[cry tough] when are we really impoverished

Regarded as one of the better democracies in Africa, in terms of political stability, Senegal has:

GDP 4.8%
Unemployment 48%
Agricultural 77.5%
Industry and services 22.5%
Below poverty line 54%
Age expectancy late 50s
Inflation 5.8%
Crops, fishing, agricultural and fish processing, phosphate mining
Official language French then local languages

It was the traditonal jumping off point for slavery pre-20th century, now a jumping off point for boat people trying for Europe. France maintains close ties and thus Spain [proximity] and France [the old colonial power] are seen as destinations. Naturally, the mortality rate on such voyages is high.

Here is another look at the direness of their living conditions.

Cut to Italy and looking again at the boat people from Tunisia and elsewhere, mainly to Lampedusa. Welshcakes ran posts on this here and here and I did too. There was the issue of the immigrants occupying the local church, only for the police to be called and Welshcakes wrote:

This incident raises so many questions, many of them uncomfortable ones: Does a country have a right, or even a duty, to look after its own citizens first? On the other hand, surely everyone has a right to be treated with some human dignity? What would any of us do if we suddenly found ourselves homeless through no fault of our own? And if you are seeking a little compassion when you most need it , is it unreasonable to suppose that you might find it in a church?

Well that's interesting, those last two sentences and has anyone really thought about that in North America, Britain or Australia? Maybe they have in South Africa - I'll have to ask the South African readers here.

In my case, the issue of being homeless is my situation, although I was headed for fellow bloggers so I was not exactly on the street for some time. Against that, the fall, for me, was from a greater height than for a Sengalese, even though I've been in rough situations around the world.

So even in a situation where I didn't exactly starve - the picture below is of the cafe in Sicily I sometimes took Welshcakes to as a break - the food in Britain was a huge drop in quality and in amount after that, I eat one full meal a day even now. On the other hand, I see people with mortgages and fear of job loss, desperately hoping for some good news so I can only say I'm nearly on a par with them, especially with the horror of 2010 coming up - I don't wish to discuss that but it's a total loss situation still.

Against that, I'm in a wonderful house [for now] with a view over the hills, out of town but within cycling distance, there is central heating [when the bloody boiler works] and the place is clean. That puts me in the top 10% of the world, in relative terms and a Sengalese would think I was on clover.

Cafe Consorzia on a Saturday afternoon

Most Brits, on the other hand, would be appalled at my living standard, not even having a TV or proper fridge and turn their faces away although I keep a tight ship and things are clean and Bristol fashion plus my clothing is almost enough to see me through the winter - the remains of the quality stuff I had in Russia, where once I walked tall.

What do we do about boat people? Do we turn them away and let them drown? Do we take them in? I don't mean "we" because ours are from Eastern Europe and I was near a restaurant yesterday on the riverbank and could hear an Eastern European language being spoken inside by most of the staff. In a situation where I saw Brits of what I would have called good station at the Job Centre, the real bourgeoisie - what must it feel like for them in their bewilderment - I couldn't help thinking that they have to come first.

Then I look at these stories of Senegal and so on, the sheer inhumanity of the conditions and I blanch. Worse than that, the Islamists are even pushing for them to pour into places like Italy to break down the hold of Catholicism and we all know where that ends up - five story mosques everywhere, thumbing their noses at us and introducing Sharia Law. It's different to the Gates of Vienna situation because it is not overtly militaristic this time but clandestine. They call them clandestini in Italy.

There is the selfish aspect. I had to go to the nearest big town, Ragusa, to the Questura and I couldn't be bothered because there'd be huge queues of boat people waiting overnight in the street to be processed, by all accounts and so I didn't. Instead I went down to the local cafe on the side of the hill and had black coffee and apple pastry, whilst reading the local paper, before heading back up the picturesque lanes to Welshcakes and a good breakfast.

Later, in my darkest hours alone, I was taking breakfast at the international hotel on the top of the hill, sitting out in the piazza and enjoying the last of the morning cool before the temperature climbed to 40 degrees. In Italian terms, I was destitute. There I had two meals in the day, reasoning that two meals of quality beat three meals below the breadline - I didn't fancy eating dog food.

What is poverty? What really constitutes "having it tough"? I'm sorry but I don't call the welfare dependency, with one's family on benefits, in a home which keeps out the rain and in which they eat twice a day, having it tough. The Africans have it tough. On the other hand, it feels tough to me, being used to a completely different lifestyle, as a former social B2, running two cars and two places of residence.

So what to think, for the umpteenth time, of the boat people? I really don't know.

Senegal street market

Women Chainmakers Festival

This is a guest post by Cherie [blogging as Cherry Pie at Cherie's Place] and she illustrates a truism that not all the excellent bloggers have to be political.

The apolitical sphere is quite large but the top bloggers there are not widely known by the politicos because the two generally don't mix; however, Cherie's name in that sphere is highly respected, so much so that when we set up Bloghounds, I went out headhunting for six of the best to join the team and I'm going to boast here now that Cherie was one of the prime catches.

In real life, as in the blogging, she is a facilitator, coordinator, an administrator and a friend who keeps whatever she touches on the straight and narrow, with sheer common sense. Her eye for detail and for the way a post fits into the whole is inspiring - cast your eye down this post and that is typical Cherie.

