they might just love each other to bits but reality will finally bite.

Of course, none of this even begins to touch on the ladies 'of a certain age' whose motherly eyes lightly fall on a young man of promise in his 20s. That's another question again.