Introduction - I am naming some names in this piece. If the parties concerned do not like the publicity or the comments, then there is a simple answer - pay me IMMEDIATELY the money that you owe me for the work that I have legitimately undertaken and produced and delivered by the date agreed, and I will amend this article accordingly. No apology will be forthcoming from me for publishing the article in the first place. And I will settle for nothing less than complete payment - though the comments below do make certain allowances which should be taken into account.
Definition - someone who works full time (= employment, even on a freelance basis) and does not get paid anything for the job that he/she undertakes is a SLAVE! Someone who gets someone to undertake work for nothing (even with the promise of financial reward for the work) is not merely a scammer, but is ENCOURAGING AND SUPPORTING SLAVERY! Think about that for five minutes!
Status - I dislike (intensely) being self-employed. I also did not want to find myself forced to live on government handouts. I want(ed) a full time salaried job in IT. After my heart attack in 2008 I found that the number of people prepared to even consider offering me opportunities in that area was very low. It could be down to age, health considerations (I am fully recovered incidentally) or the international economic crisis (I saw summat on CNNI on Spain's unemployed this week - gruesome and unacceptable - time for action, not for a permanent shrug of the shoulders from the inept politicians and the gamblers on the world's stock exchanges!).
Anyway in 2011 I decided to start working as a translator (something I had done before on an occasional basis). With my background as a modern languages graduate and a former secondary school languages teacher in England, there should have been been possibilities.
I checked out my competence at the Frankfurt branch of the leading language service provider Kern AG (they were suitably impressed) and filled out the form with which they provided me. I have picked up a good amount of work from them - in fact they are my best customer. I have also scouted the Internet for opportunities. I have picked up contacts in Spain, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Cyprus, Belgium, the UK, the USA and Austria among others. By the end of October there were no complaints about the volume of work. In fact there was in September and October probably far too much.
On reaching October 30th, I had worked 87 out of the previous 91 days (that includes weekends), and a lot of the days were 12-13 hours long. No matter how talented you are the demands on your concentration are intense, and sometimes you are prone to error due to tiredness rather than incompetence. But legitimate companies should have ways to deal with errors in the work that they receive (see later - this point is crucial).
Methodology - to produce the work I follow a 6-stage structured process. This never changes.
1. Read the piece to be translated.
2. Prepare a first draft.
3. Working from the original and the first draft, produce the body of the translation.
4. Check the work against the original, correct grammar and spelling, and enhance the phraseology and choice of vocabulary.
5. Recheck for grammatical errors and incorrect phraseology. Look for further enhancements.
6. Read the near final translation strictly as a piece of English, ignoring the original. Where it sounds artificial, not fluent, or like a too strict translation (i.e. it sounds for instance like German or French or Dutch English rather than UK English) change it referring to the original where necessary.
I no longer use computer program generated translators like Trados. My copy of Trados (which needs updating to the latest version - I do not have the money to buy it) is on my old PC which broke down at the start of 2012 (and I do not have the money available to repair it). Trying to load it on the laptop has proved impossible due to permissions required on the laptop not being accessible. And anyway I was not that good at using Trados, and the IT specialist that I was for over 20 years was not overly impressed with the software!
The translation is sent after the 6 stage process described above almost invariably on the date agreed with the client. If I am going to be late, even by a couple of hours, they are informed accordingly. There is usually (but not always) a contract involved which gives the date and time for receipt and, significantly (see later) the date for payment for the work to be issued.
Despite my experience as a linguist, despite the rigid procedure adopted as above, I cannot expect perfection 100% of the time. I have also expectations from the client side, at least when I am dealing with an agency. Along these lines:
1. Quality control. Upon receipt of the work, it is proofread.
2. If there are obvious errors it is returned to me for correction.
3. Where I accept the errors (that means the recommended changes are in fact errors and not simply alternatives which the proofreader prefers for personal reasons), the translation is corrected.
4. The "final" copy is returned to the client who then sends it to the customer.
I have no concern about having a proofreader correcting my work. This ensures that the final piece will be of the quality that is expected by the client. There is no pride involved here. We are not infallible. Sometimes in the words of the David Powter song "You've had a bad day" - sometimes no matter how hard you work, how structured your methodology is and how much you try to concentrate, you miss things. When under stress, working hours that are far too long, and not taking some breaks as you should, the quality is occasionally substandard - and considerably below your own expectations.
My view is that these should be picked up in stage 1 in the client expectations (quality control). Normally they are.
In my experience there is a 97-98% level of efficiency in providing the work that meets the client customer's requirements. There have, however, been 6 substandard pieces (2 of them in the same week in October, obviously the product of overwork and stress) issued to the customers out of over 200 produced in the 20 months that I have been undertaking this work full time. My normal policy, if this occurs, is to either accept a reduced payment or to withdraw any claim for payment entirely. I value my professional reputation. I am also an honourable person, I only wish that I could say the same for some of the people with whom I am dealing!
Payment and invoicing - invoices are usually issued on the day after delivery of the translation, although with regular customers I occasionally leave them and send later an invoice covering a number of pieces of work. The invoice states (in line with what I was informed when I started out) that payment is expected "within 14 days". This needs amending to "by xx/xx/xxxx" where "xx/xx/xxxx" is the due date stated in the contract.
Most clients are reliable when it comes to making payment, in fact one of the three who are currently negligent used to be very reliable in the past (see later). One client who notably does not issue contracts has proved the post reliable payer of the lot - so the lack of a contract is not in fact necessarily a "bad thing".
Payment dates vary. Often the standard is on the final day of the following month - although my customers in France and Belgium (see also later) insist upon the final day of the month after 2 clear months. As long as you know where you stand, this should not be a problem.
Grounds for non-payment - if the work is substandard, then there should be dispute procedures established where payment can be challenged. I have no problem with this. As stated above I will accept reduced payment, or even complete denial of payment where necessary.
There are points that need establishing here though.
1. Challenging payment of the invoice should occur before the due date has been met. It is ridiculous to leave a piece of work unchallenged for something like 2-3 months before raising issues and claiming inadequacies in the work. Frankly it looks like a way of copping out on due payment. "Honourable", business-like it is not!
2. The translation deemed "substandard" and the invoice attached to it should stand as independent entities from any other translations and invoices associated with them. That means that there should be no delay in meeting payment on the the due date of work that is not under dispute. To do otherwise is a clear violation of accepted business practices.
On the boxes of tomatoes principle. If a supplier sends boxes of tomatoes to a distributor with separate invoices on a weekly basis, and all those boxes contain satisfactory items for 5 weeks, any box sent in the 6th week with rotting produce must be judged on its own merits, and any dispute regarding payment should apply purely to that delivery.
Where this is a significant issue (the receiving of rotten fruit), then the distributor can look also at ending the trade relationship with the supplier. But refusing to pay for goods that were delivered in good order before the problem arose is unacceptable, as these met the contract requirements originally agreed.
That is my understanding of the situation following (unofficial) discussions with an acquaintance who understands legal business practices within Germany.
The current problem - As of now I am owed a sum of approximately 3,275 Euro on invoices that have been properly issued for work legitimately undertaken and completed (without notification of any challenge, see above), and which should have been paid by December 1st. In fact the due date in most of these cases is considerably before December 1st (see below).
