A number of correspondents for Iceland Review have been short-term American students who somehow got a column in the publication. Not a bad thing but when I visit that site, I prefer to get the Icelandic perspective.
There is one, Eygló Svala Arnarsdóttir, who is the genuine article and so it was with great interest that I read her piece entitled Shameful Shortsightedness, concerning the greedy little people who saw big Euro signs in their eyes, come the summer tourist season.
Before the crisis hit, one euro could buy you approximately 90 krónas. Now, one euro trades for 180 krónas, which should mean that those traveling with euros are getting a “half-price discount” off everything.
However, following the crisis, prices have risen, mainly because with the depreciation of the króna it is becoming more expensive for Icelanders to import goods and Iceland relies heavily on imported goods.
Still, Iceland should prove considerably less expensive to foreign tourists than it was before the króna began spiraling downwards and, in an effort to turn this sad development into something positive, Iceland is now being advertised as a “budget destination.”
[However], many travel agencies, car rentals and hotels are now pricing their services in euros and at the same rate as before the crisis or even higher. [My Austrian friends] had rented a car for the outrageous price of EUR 3,000 (USD 4,000) for three weeks.
I couldn’t believe it. Is this how we treat the people who are kind enough to pay us a visit during these difficult times, helping our economy recover… by robbing them blind, making sure they’ll never come again and having them tell everyone that Iceland has become more expensive than ever?
I felt like sinking to the bottom of the pool with shame. I felt like I had betrayed all the people I had told come visit Iceland now because it had finally become affordable.
Shortsightedness. If the Icelandic mentality can be summoned up with one word, that would be it.
Shortsightedness is what made people think they could buy the world on loans. Shortsightedness is what spurs people involved in tourism to jerk up the prices as high as possible to make the most of this summer—a move that is sure to restrain the industry’s growth in the long run.
Shortsightedness is what caused the crisis and shortsightedness is certainly not going to lead us out of it but rather deepen the recession and ruin our reputation for good. And I really thought this time around people would learn from their mistakes…
More than shortsightedness, Eyglo, it is greed and this is not just an Icelandic phenomenon.
Examples abound, including London taxi drivers who know they could go down that lane to get to the hotel but instead let themselves get into traffic jams and go the long way, thinking you won’t know; local taxi drivers here who know there are two different hotels named the Victoria and drive you in the direction of the one in a nearby town, thinking you won’t know; and then we can look at Russia.
In Moscow, going from our hotel to a shopping centre, less than a kilometre down a straight road which we could have taken the tram along but understanding that a taxi should not be too expensive, he refused to understand my Russian when I asked up front how much and even when my Russian girlfriend spoke to him in perfect Russian, still refused to understand but had already done the short hop, then asked, in English, for $20 and kicked up a fuss when we gave him what the journey was worth.
Or the car driver in the centre of town whom I hailed to drive me home one evening who, the instant he heard my accent asked an amount three times the going rate and when I admonished him in Russian and told him I’d done this journey every day for eight years, didn’t want to lose even that amount but at the other end, pretended to misunderstand the name of the road for a much nearer to town bus stop by the same name and so on.
Or at Peterhof in St Petersburg, where Russians were allowed in for 10 roubles but foreigners paid 128 roubles and when I paid the ten roubles, she pointed to the sign and said, in pidgin English; ‘128 roubles’, to which I replied in Russian: ‘Nyet – ten roubles. What, am I not speaking Russian?’ to which my girlfriend tore strips off her in Russian too and she gave in and let me have the ticket [though the 128 roubles was neither here nor there actually].
Piggy-eyed greed and ripping off. Swindles, using the currency which will realize the most profit for them. That’s what it’s all about and as Eyglo wrote – short termism. It’s a very nordic and slavic mentality – the notion that there might not be any summer next year and no tourists so we’d best rip them off now. It’s the same mentality as the person who buys something in a Russian shop, not wanting it, for fear it’s not going to be there next week.
It’s the mentality, the slow-wittedness which can’t see beyond the immediate profit to the idea that you might like to contribute to making the destination pleasant for visitors so that they might want to return next year. The mentality can’t see as far as next week.
Eyglo mentioned one place which hadn’t done that - Hótel Djúpavík in Strandir - so people, if you're planning a sojourn in Iceland, a very beautiful country which I've visited and have been following for years, then you could do worse than add that hotel to your itinerary. .
Obama's 'considering' bailing out small businesses. Considering. And who suddenly put this brilliant idea into his head? And why now, after the goose is well and truly cooked in America? Why not when it had a chance of making some difference?
The effort would represent a striking shift from the rescue program's original mandate, since it would direct billions of bailout dollars toward a plan that aims more at saving jobs than at righting the financial system. Some economists estimate that small businesses, defined as firms with fewer than 500 workers, employ most of the country's workforce.
Look, you moron [or very clever cynic or stool pigeon for the very clever cynics – Them], you don't run down a nation, then bail out the architects of its continued misery and then think you might inject some funds into compensating small businesses for their losses.
"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." [Albert Einstein]
The way you do it is to change, in the first place, long ago, the tax codes to advantage small businesses and entrepeneurs, introduce incentives to start up and create a climate which is positive to business, in particular small and medium business, the engine room of the nation and the giver of work to millions.
Anyone with half a brain knows you create conditions conducive to business flourishing and to the flow of unencumbered money.
Calvin Coolidge once said that the business of government is business. Why can't you and Brown get that into your heads? Why couldn't the Neocons on their multi-billion dollar forays into other people's wars get that?
