[systems] making the week possible

Let's assume that you're not head of an organization with its own secretarial staff and that you're in the position most of us are - wondering how to handle the flood of emails, the shopping, cleaning, work commitments, home security and so on.

You could deal with this by using a concierge service but that's expensive and it cuts both ways. If you fail to handle even one detail a couple of times, it gets about that you're less than efficient and there goes your business. The people who stay in this business are good but the good ones are not cheap.

So you might get someone to handle your correspondence and hire a cleaning lady to do the house once a week. A friend in Russia, who set up an introductions business, hired a woman to put in about three hours a day and her main task was to arrange the emails in priority order, with permission to deal herself with much of the pile.

The way I ran my phone was to keep the answer machine on permanently. As there was no need to deal with people through the day and as I had commitments which required my undivided attention, I used no mobile. One friend asked me why I didn't get a number tracker such as he had, which intercepted all calls and filtered them for answering or blocking.

My phone system was part of my overall security system. Firstly, there was a coded metal door to our house downstairs. Then there was a metal door on my landing. Then came my first metal door and the lock was so old that the key had bent into an S shape. Everyone said it was impossible and I once asked a bad boy friend of mine [who could break in anywhere] to try getting through my door.

He concluded that special services could but the average punter couldn't. The wooden second door was not as secure.

Next, I had no domaphone, i.e. no one downstairs could buzz me. I also disconnected my doorbell but made it look like it worked. So there were only two ways through. Either email me or phone and everyone I knew knew that they'd have to speak on the answer machine and then I'd pick it up if I recognized the voice. I had a key in a padded wrapper. I'd then go out to the back balcony and throw it down to them and they'd come upstairs while I undid all the doors from inside.

That would be seen as OTT over here but only slightly excessive over there. No matter, it worked. Many hated this system and I lost a lot of outside business that way but even that was a good filtration system. The people who understood the reasoning were people I felt I could deal with. The rest - well, I was up to my eyeballs in commitments anyway.

We all need some system to cope with the weekly pressures. Wonder what yours is.

[snowfall] is it the alps, is it alaska

Plascassier and the snowcapped hills above Magagnosc/Chateauneuf

... no, it's L'Ombre's Côte d'Azur. Check the pics.

And for snow you'd expect to see - Cherie:

[flashpoints] global symphony, orchestral accompaniment

If ever there was an issue where people will argue from their entrenched positions, the powder keg in the sub-continent is it:

The point is, the India-Pakistan adversarial relationship with its undercurrents of mutual suspicion and bristling with countless animosities bordering on hostility, is so delicately poised at any given moment that it doesn't need more than a few hours to degenerate into a conflict situation on account of a misstep or two on either side, even when it is camouflaged in veneers of cordiality as it has been during the past three to four years.

There have always been tensions and wars in the region, as there have been in the Balkans and the Middle-East but the question is who is fomenting it? The first thought is a geographical one - if it's in India, it must be Pakistan, if in Iraq, it must be Iran and America.

But if you dig deeper than that, it is the ones who stand to profit, as they always have, from financing these things, the ones who profess a neutrality and yet have an almost religious commitment to depopulation. Doesn't matter where it is - Rwanda and Kissinger, the Sudan and the UN, Kosovo - destabilization, misery and depopulation are the key agendas.

It begins to look some sort of global 'club", membership of which requires an atrocity in your country for entry. Australia, whose foreign policy closely mirrors the U.S., kicked off with its Port Arthur, the U.S. followed up with 911; Russia, who were interested in playing in the world market economy at that time, had its theatre and Beslan atrocities, Britain did its bit to mark the Olympic "success" and now India has its own.

On safer ground, which pundits can more readily accept:

The current US thinking leans towards equipping select Pashtun tribes to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. It is a controversial move that worries the Pakistani military, as it might ignite violence in the Pashtun regions inside Pakistan and fuel the Pashtunistan demand.

Add to that Gates' Afghan Tajik army proposal. In all of this is the forcing of parties in the region into more polarized positions and after all that, there is always the Kashmir issue to reignite. The warmongers are spoilt for choice. It's odds on that the U.S. will be the stirrer wherever they go, certainly in the minds of non-Americans.

Yet who is the U.S.? Certainly not the citizens, as witnessed in the anti-war movement. The leadership then. As Franklin Roosevelt wrote to Colonel House on Nov. 21, 1933:

"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson."

Meanwhile, people continue to slaughter one another and the government seems powerless:

The interior minister has been forced by an irate Congress party leadership to resign, owning responsibility for the massive failure to prevent the fidayeen from storming India's financial capital with such impunity.

Curious how exactly the same situation existed at all the other atrocity points, especially in Russia, which is a controlled space. Curious how so much incompetence has reared its ugly head worldwide just in the last few years, how the global collapse has accompanied the advent of terror and the re-opening of old war zones.

Curious how it blows up in one region, whilst the others remain relatively stable, then, when that region sees "peacekeepers" going in to thrash out a deal, the focus moves to another region - but no two at the same time.