This is not money which is surplus amounts for fun outings or buying beer - it is serious money that is needed to cover basic living costs, costs incurred by the work that I undertake (repairing the PC finally, getting up-to-date Microsoft Word software usw) and important little matters like meeting my obligations to the German tax authorities and paying health insurance! And paying off the one debt that I have taken out (interest free from a close friend).
If you are Mitt Romney, Richard Branson, Carlos Slim usw, that money is chicken-feed. To me it is my livelihood that is involved.
As of this morning I have €518 in my bank account. I have a payment of €205 due from a reliable supplier (Kern AG), which will probably arrive next week. This means that I will be able to pay the rent (late!), but insufficient funds will be available to pay my health insurance costs which are due in the middle of the month, and sufficient funds need to be in the account by January 11th. Go without medical insurance? After all it was only a heart attack that I had in 2008, so should I worry too much about the medication that I am taking?
Ask my wife for money? She has nothing spare - there are other obligations in the house that she has to meet (utility and telephone bills, food usw).
Take out a loan? On what basis - I have no guarantee that the money that I am due will be paid, and why should I incur interest charges because other people aren't paying me? If they are prepared to pay the interest charges I might consider it. But this taking out loans without due consideration of non-payment in the future is one of the major reasons why the world landed in an economic crisis in 2008.
Because other people want to snort economic heroin regardless of the consequences does not mean that I have to follow suit. I am not that daft!
So where do I go with this?
I have no satisfactory answer. I SHOULD NOT EVEN BE IN THE SITUATION WHERE I HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THIS! The money is due, it should be paid immediately, there are no acceptable grounds for non-payment, and that is the only satisfactory resolution to the problem. If I were dealing with honourable people, the problem would also not exist!
Did I mention lawyers maybe? I have already sought legal advice unofficially. The view that I heard expressed was that where 2,700 Euros worth was retrievable, but as there would be potentially substantial legal costs to find .... It remains an option though not one that I would choose to follow.
The negligent payers
1. A name that makes me wince whenever I think about it - Ralph William. His name came off an advert on translationdirectory.com in July 2011. I produced 13 pieces of work of undisputed quality for him (one further I withdrew). An invoice was issued to him on 23/8/11 for US$ 657.98 (approximately €480 at the time).
Since that time I have heard twice from him saying that he would pay me as soon as possible, but the last of these was at the start of 2012. In the second he also indicated that he had had to have surgery, hence the delay.
This seems to me to be an unlikely story. I suspect that he has done some work as a translator himself and has been using other people to produce work for him, claim the work as his own and keep the money for himself. In other words an out and out scammer.
Where he is, address, telephone number usw I do not possess. Only an email address. I sent an email asking for more details, needless to say I got no reply. Obviously I should have been more careful, and not done the work for him in the first place. As no contract was issued either, he could deny any such arrangement, although in case of any legal investigation, I have kept every one of his emails!
If he does want to redeem his reputation, he can write to me, send his address and other details, and send the money by direct credit transfer (SWIFT - I am not prepared to wait any longer than necessary) to the bank account in Germany given on the invoice. And for the record the German tax authorities will be informed about the invoice.
If anyone knows anything further about this character, please let me know.
2. JTI Development (also known as Juristraduction) in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. They used to be extremely reliable. Since May this year they have become a perennial disaster story. They owe me €917.29 for for invoices issued in May and due for payment at the end of July, €395.70 for an invoice issued in June and due for payment at the end of August, and €185.68 for an invoice issued in August and due for payment at the end of October. Add that lot together, it comes out at €1,498.67.
There has been plenty of communication between us on this, though this tends to be principally one-way. I was told that I might expect a payment at the end of October, that was not forthcoming. I have been pursuing this ardently since with little success. Currently I have four unanswered emails awaiting replies.
The argument for the late payment (in a mail that I received earlier this year) was summat on the lines of their not receiving payment from their clients, so they could not pay me.
Frankly the second part of this statement is a non-sequitur anyway. They have received the work on the date agreed, there have been no significant questions regarding quality, and their contract with me states that the payment date would be at the end of the month following 60 days grace. Any problems for dealing with their clients should be subject to their own procedures (and the legal procedures applying in France) - I do not see that I should be affected. My side of the contract has been met (and see above for the consequences of the non-payment).
3. 2B Translated in Belgium
They may have a case but not much of one IMHO. There was one piece of work that was returned as substandard (first of a series of three) just before I was due to leave for Thailand at the end of October. I made a number of changes as requested, and pointed out that I could not (due to lack of available materials - my wife decided that taking the laptop with us was out of the question) deal with anything further for three weeks. Given also the state of exhaustion in which I found myself at the time, taking the first break in nearly two years made sense.
I received confirmation from them when I returned that they would be in touch about this piece of work - I have heard nothing further since.
They had though decided not to proceed with payment of invoices for work PROPERLY AND DULY DELIVERED AND NOT SUBJECT TO QUALITY ISSUES before the "substandard" piece of work. The first of these invoices, for €132.15 should have been paid on October 1st - before I even set to work on the "substandard" piece of work! That they forgot to pay it is not untypical. They have a habit of being late, and if I do not send them reminders that payment of invoices is due, I am unlikely to receive any money from them.
Professional organisations should be aware of when their obligations to make payments that are due - they should not need reminders.
The remaining payments (€177,05 due at the end of October for work performed in August and €986.85 due at the end of November for work carried out in September) should have been paid according to the "boxes of tomatoes" principle explained above. A total of €1,296.05 is being held back with the consequences again as described above.
Following my unofficial discussion about the questionable legality of the reasons for non-payment, I wrote a very long letter to them explaining the situation, the problems that it was causing and offering to withdraw the invoice for the disputed "substandard" work (or accepting a partial payment only). There is a precedent for this where one such piece of work was sent to Kern AG in Germany. They paid all the invoices issued before the disputed piece, all the invoices after it, and offered a partial payment for the piece in question. Which is probably as well as I would now very likely be sleeping on the street if they had not!
This letter was sent in an email to 2BT on December 16th. I have, surprise, surprise, received no reply. No money? Of course not.
Final statement - I expect some reaction from these people. Where disputes exist on work issued and the due date on invoices has not yet been reached, then I am open to negotiation. I am, I repeat, an honourable person. Unfortunately in this world where cynicism, bloody-mindedness and throwing honest hardworking people to the dogs seem to be the modus operandi, getting any sort of satisfactory response seems increasingly unlikely. And then if none is forthcoming - given the critical situation explained above .....
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Tuesday, 25 December 2012
What do you often get these days when a dictatorship disappears?
OK
1. Check out what happened in Russia for nearly 10 years after the fall of Communism.
2. Check out what happened in Iraq (and is still going on occasionally even now) after the fall of Saddam.
3. Check out what has happened in Egypt since Mubarak was removed.
4. Check out what will happen in Syria once Assad finally goes.
Answer - chaos and often violent dissent.
Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule - some Eastern European countries in the 1990s, Chile after Pinochet, Indonesia after Suharto (?), Libya now and others that you can name ....
And of course one can hardly describe the brutalities of the dictators and everything that was involved as desirable.
But the removal of an undesirable dictatorship does not necessarily lead to a better state, a thriving democracy usw. And there is the risk that in certain areas (z. B. women's rights in the "Muslim world") things will actually deteriorate!