... In the last major economic depression in the 1930s, a Labour government fell because it decided that the cure for the latest crisis of capitalism was to cut public spending - in particular, to cut benefits to the unemployed.
A Labour prime minister and his main ministerial allies accepted wholeheartedly the economic orthodoxy of the time that public expenditure had to be reined in to stabilise the markets.
Working people, living at best on subsistence incomes but more often on the edge of destitution, were told that the country couldn't afford to pay them decent wages, house them, educate their children or treat their sick.
Labour ministers who stayed in office in the national government were applauded by their Conservative colleagues and the press for their statesmanship in telling their working-class supporters that they had to accept wage cuts and longer hours for the sake of the economy. These ministers were lauded for their patriotism in putting the interests of the country before the interests of their class.
The consequence of this acquiescence by a Labour government was a level of unemployment that impoverished millions of people in Britain and many millions more across the globe.
Over the last three months the same consensus has emerged across the three main political parties and within the mainstream media. In the interests of the country, wages must be cut, working hours increased, public expenditure must be massively reduced and there has even been a call to increase the retirement age to 70.
In effect the difference between the parties is not the direction of political travel but the depth and speed of cutting wages and public spending ...
For a start, this is not a crisis of capitalism, not in the least.
It is a crisis of an inept government, beholden to powers who wish for this situation to exist. Many pundits have shown enough evidence of the Morgans et al over there with their tactic of creating a melting pot and making a killing, a tactic so well known that when Goldman Sachs was tasked with it, they quickly trotted out their standard defence without actually questioning why the question would have been asked in the first place.
The arrogant always make small slips in the end.
Similarly, over here, can anyone seriously doubt that the EU is waiting to pounce, after October 10th, with its 'rescue packages'? The whole notion of letting a thing get so bad that people are seriously suffering up and down the nation and then cynically exploiting that, 'Them', to achieve your political ends is a one way ticket to hell once your miserable lives have been snuffed out.
You knew Brown was a total non-comp, a wood-duck who'd sell off the nation's gold and rob its pension funds and that pretty boy Blair was a 'how high?' man whenever you said, 'Jump!'
Effing cuts are what you've manoeuvred us towards, haven't you? The next step in the drama and you've let the feeders out to the press so they can take up the call. That's what this has all been about – manoeuvering as many of us as possible on to the dole, snuffing out any incentive in this country, nay, making it well-nigh impossible to create any new business and you've backed that up with stealth taxes like Land value and VAT etc.
You bastards, with your Gordon Brown grins.
Oh yes, we can see where this one's going. Who gets cut? NHS services to those who can least afford it. People excised from the dole which you put them onto in the first place with your plethora of constricted tick boxes and worthless NVQs and cards you must have to even apply for a job.
Are you going to remove the single mothers who see the dole as the way forward in this new Britain? Are you hell. Are you going to excise the chavs? Ha ha. You're going to excise the bourgeoisie who've been made redundant, aren’t you? Those who've committed the grievous sin of actually saving for their future, those who've played by the rules in the mistaken belief that their government would also do so, those who have equity in their homes and are penalized for it, those who'd hoped to have had a pension fund when they retired.
These are the ones you are targetting, under the guise of compassion. And why? Because you want to snuff out the middle class, the engine room of the capitalist society, meaning the free society. All that will remain is you at the top, doling out to the serfs down below who, by the next generation, will have known no other lifestyle but that of a welfare dependent.
You bastards. You're not going to get away with it. .
Ugly, amateurish grille to which all lines lead, ugly lines, boxy, too much metal, little glass, muscle car look which was never Jaguar's thing - it's awful. Your opinion?
People have long appreciated beautiful flowers and arranged them in vases. However, in Japan, the way of arranging flowers and plants has been carefully systematised and this is called ‘Kado’.
In the Kamakura period (1192-1333), the Samurai (elite warrior class) wrested the power of government from the aristocrats and brought great lifestyle and fashion changes into the whole of Japanese society.
At this time it became fashionable to create a Tokonoma, a small sacred alcove, in a zashiki (Japanese room). The Tokonoma would contain a flower arrangement, incense and a candle. It is because the space is an alcove, that traditional styles of Ikebana are designed to be viewed only from the front.
Ikebana, the art of floral arrangement, is simple in the basic materials and tools it requires. All you need is a shallow wide-mouthed container and some metal frogs. A metal frog is a holder with spiked needles into which you stick stems and twigs. In a shallow vase, add a little water and put in the metal frog and the container is ready to take in any flower arrangement.
The upright is the most basic structure and this arrangement looks good in shallow pots. The slanting, which is an ideal composition for beginners looks beautiful in tall containers like bamboo or pitchers. Again, in ikebana, the lines described by the elements are considered more attractive than the form and colour.
A branch or a twig in a gentle flowing line is preferred or considered more aesthetic than a group of flowers in full blossom. The arrangement is necessarily asymmetrical and the empty spaces that the arrangements circumscribe are equally important as those the materials encompass.
Basically, there are three triangular spatial groups - the higher level is upright central, the intermediate level which is slanting, and the lower level which is inverted, around which the materials are arranged. Thus the above-mentioned three levels signify heaven, earth and mankind!
Ikenobo is a school of Ikebana. It is the oldest school of Ikebana in Japan, having been founded in the 15th century by the Buddhist monk Ikenobo Senno. The school, currently headed by its 45th generation headmaster, Ikenobo Sen'ei, is based in the Rokkakudo Temple in Kyoto.
Ikenobo Moribana [freer] arrangement