[thought for the day] monday evening

Would you - back to the rustic village life?

You might like to view this as a fuller take on the issue. Consider:

The hankering after a presumed idyllic rustic past seems to be something that townies of various sorts hanker after. It isn't a new desire either. From all those 18th century philosphers and the "noble savage" to Tolkein with his hobbits, the desire to throw off the shackles of nasty urban life and return to something simpler has a long literary tradition.

It is also, pardon my French, Nucking Futs. Rustic life requires one to be occupied in a way that is 100% opposite to Pterry's prefered job description (indoors and no heavy lifting). Rustic life is hard grind.

[minutiae] and the gloom of the bus station

At first glance, waiting for a return bus from a cold and windswept bus station in the town centre, just as the dark had fallen with a thud, did not promise a scintillating time but stranger things have happened.

Having done the doings and thinking I was late, the jacket collar went up, the Thinsulate toque was tugged down, I got to the stand and there we all were, side by side in the gloom, grandmothers, grandpas, mothers with kids and shopping, young spivs, chavs, schoolkids and me. No one spoke; every one of the Pod People sported a blank look.

"N7 been along yet?" I couldn't resist asking the woman standing beside me, all muffled up, at which she showed bewilderment, "Not sure. N4 should have been 'ere at fifteen past. I got 'ere at quarter to and must a' missed it like."

A glance at the watch said 16:20.

"Nah, it never came," piped up a bearded type, front right, wearing a kagoul. "N7 neither."

"It's very late, the N4," spoke up a grandma to my left, sitting bolt upright on the rounded red steel bench, her shopping on the seat beside her. "It's already fifteen past and they're usually so punctual."

"Twenty past," I threw in an unheeded correction.

There were about thirty seconds silence.

"Must have been held up," added an elderly voice from a vaguely visible figure, further along to my right.

"Or roadworks," replied the grandma and everyone else stared fixedly towards where the bus stubbornly refused to come from.

"Oh look," a mother called out, "Is this it coming now?" Everyone peered into the gloom and it was certainly a bus which had swung itself round the corner and into our lane but ... and this was a big but ... it had stopped behind a stationary bus at the stand one up from us and wouldn't show itself.

Someone stepped onto the road and reported back, "Nah, it's the N7." I looked at the woman beside me and felt I needed to say something. "Never mind, the N4'll be along shortly." She smiled that resigned look and clutched her collar even more tightly to her neck.

The long, long queue finally got on, all were seated, the bus was heated and the lights inside meant you couldn't see anything outside, as the hiss near the driver signalled we were off on our grand adventure.

Immediately, behind me, some girl saw it as the cue to start up. "I bought an Advent calendar today, from Marks and Spencers." Silence, then, "I really like that tune, y'know. It's really nice like."

"Oh, I bought that one too," answered her friend. Silence. "I really like that tune too."

More silence. The first girl had obviously been considering this last remark.

"I'm taking it back tomorrow. I'm not havin' soomit wot evera'one else has."

Someone dinged the bell, eight or nine of us got up, the driver swung round the corner and jammed on his brakes, sending us careering towards the exit door. "Cheers," I called back to him, falling off the bus at the same time.

It was a bit chilly outside so I zipped my collar up to the top and pulled the toque down even further over the eyebrows.

[david] makes a comeback, clad in gold

All right, I admit I bottled out on showing those nether regions but if you're desperate to get a gander, here they are.


David's been restored for $255 000 in Firenze:

Museum director Beatrice Paolozzi Strozzi said the 15th century statue created by Renaissance artist Donatello was fully restored to its original glory using advanced laser technology ...

That is one question - what to do to restore - but what about the question of embellishing?

[The restoration] included the application of a thin layer of gold to the statue ... intended to add luster to the historic piece ...

This takes it out of the realms of restoration and into someone's modern notion of creativity. And so to another major question - how much money should be devoted to/wasted on restoration of world heritage items?

The "could have been spent on the poor" brigade have a legitimate argument but the opposite argument - that key restoration work preserves the world's treasures, something beyond one day's meal for the city's poor - that is also a powerful point of view.

This view holds that the poor would get value from the work of art anyway - they have little else to do during the day but to appreciate the city's beauty. Unless the work was hidden behind closed doors and was only viewable for an entrance fee.

What percentage of a nation's budget should be devoted to restoration anyway? Difficult to get the percentages for Italy but I found this:

• Article 3 of the Budget Law 662/1996, providing for a portion of the national lottery revenue to be dedicated to the protection and restoration of cultural goods; and

• Article 60 of the Budget Law 289/2002, establishing that 3% of public capital expenditure for "strategic infrastructure" should be assigned to the financing of cultural goods and activities.

It would seem not very much. Plus much cultural funding is expected to come out of national lotteries, which is hardly government allocation of moneys. Then there are the cuts in funding to existing bodies, such as English Heritage.

If one accepts that maintenance and restoration is not a N1 priority, compared to education and social services, then how much, in percentage terms of GNP should be allocated? And how does that compare to the massive wastage at every level, in so many diverse areas the governments administer, for so many years now?