1. Check out what happened in Russia for nearly 10 years after the fall of Communism.
2. Check out what happened in Iraq (and is still going on occasionally even now) after the fall of Saddam.
3. Check out what has happened in Egypt since Mubarak was removed.
4. Check out what will happen in Syria once Assad finally goes.
Answer - chaos and often violent dissent.
Of course there are exceptions that prove the rule - some Eastern European countries in the 1990s, Chile after Pinochet, Indonesia after Suharto (?), Libya now and others that you can name ....
And of course one can hardly describe the brutalities of the dictators and everything that was involved as desirable.
But the removal of an undesirable dictatorship does not necessarily lead to a better state, a thriving democracy usw. And there is the risk that in certain areas (z. B. women's rights in the "Muslim world") things will actually deteriorate!
Postscript (December 28th, 2021) - check out what has happened in Libya since I wrote this item. At one point ISIS was threatening to take over large chunks of it, and the civil war there is yet another example of the chaos which follows the fall of a dictator!
Monday, 24 December 2012
Securing schools
Not really my place to start telling Americans what to do with their gun laws. Why anyone would need an automatic rifle / handgun which shoots 30 rounds at a time for domestic use (yes, I know you found your neighbour who is supposed to be a strict Christian in bed with your wife, but 30 rounds sounds a bit like overkill? Maybe? Well OK, you would have preferred 60) ....
Anyway your heart goes out to the parents of the young children brutally slain in Connecticut. Words fail me as to what would drive anyone to kill children like that. Some things in this often brutal world are beyond comprehension.
One suggestion that has arisen about preventing a repeat of this comes from the NRA in the US. NRA (explained principally for the benefit of foreigners who do not know this fact) stands for National Rifle Association (the "N" does not stand for "Nutty" or "Nauseating" incidentally), and they are strong advocates for the Second Amendment rights in the US constitution which is all to do with the right to bear arsenals - sorry "arms"!
Their suggestion involves essentially putting armed guards in front of every school in the US. Ignoring comments that I have read from seditious American "Leftists" in the past few days that on the day of the notorious Columbine High School massacre back in 1999 that the school in question did have armed guards "protecting" the place (so the suggestion will not necessarily work ....) - and after all denying the constitutional rights of the likes of Adam Lanza to bear arms would obviously have been a mistake - I will look at school security in the light of my experiences as a teacher in England back in the 1970s.
I have extremely good memory powers, and unfortunately I can still remember much about the school where I spent most of my teaching career in the late 70s - "unfortunately" as the nightmares often still come back.
To bear in mind - no two schools are structured or administered the same way.
This particular school had been amalgamated from two separate schools on the same site in a fit of passionate Socialist idealism which regarded pragmatism as an unfortunate obstacle that gets in the way of clear idealistic thinking and planning (why they do not apply the thinking when it comes to bankers wrecking economies usw, I never do get - education seems fine for idealism, politicos tend to lose this idealism when it comes to taxation & regulations usw for some strange reason).
Logistically it was summat of a nightmare. There were two sets of buildings. To the front of one set was a main road. Go 500 metres and turn left, go down another not insignificant road for about 200 metres, you came to the other set of buildings. Surrounding the buildings on the other sides were the fairly extensive sports fields - football (North American = soccer) pitches for the boys, hockey (North American = field hockey) pitches for the girls, in summer (no jokes here about the summer in England incidentally - in 1975 and 1976 there were real summers!) these could be converted into athletic tracks or cricket pitches.
At one end the school was definitely fenced off from the private property and public walkways to be found there. I imagine that it was also the case at the other end (I never went to find out), but as a lot of kids used to walk home that way at the end of the school day, I imagine that any fence was not too effective at providing 100% security.
There were meanwhile at least five entrances from the roads to the school and a parking bay where school buses dropped off kids who were brought in daily from the surrounding villages. This bay was conveniently situated next to the school, so there was no requirement to go to any main entrance from there.
With me so far?
Your challenge at this point is to turn this establishment, at least as it then stood, into a secure property which security guards can protect.
Fence off the outside, close all the entrances except one, put in metal detectors ..... Fine, that quick and easy, eh? Think of airports, restrict areas of movement from the outside and you are there?
Give me that as an answer and you get sent home with extra homework!
Right to start with - the fence. This has to be secure. Vandal-proof. Might I suggest electronic fencing. Electronic fencing will keep villains out, right? Not voting against electronic fencing personally, but remember that what serves to keep villains out (getting frazzled as they try to break in) also impacts other less villainous individuals.
This is a school, remember. Some kids are curious to the point of being utterly stupid. And sticking up a very large sign saying "do not touch the fence, you might get frazzled!" will not always work. Some will still have an unstoppable urge to risk touching it (to see what happens) while the academically less gifted might not even be able to read what the sign says!
And then of course there is the matter of private property and public walkways on the other side of the fence. People out walking with their dogs do not want Rover coming back .... well totally frazzled! So the problem is how to keep the fence out of reach from outside.
Leaving this excellent question unanswered (someone has already answered it somewhere - there are plenty of electronic fences in use for security elsewhere), I will move on to the now single main entrance, metal detectors, our wonderful ever-alert security guard (sorry, excuse me while I wake him up again - the problem with appointing retirees is that they need more sleep. The head of the NRA suggested retirees incidentally - not my proposal).
You then have the rather interesting point of how you get all the children into the school through the one entrance. In my teaching years this would have meant getting approximately 1,300 kids (between the ages of 11 and 18) into the school. They would tend to arrive in a 30 minute period between 0820 and 0850. Divide 1,300 by 30 you get 43.3 recurring per minute. And who are all now obliged to pass through the metal detectors.
Ask people at airports if this can be done (expect hilarious laughter or a look of shock). Ask people at airports what sort of items set off the alarm on metal detectors. Which is why mobile 'phones need to go with your hand luggage through a special device. I don't know about the US or the UK or Germany, but in Scandinavia a recent survey indicated that some 85-90% of kids would expect to have a mobile 'phone with them during the day (parents also appreciate the possibility of having their kids contactable by such, even if the kids use them more for social purposes).
Metal detectors sounding alarms every few seconds, 1 child passing through them every one and a half seconds, and an old security guard on his own trying to deal with this.
And then imagine the situation when a 15-year-old girl sets this off, she cannot understand why it has gone off, and the old (male!) guard decides that he has to search her? After all she could be hiding a handgun in her underwear ....
Suddenly you need a female security guard, right?
Given all the factors involved, the original proposal as stands can never work. Simply put.
The number of guards necessary (and the number of access points) has to increase, the processing has to be far more efficient, the time factor has to be more realistic, and the personnel have to be trained professionals and quick enough to react if there is an emergency. How quickly would even a retired policeman react when faced by a fit young man armed with an automatic rifle. The chances are that he would be dead before he had time to even think. The first of many if these school killings are anything to go by.
And did I mention the cost involved?
Providing PROPER security to all schools if you want armed guards and the like in a country the size of the United States is going to be, like it or not, very expensive! And at a time when the politicians are involved in a noisy debate about cutting public expenditure, reducing the deficit usw, adding massively to the cost of school security will only means an increase in education costs which have to be taken from elsewhere.
That is the financial logic of the argument.
But the security of the kids is paramount?
Of course it is.
There have to be ways to keep guns out of schools there and everywhere else in the world for that matter (there have been two instances of these atrocities with guns in schools in Germany since the start of the 21st century - in Erfurt in 2002 and in Winnenden near Stuttgart in 2009). But the solutions have to be clear and well thought out, not a series of sound bytes full of obvious logical flaws through which even someone like myself, who is no expert on security, can drive the proverbial coach and horses.