Enjoy ...

On Saturday, the 99th Women’s Chainmakers Anniversary took place at the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley. The event is held annually and commemorates the struggle of the women chainmakers to earn a decent living wage.

In 1910 the women chainmakers of Cradley Heath fought a successful 10 week dispute to establish a minimum wage for their labour. The dispute was led by union organiser and campaigner Mary MacArthur. By the end of the dispute the women chainmakers had managed to increase their earnings from 5 shillings (25p) to 11 shillings (55p). The victory helped to make the possibility of a national minimum wage a reality.

Women chainmakers were a good example of ‘sweated labour’ meaning hours of toil for minimum wages. The women chainmakers’ pamphlet, which gives extensive information about the dispute, quotes the following about the working conditions of chainmakers:

Author Robert Harborough Sherard visited Cradley Heath to collect evidence for one of a series of articles, later published as a book ‘The White Slaves of England’ (1898), on the sweated trades of the land. He was taken by James Smith, secretary of the Chainmakers’ Union, to a place called Anvil Yard. Sherard Wrote:

"Two of the girls working in the shed were suckling babes and could work but slowly. Those who could work at their best being unencumbered could make a hundredweight of chain in two and a half days. Their owner walked serene and grey –haired among them, checking conversation, and being, at times, abusive. She was but one of a numerous class of human leeches fast to a gangrened sore.

Of Anvil Yard, with its open sewers and filth and shame, one would rather not write, nor of the haggard tatterdermalions* who groaned and jumped. In fact I hardly saw them, the name ‘Anvil Yard’ had set me thinking of some lines of Goethe, in which he deplores the condition of the people – ‘zwischen dem Amboss und Hammer’ – between the anvil and the hammer.

And as these lines went through my head, whilst before my spiritual eyes there passed the pale procession of the White Slaves of England, I could see nothing but sorrow and hunger and grime, rags, foul food, open sores and movements incessant, instinctive yet laborious – and anvil and a hammer ever descending – all vague, and in a mist as yet untinged with red, a spectacle so hideous that I gladly shut it out, wondering for my part, what in these things is right."

*tatterdermalion – a poor and ragged person

Throughout the day re-enactments of the struggle and dispute took place in the reconstructed town at the museum. These were followed by a march through the museum streets which was accompanied by marching bands. At the end of the march there was a reading of one of Mary MacArthur’s speeches.

[late evening listening] dearieme presents two surprising pieces

Dearieme notes:

Anyways, Hob, how d'you like this old girl, star of the 20s and 30s, resurrected in old age by a bunch of Scandowegian jazzers? Ain't it fine?



Indeed it is fine. For the second piece, Dearieme notes:

And if you're ever stuck, there is always the only pair of really top jazzers who weren't North American:

[spot the world leader] who said what

Who is the leader in each case?

1. Commenting on a band in the 2006 summer issue of New Woman magazine, this leader said, "The Arctic Monkeys really wake you up in the morning."

2. On January 12th, 2009, this gallant leader made a speech: "I'm telling you there's an enemy that would like to attack our country, our countrymen, again. There just is. That's the reality of the world. And I wish him all the very best." [I changed the name of the country for the word "country".]

3. On being asked, the PM said: "I don't carry any early childhood trauma around with me, if that's what you're hinting at. The story of the bicycles - and there were three of them which were stolen from me - I've dealt with it well."

4. Showing a fine grasp of geography, this leader said: “The fifth province is not anywhere here or there, north or south, east or west. It is a place within each of us. It is that place that is open to the other, that swinging door which allows us to venture out and others to venture in.”

5. "These are our people. The workers, the strivers, the builders. These are our people. The builders of our world, struggling, fighting, bleeding, dying. On the streets of our cities and on the far-flung battlefields. Fighting against the mutilation of our hopes and dreams. Who are they?"

Answers

Gordon Brown, George W. Bush, Angela Merkel, Mary Robinson, Big Brother

[silent sunday] oops

[sherlock again] who is married to whom

[Just a little word about the CRB post. As there are too many posts up today, this has been rescheduled to tomorrow morning, for those who were perhaps wondering although it is readable in RSS.]


"Well, I never,' muttered Watson. "I thought you told me, Holmes, that Pamela Butler's sister wasn't married to Terence Corrigan?"

"Ah, the Hampshire Mystery. That's right, Watson."

"Well look at this biography of Lord Haylesham."

Holmes took the book and his face underwent a change, his lips pursed, his brow furrowed and he slowly let out a long breath.

"I see, Watson. So they appear to have been married after all. That changes everything, you do see that, don't you?" Holmes read on further. "Hmmmm, not only that but the stockbroker, Arthur Hawes, has never met Patricia Raybourne who is an only child."

"And yet," added Watson, "if that biography can be believed, Arthur Hawes, Gerald Collins and Terence Corrigan are married to Pamela Butler, Susan Partridge and Patricia Raybourne."

"So it appears," agreed Holmes, "only who is married to whom?"

It took Holmes eight minutes to come up with the solution. How long will it take you?

Answer

Arthur Hawes + Pamela Butler, Gerald Collins + Patricia Raybourne, Terence Corrigan + Susan Partridge