Anyway your heart goes out to the parents of the young children brutally slain in Connecticut. Words fail me as to what would drive anyone to kill children like that. Some things in this often brutal world are beyond comprehension.
One suggestion that has arisen about preventing a repeat of this comes from the NRA in the US. NRA (explained principally for the benefit of foreigners who do not know this fact) stands for National Rifle Association (the "N" does not stand for "Nutty" or "Nauseating" incidentally), and they are strong advocates for the Second Amendment rights in the US constitution which is all to do with the right to bear arsenals - sorry "arms"!
Their suggestion involves essentially putting armed guards in front of every school in the US. Ignoring comments that I have read from seditious American "Leftists" in the past few days that on the day of the notorious Columbine High School massacre back in 1999 that the school in question did have armed guards "protecting" the place (so the suggestion will not necessarily work ....) - and after all denying the constitutional rights of the likes of Adam Lanza to bear arms would obviously have been a mistake - I will look at school security in the light of my experiences as a teacher in England back in the 1970s.
I have extremely good memory powers, and unfortunately I can still remember much about the school where I spent most of my teaching career in the late 70s - "unfortunately" as the nightmares often still come back.
To bear in mind - no two schools are structured or administered the same way.
This particular school had been amalgamated from two separate schools on the same site in a fit of passionate Socialist idealism which regarded pragmatism as an unfortunate obstacle that gets in the way of clear idealistic thinking and planning (why they do not apply the thinking when it comes to bankers wrecking economies usw, I never do get - education seems fine for idealism, politicos tend to lose this idealism when it comes to taxation & regulations usw for some strange reason).
Logistically it was summat of a nightmare. There were two sets of buildings. To the front of one set was a main road. Go 500 metres and turn left, go down another not insignificant road for about 200 metres, you came to the other set of buildings. Surrounding the buildings on the other sides were the fairly extensive sports fields - football (North American = soccer) pitches for the boys, hockey (North American = field hockey) pitches for the girls, in summer (no jokes here about the summer in England incidentally - in 1975 and 1976 there were real summers!) these could be converted into athletic tracks or cricket pitches.
At one end the school was definitely fenced off from the private property and public walkways to be found there. I imagine that it was also the case at the other end (I never went to find out), but as a lot of kids used to walk home that way at the end of the school day, I imagine that any fence was not too effective at providing 100% security.
There were meanwhile at least five entrances from the roads to the school and a parking bay where school buses dropped off kids who were brought in daily from the surrounding villages. This bay was conveniently situated next to the school, so there was no requirement to go to any main entrance from there.
With me so far?
Your challenge at this point is to turn this establishment, at least as it then stood, into a secure property which security guards can protect.
Fence off the outside, close all the entrances except one, put in metal detectors ..... Fine, that quick and easy, eh? Think of airports, restrict areas of movement from the outside and you are there?
Give me that as an answer and you get sent home with extra homework!
Right to start with - the fence. This has to be secure. Vandal-proof. Might I suggest electronic fencing. Electronic fencing will keep villains out, right? Not voting against electronic fencing personally, but remember that what serves to keep villains out (getting frazzled as they try to break in) also impacts other less villainous individuals.
This is a school, remember. Some kids are curious to the point of being utterly stupid. And sticking up a very large sign saying "do not touch the fence, you might get frazzled!" will not always work. Some will still have an unstoppable urge to risk touching it (to see what happens) while the academically less gifted might not even be able to read what the sign says!
And then of course there is the matter of private property and public walkways on the other side of the fence. People out walking with their dogs do not want Rover coming back .... well totally frazzled! So the problem is how to keep the fence out of reach from outside.
Leaving this excellent question unanswered (someone has already answered it somewhere - there are plenty of electronic fences in use for security elsewhere), I will move on to the now single main entrance, metal detectors, our wonderful ever-alert security guard (sorry, excuse me while I wake him up again - the problem with appointing retirees is that they need more sleep. The head of the NRA suggested retirees incidentally - not my proposal).
You then have the rather interesting point of how you get all the children into the school through the one entrance. In my teaching years this would have meant getting approximately 1,300 kids (between the ages of 11 and 18) into the school. They would tend to arrive in a 30 minute period between 0820 and 0850. Divide 1,300 by 30 you get 43.3 recurring per minute. And who are all now obliged to pass through the metal detectors.
Ask people at airports if this can be done (expect hilarious laughter or a look of shock). Ask people at airports what sort of items set off the alarm on metal detectors. Which is why mobile 'phones need to go with your hand luggage through a special device. I don't know about the US or the UK or Germany, but in Scandinavia a recent survey indicated that some 85-90% of kids would expect to have a mobile 'phone with them during the day (parents also appreciate the possibility of having their kids contactable by such, even if the kids use them more for social purposes).
Metal detectors sounding alarms every few seconds, 1 child passing through them every one and a half seconds, and an old security guard on his own trying to deal with this.
And then imagine the situation when a 15-year-old girl sets this off, she cannot understand why it has gone off, and the old (male!) guard decides that he has to search her? After all she could be hiding a handgun in her underwear ....
Suddenly you need a female security guard, right?
Given all the factors involved, the original proposal as stands can never work. Simply put.
The number of guards necessary (and the number of access points) has to increase, the processing has to be far more efficient, the time factor has to be more realistic, and the personnel have to be trained professionals and quick enough to react if there is an emergency. How quickly would even a retired policeman react when faced by a fit young man armed with an automatic rifle. The chances are that he would be dead before he had time to even think. The first of many if these school killings are anything to go by.
And did I mention the cost involved?
Providing PROPER security to all schools if you want armed guards and the like in a country the size of the United States is going to be, like it or not, very expensive! And at a time when the politicians are involved in a noisy debate about cutting public expenditure, reducing the deficit usw, adding massively to the cost of school security will only means an increase in education costs which have to be taken from elsewhere.
That is the financial logic of the argument.
But the security of the kids is paramount?
Of course it is.
There have to be ways to keep guns out of schools there and everywhere else in the world for that matter (there have been two instances of these atrocities with guns in schools in Germany since the start of the 21st century - in Erfurt in 2002 and in Winnenden near Stuttgart in 2009). But the solutions have to be clear and well thought out, not a series of sound bytes full of obvious logical flaws through which even someone like myself, who is no expert on security, can drive the proverbial coach and horses.
Thursday, 20 December 2012
End of the world tomorrow?
Well I hate to disappoint you, folks, but the world is not going to end tomorrow.
There is no more reason to believe that than there is to believe the two predictions of such that we had in 2011, and numerous others before that (check out Mother Shipton of Knaresborough in Yorkshire some time).
No need to waste money on the event. No need to panic. No need even to take precautions.
The day after - we will all be here as normal (except those would have died on that day anyway, and they will not know anything about anything any more!).
The prediction may instead mean merely the end of the era as we know it, and a new dawn in our existence usw. Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing at the thought, gurgling the words "the age of Aquarius" as I do so! The age of Aquarius didn't happen, this won't either.
Better times are coming? We can but hope. But it will require the application of human intelligence, not some silly prophesy wharrever its origins!
There is no more reason to believe that than there is to believe the two predictions of such that we had in 2011, and numerous others before that (check out Mother Shipton of Knaresborough in Yorkshire some time).
No need to waste money on the event. No need to panic. No need even to take precautions.
The day after - we will all be here as normal (except those would have died on that day anyway, and they will not know anything about anything any more!).
The prediction may instead mean merely the end of the era as we know it, and a new dawn in our existence usw. Excuse me while I fall on the floor laughing at the thought, gurgling the words "the age of Aquarius" as I do so! The age of Aquarius didn't happen, this won't either.
Better times are coming? We can but hope. But it will require the application of human intelligence, not some silly prophesy wharrever its origins!
Tuesday, 18 December 2012
How do you force people to enjoy themselves?
Yep it is Christmas coming up again.
Same old boring movies on television - including stuff appearing after the cut-off time (longstanding opinion - movies that are only fit for children should not be shown after 1800).
Same old dirges on the radio with awful sentimental lyrics that you would never hear again if they didn't have the word "Christmas" in them every second line.
Same old commercialisation trying to get people to buy things that they cannot afford and would probably never purchase under other circumstances in the proverbial month of Sundays.
Same old thinking that you have to be as miserable as this economy makes you, but for some strange reason on December 25th you have to be cheerful.
And the same attempts to make the event religiously significant (despite the above) to an audience in Europe that is ever more sceptical. In 30 years time, the way things are heading, atheists in many European countries will outnumber Christians by a massive margin, so the significance of Christmas will change per se, although whether there will be a change in outlook by commercial interests remains to be seen.
And yes I know that it used to be a pagan festival (to celebrate the winter solstice) that the Christians stole.
As I am neither a Christian, nor a pagan (and winter is for me the least desirable of the seasons) ....
So why not try to be happy every day? And generous and .... Why not celebrate on August 4th, December 12th, March 3rd (for people with birthdays on those dates of course, you might anyway, but I think that you get the point)?
Meanwhile turn up for one of those typical family get-togethers where you have to eat too much, far too much alcohol is consumed and someone gets not merely drunk but chronically verbally abusive ....
Then and there someone will then tell you in an imperative voice "Enjoy yourself, it's Christmas!!!!".
A bit like the Christmas turkey (or chicken or goose or duck) is supposed to enjoy itself, I suppose.
Enjoyment, my friends, arises from within. It cannot be forced from the outside. It is very difficult to force someone to enjoy themselves (and bad excuses like "well it's Christmas" definitely do not work). Maybe masochists can be forced to enjoy an event if you know where to hit them and how, but for most everyone else it is as ridiculous a thought as it gets.
In fact most Christmas celebrations are, in my experience, held with many people that you would choose to avoid most of the time. Enjoyment in those circumstances is definitely not part of the argument!
A waste of time and effort in other words.
Now let us get back to the point which I made earlier about being able to enjoy life all the time and not (stupidly) on one day a year.
For that we need a working, prosperous economy, interesting worthwhile jobs that reward people who want to work, an affordable lifestyle and a degree of control over our own lives rather than having it run - and ruined - for us by a few idiot gamblers who are part of the corporatocracy. 365 days a year (366 in leap years). The chances of that though are about as likely as getting through to December 28th without any more nonsense!
Same old boring movies on television - including stuff appearing after the cut-off time (longstanding opinion - movies that are only fit for children should not be shown after 1800).
Same old dirges on the radio with awful sentimental lyrics that you would never hear again if they didn't have the word "Christmas" in them every second line.
Same old commercialisation trying to get people to buy things that they cannot afford and would probably never purchase under other circumstances in the proverbial month of Sundays.
Same old thinking that you have to be as miserable as this economy makes you, but for some strange reason on December 25th you have to be cheerful.
And the same attempts to make the event religiously significant (despite the above) to an audience in Europe that is ever more sceptical. In 30 years time, the way things are heading, atheists in many European countries will outnumber Christians by a massive margin, so the significance of Christmas will change per se, although whether there will be a change in outlook by commercial interests remains to be seen.
And yes I know that it used to be a pagan festival (to celebrate the winter solstice) that the Christians stole.
As I am neither a Christian, nor a pagan (and winter is for me the least desirable of the seasons) ....
So why not try to be happy every day? And generous and .... Why not celebrate on August 4th, December 12th, March 3rd (for people with birthdays on those dates of course, you might anyway, but I think that you get the point)?
Meanwhile turn up for one of those typical family get-togethers where you have to eat too much, far too much alcohol is consumed and someone gets not merely drunk but chronically verbally abusive ....
Then and there someone will then tell you in an imperative voice "Enjoy yourself, it's Christmas!!!!".
A bit like the Christmas turkey (or chicken or goose or duck) is supposed to enjoy itself, I suppose.
Enjoyment, my friends, arises from within. It cannot be forced from the outside. It is very difficult to force someone to enjoy themselves (and bad excuses like "well it's Christmas" definitely do not work). Maybe masochists can be forced to enjoy an event if you know where to hit them and how, but for most everyone else it is as ridiculous a thought as it gets.
In fact most Christmas celebrations are, in my experience, held with many people that you would choose to avoid most of the time. Enjoyment in those circumstances is definitely not part of the argument!
A waste of time and effort in other words.
Now let us get back to the point which I made earlier about being able to enjoy life all the time and not (stupidly) on one day a year.
For that we need a working, prosperous economy, interesting worthwhile jobs that reward people who want to work, an affordable lifestyle and a degree of control over our own lives rather than having it run - and ruined - for us by a few idiot gamblers who are part of the corporatocracy. 365 days a year (366 in leap years). The chances of that though are about as likely as getting through to December 28th without any more nonsense!
Friday, 14 December 2012
Sixteen
Go back to the halcyon days of Rock 'n' Roll in the 1950s and the early 1960s. Dig out the many songs which seem fixated upon 16-year-old girls. The Crests "Sixteen Candles" (still even now a favourite song of mine - for the vocalisation at least), Chuck Berry "Sweet Little Sixteen", Johnny Burnette "You're Sixteen" - there are dozens more. Sexual implication (naughty), but nothing too direct. What was it with Rock and girls of that age?
No answer. Move on.
Between 1973 and 1979 I used to teach a lot of 16-year-olds. Mainly the intelligent ones. Neither children (I also used to teach 11-year-olds, they definitely were children), definitely not adults (walk into the staff room and check out my female colleagues - they definitely were adults). Difficult age to define really. Nothing to risk getting involved with.
Move on again.
According to stats in the UK approximately one third of kids of that age now are sexually active, in Germany it is about a quarter. Whether the stats can be trusted is a good question, but 16 is the age of consent, so in theory nothing illegal is going on, even if common-sense should encourage them to wait a bit. (I noted a few weeks ago that there are European countries where the age of consent is lower than that - see Austria and the Czech Republic for example - but there are strings attached to prevent predators taking advantage).
OK combine 1979 (see above), 16-year-old girls (see above), sexual activity (see above), age of consent (see above) and try what was happening in Denmark in 1979.
Copenhagen was at that time (times change) one of the centres of the production of pornographic movies in Europe. The age of consent being 16 (I am told), a girl could appear in such a movie when she reached that age apparently (any readers in Denmark please correct me on that if I am wrong but this was stated by one of the leading makers of such movies who had no scruples about using such girls).
1979, a 16-year-old girl makes an adult movie, a couple of years later it is almost forgotten, the world moves on.
You would imagine.
The number of adult movies being made around the world and intended to satisfy the seemingly endless demand on the Internet dwarfs the number made in the 1970s. So would anyone want these antique pieces of short not exactly classic movies. Times have moved on, the minimum age is theoretically 18 (cough, splutter) but apart from that what would be the attraction? There are certain things from 1979 we could do with now (the standard of living, the relatively low unemployment rate, enforced discipline in some schools at least - even if the one I taught in failed in that respect), but tacky bits of porn?
Well the Internet is with us and apparently .....
I was reading last night how the American authorities got themselves into a confused state in 2007 (does that surprise me????). They were trying to stop the publication (not sure whether it was a DVD or on the Internet) of a few of these ancient Danish porn films based upon the fact that the girls were underage ("Child Porn" etc).
I personally wouldn't regard films involving 16-year-olds as being "Child Porn". It probably ought to be called "Adolescent Porn" or summat. "Child Porn" sounds like one of these horror stories involving 5-year-olds.
The rules these days say "18" so that ought to be enforced (protecting the individuals younger than that from being exploited maybe - though if the girl were 17 years and 364 days old is a day gonna make much difference?). But ancient stuff from 1979 in a country where such films could be made legally?
It is not as if you are trying to protect anyone from anything really. Go off to Denmark and ask the people involved (if they are still there and still alive). Problem being they would be well into their 40s now. So do they need protecting from their pasts? Maybe they would be so embarrassed they would like them withdrawn. And then it may bring back fond memories. And then it may be so long ago they do not care one way or the other.
There is a need out there to protect kids from predators. That involves us looking at the situation now and finding how we can effectively do it (see the child brothels in Cambodia for example), not wrapping ourselves in concern about some tacky 33-year-old movies. That is a world away, any damage has long since been done, and public money could be spent far more usefully pursuing existing problems.
No answer. Move on.
Between 1973 and 1979 I used to teach a lot of 16-year-olds. Mainly the intelligent ones. Neither children (I also used to teach 11-year-olds, they definitely were children), definitely not adults (walk into the staff room and check out my female colleagues - they definitely were adults). Difficult age to define really. Nothing to risk getting involved with.
Move on again.
According to stats in the UK approximately one third of kids of that age now are sexually active, in Germany it is about a quarter. Whether the stats can be trusted is a good question, but 16 is the age of consent, so in theory nothing illegal is going on, even if common-sense should encourage them to wait a bit. (I noted a few weeks ago that there are European countries where the age of consent is lower than that - see Austria and the Czech Republic for example - but there are strings attached to prevent predators taking advantage).
OK combine 1979 (see above), 16-year-old girls (see above), sexual activity (see above), age of consent (see above) and try what was happening in Denmark in 1979.
Copenhagen was at that time (times change) one of the centres of the production of pornographic movies in Europe. The age of consent being 16 (I am told), a girl could appear in such a movie when she reached that age apparently (any readers in Denmark please correct me on that if I am wrong but this was stated by one of the leading makers of such movies who had no scruples about using such girls).
1979, a 16-year-old girl makes an adult movie, a couple of years later it is almost forgotten, the world moves on.
You would imagine.
The number of adult movies being made around the world and intended to satisfy the seemingly endless demand on the Internet dwarfs the number made in the 1970s. So would anyone want these antique pieces of short not exactly classic movies. Times have moved on, the minimum age is theoretically 18 (cough, splutter) but apart from that what would be the attraction? There are certain things from 1979 we could do with now (the standard of living, the relatively low unemployment rate, enforced discipline in some schools at least - even if the one I taught in failed in that respect), but tacky bits of porn?
Well the Internet is with us and apparently .....
I was reading last night how the American authorities got themselves into a confused state in 2007 (does that surprise me????). They were trying to stop the publication (not sure whether it was a DVD or on the Internet) of a few of these ancient Danish porn films based upon the fact that the girls were underage ("Child Porn" etc).
I personally wouldn't regard films involving 16-year-olds as being "Child Porn". It probably ought to be called "Adolescent Porn" or summat. "Child Porn" sounds like one of these horror stories involving 5-year-olds.
The rules these days say "18" so that ought to be enforced (protecting the individuals younger than that from being exploited maybe - though if the girl were 17 years and 364 days old is a day gonna make much difference?). But ancient stuff from 1979 in a country where such films could be made legally?
It is not as if you are trying to protect anyone from anything really. Go off to Denmark and ask the people involved (if they are still there and still alive). Problem being they would be well into their 40s now. So do they need protecting from their pasts? Maybe they would be so embarrassed they would like them withdrawn. And then it may bring back fond memories. And then it may be so long ago they do not care one way or the other.
There is a need out there to protect kids from predators. That involves us looking at the situation now and finding how we can effectively do it (see the child brothels in Cambodia for example), not wrapping ourselves in concern about some tacky 33-year-old movies. That is a world away, any damage has long since been done, and public money could be spent far more usefully pursuing existing problems.
Sunday, 9 December 2012
With age comes wisdom
Once in a while on YouTube you find a real classic video.
If you want a view on what has gone right and wrong with the world since 1945, where the UN has got it right and got it wrong in the past 60+ years, where the EU has got it right and wrong in the past 50 odd years usw, this is worth hearing.
He is 96 years old, and the intelligence, the insight into and grasp of what has been happening for the past few decades is astounding. I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he had to say, particularly his comments on nationalism in Europe.
One down side, dear reader, you had better speak French (or find some way to make YouTube produce English subtitles!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFi0aG08ydY&feature=g-crec-lik
If you want a view on what has gone right and wrong with the world since 1945, where the UN has got it right and got it wrong in the past 60+ years, where the EU has got it right and wrong in the past 50 odd years usw, this is worth hearing.
He is 96 years old, and the intelligence, the insight into and grasp of what has been happening for the past few decades is astounding. I found myself agreeing with nearly everything he had to say, particularly his comments on nationalism in Europe.
One down side, dear reader, you had better speak French (or find some way to make YouTube produce English subtitles!).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFi0aG08ydY&feature=g-crec-lik
Tuesday, 27 November 2012
Mixing politics with sport - the side effects
One of the stories of the weekend in Europe has been that of the elections in the region of Catalonia in Spain.
There has been some talk of an upcoming referendum upon independence from Spain - Catalonia is apparently one of the wealthier regions of the country, and given the financial desperation that the banking collapse has brought to Spain as a whole many Catalans see independence as a way out.
Nothing is ever easy of course.
Firstly there is no way, apparently, that such a referendum would be constitutional - there does not seem to be a quick and easy way of simply becoming a separate country if the region so desires - and in Madrid the impact of a referendum in Catalonia would also impact the volatile neighbouring Basque region, where calls for independence (and often violent methods of pursuing it) have been an issue for a generation.
And then with Catalonia there is not even an agreement who should take them down that road. The top two parties in the elections this weekend were both strongly for the referendum and the independence that would follow, the first a strictly Conservative party, the second a traditional Social Democrat party. Agree upon wanting independence? They do. Agree upon anything else? Mmmmmm.
If Catalonia did become an independent state, of course they would have everything Catalan (the way Slovakia has everything Slovak since it broke away, peacefully, from the former Czechoslovakia). Including its own sports leagues.
The pride of sporting Catalonia is FC Barcelona, probably the strongest football (North American = soccer) team in Europe over the past five years. Their major rivals in Spain forever and a day have been Real Madrid - still, for many, the biggest club name in European football.
Every year the teams meet twice in the Spanish championship, and very often in various cup competitions. The matches, known under the label "El Clásico", are as important in just about every respect (including revenue) as any games played anywhere any time.
Given an independent Catalonia, FC Barcelona would be playing in the Catalan League, Real in the remaining Spanish Championship, and but for possible encounters in the various European competitions, never the twain will meet! Exit "El Clásico"! And do not for a minute expect UEFA to agree to a "national" competition crossing borders.
So there is summat for the voters of Catalonia to consider if they ever get a referendum on independence! Will the significance of a very major sporting event play a role in deciding the region's future? We will see!
There has been some talk of an upcoming referendum upon independence from Spain - Catalonia is apparently one of the wealthier regions of the country, and given the financial desperation that the banking collapse has brought to Spain as a whole many Catalans see independence as a way out.
Nothing is ever easy of course.
Firstly there is no way, apparently, that such a referendum would be constitutional - there does not seem to be a quick and easy way of simply becoming a separate country if the region so desires - and in Madrid the impact of a referendum in Catalonia would also impact the volatile neighbouring Basque region, where calls for independence (and often violent methods of pursuing it) have been an issue for a generation.
And then with Catalonia there is not even an agreement who should take them down that road. The top two parties in the elections this weekend were both strongly for the referendum and the independence that would follow, the first a strictly Conservative party, the second a traditional Social Democrat party. Agree upon wanting independence? They do. Agree upon anything else? Mmmmmm.
If Catalonia did become an independent state, of course they would have everything Catalan (the way Slovakia has everything Slovak since it broke away, peacefully, from the former Czechoslovakia). Including its own sports leagues.
The pride of sporting Catalonia is FC Barcelona, probably the strongest football (North American = soccer) team in Europe over the past five years. Their major rivals in Spain forever and a day have been Real Madrid - still, for many, the biggest club name in European football.
Every year the teams meet twice in the Spanish championship, and very often in various cup competitions. The matches, known under the label "El Clásico", are as important in just about every respect (including revenue) as any games played anywhere any time.
Given an independent Catalonia, FC Barcelona would be playing in the Catalan League, Real in the remaining Spanish Championship, and but for possible encounters in the various European competitions, never the twain will meet! Exit "El Clásico"! And do not for a minute expect UEFA to agree to a "national" competition crossing borders.
So there is summat for the voters of Catalonia to consider if they ever get a referendum on independence! Will the significance of a very major sporting event play a role in deciding the region's future? We will see!
Saturday, 24 November 2012
Thailand, the Middle East, the secession of American states, and more turmoil
1. Thailand
A house divided among itself and becoming ungovernable?
The Shinawatras are to say the least controversial. The current Prime Minister though, Yingluck Shinawatra, is popular with a large body of the population - mainly the rural poor in the East and North of the country, which is perhaps weird given that her brother and the former Prime Minister, Thaksin (now in exile to avoid being jailed for corruption), is/was Thailand's richest man.
That her party won a landslide election victory last time round, though, is unquestioned - even with the accusations of vote-buying that invariably occur during Thai elections.
When we left Bangkok on Wednesday a lot of fears were being uttered about today's anti-government demonstration turning violent - fears that seem to have been confirmed:
http://news.yahoo.com/thai-police-fire-tear-gas-clash-hundreds-protesters-052421950.html
Not sure how accurate or neutral that report is, incidentally. The main opposition party, the Democrats, are supposed to have disapproved of the event. One other point - Thaksin is also alleged to have been publicly critical of the Thai royal family, which is actually an offence under Thai law (lèse-majesté)! This will explain the "royalist" references in the above piece.
On Thai television every day at 0800 and 1800 you get the Thai national anthem played along with a film showing the country's positive aspects (including Muslims from the South, as well the majority Buddhists, among the people shown), indicating its royal allegiance, and giving an indication of its military power - principally a warning to some neighbours like poverty-stricken Cambodia and pirates in territorial waters (reasons for the Thai navy getting all the free plugs would take some explanation otherwise).
It will not surprise me if, before long, the military does its usual thing and displaces the democratically elected government. In the name of re-establishing order usw. If Yingluck, who is far more personable than her brother, goes, the question follows as to which member of the family will succeed her as the party head. Like Communist North Korea, though, it is becoming something of a family fiefdom politically - although democratically elected and with no nuclear aspirations, yet at least.
2. The Middle East - Pat Buchanan's take
I may not approve of some his views regarding domestic policy (but how far that is my business ....), but his grasp of international affairs remains as good as any American commentator. That he does not buy into the Israeli lobby's one-sided take of affairs makes him controversial in his own country, but his assessment (article dated November 23rd if you get something else) strikes me as pretty neutral and factual:
http://www.creators.com/conservative/pat-buchanan.html
Unfortunately the window for Middle East peace seems to have closed some time ago, and the whole area has a Doomsday feeling about it. I regard Syria as the next Somalia given the divisions within the country and there is no way that the current conflict will end any time soon. Notably the opposition is united in its hatred of Assad, but divided among itself otherwise (notably Al-Qaeda has a presence in, but does not dominate, the opposition - does the West really like that idea?). Mr Buchanan's comments about Jordan are informative (and depressing), and the Arab Spring turning into the Arab Autumn (see my previous articles on this) seems to be following its inevitable path.
An area divided among itself? Finding things wrong is easy, finding solutions that work is another matter. Islam though is definitely NOT the answer.
3. States seceding from the US - peacefully
One of the fun concepts stemming from the recent US elections is the "sore loser" noises emanating from mainly Republican supporters who, apparently, now wish to leave the USA entirely.
I am somewhat surprised by the response from many Democrats. If Texas seceded, the rest of the country would become virtually a lock-in for the Democratic Party for years. There is the question of the Democrat supporters in Texas. Maybe this is the time for a bit of polite "ethnic cleansing" - Californian Republicans (facing a Democrat supermajority in both houses in the State Legislature (?)) could move to Texas, Texas Democrats could move to California in their place, all property rights exchanged to everyone's satisfaction, everybody could be happy - maybe? No guns to the head, no obligations, no American version of the former Yugoslavia or Iraq of course.
Just an idea.
A house divided among itself and becoming ungovernable?
The Shinawatras are to say the least controversial. The current Prime Minister though, Yingluck Shinawatra, is popular with a large body of the population - mainly the rural poor in the East and North of the country, which is perhaps weird given that her brother and the former Prime Minister, Thaksin (now in exile to avoid being jailed for corruption), is/was Thailand's richest man.
That her party won a landslide election victory last time round, though, is unquestioned - even with the accusations of vote-buying that invariably occur during Thai elections.
When we left Bangkok on Wednesday a lot of fears were being uttered about today's anti-government demonstration turning violent - fears that seem to have been confirmed:
http://news.yahoo.com/thai-police-fire-tear-gas-clash-hundreds-protesters-052421950.html
Not sure how accurate or neutral that report is, incidentally. The main opposition party, the Democrats, are supposed to have disapproved of the event. One other point - Thaksin is also alleged to have been publicly critical of the Thai royal family, which is actually an offence under Thai law (lèse-majesté)! This will explain the "royalist" references in the above piece.
On Thai television every day at 0800 and 1800 you get the Thai national anthem played along with a film showing the country's positive aspects (including Muslims from the South, as well the majority Buddhists, among the people shown), indicating its royal allegiance, and giving an indication of its military power - principally a warning to some neighbours like poverty-stricken Cambodia and pirates in territorial waters (reasons for the Thai navy getting all the free plugs would take some explanation otherwise).
It will not surprise me if, before long, the military does its usual thing and displaces the democratically elected government. In the name of re-establishing order usw. If Yingluck, who is far more personable than her brother, goes, the question follows as to which member of the family will succeed her as the party head. Like Communist North Korea, though, it is becoming something of a family fiefdom politically - although democratically elected and with no nuclear aspirations, yet at least.
2. The Middle East - Pat Buchanan's take
I may not approve of some his views regarding domestic policy (but how far that is my business ....), but his grasp of international affairs remains as good as any American commentator. That he does not buy into the Israeli lobby's one-sided take of affairs makes him controversial in his own country, but his assessment (article dated November 23rd if you get something else) strikes me as pretty neutral and factual:
http://www.creators.com/conservative/pat-buchanan.html
Unfortunately the window for Middle East peace seems to have closed some time ago, and the whole area has a Doomsday feeling about it. I regard Syria as the next Somalia given the divisions within the country and there is no way that the current conflict will end any time soon. Notably the opposition is united in its hatred of Assad, but divided among itself otherwise (notably Al-Qaeda has a presence in, but does not dominate, the opposition - does the West really like that idea?). Mr Buchanan's comments about Jordan are informative (and depressing), and the Arab Spring turning into the Arab Autumn (see my previous articles on this) seems to be following its inevitable path.
An area divided among itself? Finding things wrong is easy, finding solutions that work is another matter. Islam though is definitely NOT the answer.
3. States seceding from the US - peacefully
One of the fun concepts stemming from the recent US elections is the "sore loser" noises emanating from mainly Republican supporters who, apparently, now wish to leave the USA entirely.
I am somewhat surprised by the response from many Democrats. If Texas seceded, the rest of the country would become virtually a lock-in for the Democratic Party for years. There is the question of the Democrat supporters in Texas. Maybe this is the time for a bit of polite "ethnic cleansing" - Californian Republicans (facing a Democrat supermajority in both houses in the State Legislature (?)) could move to Texas, Texas Democrats could move to California in their place, all property rights exchanged to everyone's satisfaction, everybody could be happy - maybe? No guns to the head, no obligations, no American version of the former Yugoslavia or Iraq of course.
Just an idea.
Thursday, 22 November 2012
Postscript and an apology to my American readers
Well if nowt else I am a lousy pundit.
After months of predicting that Romney would win the US Presidential election, I was proved wrong. Unlike a number of other pundits (Barone, Morris usw) who not merely expected a Romney win (well actually a landslide), but wanted to see one, I am happy (but not ecstatic) at the outcome. The US will continue to recover slowly, there will be growth in areas other than the work of bankruptcy lawyers, and who knows, Europe might get carried along with it.
I also noted that the Democrats received more votes overall in races for the House of Representatives and lost by a wide margin. This can happen in "First past the post" systems and similar. Blair handsomely won the UK election in 2005 with 35% of the vote, while the awful Margaret Thatcher permanently wrecked the economy of the North of England and did considerable harm to that of Scotland while never getting more than 43% of the vote. Which speaks volumes for democracy (cough, cough).
Both Obama and I were in Thailand this weekend. The difference is there were no cheering crowds for me. I actually spent 3 weeks being dragged round all my wife's relatives. More chore than holiday, and more an exercise in seeing how she can waste money. I set a personal record in not spending a cent from my own pocket in the entire period. That we both have to spend the next 11 months living a Spartan lifestyle to pay for it .... enuff said!
Sounds a bit like some political thinking that I have heard over the years. Tax breaks and party for a month, and 11 months paying off the bill (well actually keep partying and not paying off the bill thinking about it - just run up the debt, you may have grandchildren who might eventually cough up for it).
Still not sure, dear regular reader, that I will be writing any more incidentally. We will have to see!
After months of predicting that Romney would win the US Presidential election, I was proved wrong. Unlike a number of other pundits (Barone, Morris usw) who not merely expected a Romney win (well actually a landslide), but wanted to see one, I am happy (but not ecstatic) at the outcome. The US will continue to recover slowly, there will be growth in areas other than the work of bankruptcy lawyers, and who knows, Europe might get carried along with it.
I also noted that the Democrats received more votes overall in races for the House of Representatives and lost by a wide margin. This can happen in "First past the post" systems and similar. Blair handsomely won the UK election in 2005 with 35% of the vote, while the awful Margaret Thatcher permanently wrecked the economy of the North of England and did considerable harm to that of Scotland while never getting more than 43% of the vote. Which speaks volumes for democracy (cough, cough).
Both Obama and I were in Thailand this weekend. The difference is there were no cheering crowds for me. I actually spent 3 weeks being dragged round all my wife's relatives. More chore than holiday, and more an exercise in seeing how she can waste money. I set a personal record in not spending a cent from my own pocket in the entire period. That we both have to spend the next 11 months living a Spartan lifestyle to pay for it .... enuff said!
Sounds a bit like some political thinking that I have heard over the years. Tax breaks and party for a month, and 11 months paying off the bill (well actually keep partying and not paying off the bill thinking about it - just run up the debt, you may have grandchildren who might eventually cough up for it).
Still not sure, dear regular reader, that I will be writing any more incidentally. We will have to see!
Monday, 29 October 2012
So maybe goodbye
or "farewell" or "Auf Wiedersehen" or "Tschüss" or "au revoir" or "ciao" or "tot ziens" or "sawasdee krap" or "hejdå" or "farvel " ....
Addressed principally to my small group of regular readers, although everyone is, as ever, welcome.
There are 365 items to date (before this article) on this blog. It would be possible for a reader to select one item per day to study each day of the year. As in a leap year you will need an extra item for February 29th, you create one more article (hence this) and let the reader decide what to read that day. Every four years, like a German election cycle or an American Presidential cycle.
I started writing this blog in 2010. My concern then as now was to get beyond the clutter of individual instances (the "tabloid" approach), and get to the grist of the issues (like the "quality" press). Facts. Analysis, long-term picture. Escape the situation where you cannot see the wood for the trees.
I have not always succeeded - I too get stuck in the here and now rather than looking to the future. Some of the best stuff IMHO I wrote when I first started out - only I seem to read that now, so .....
At times you are deadly serious, at times you are funny, at times you are cynical, at times you are downright pessimistic, at times despite all the events pointing to the contrary, you can see a light shining at the end of the tunnel. You need the latter - once that goes out .....
The impersonal mixes with the personal. The individual voice is suddenly part of the crowd. And suddenly everything fades to shadow and you are alone again, the voice of wisdom in a world dominated by stupidity, the selfless voice among the selfish cat-calls.
You mix history, politics, economics, various languages, various branches of science, geography, maths, music, the arts in general. All the learning required to understand the reality of what is happening out there. You blend, you mix, but you stay rational. Silencing your emotions is not always easy, but emotional shouting matches are never really won, remember that! Bitterness always remains for the loser.
So where are we?
See most polls out there where people can decide for themselves (exclude chronic dictatorships where voicing your opinion is not allowed), and you will hear that the world is headed in the wrong direction. So then we have an election and vote into power a load of people who do not understand this.
And the repeat errors are there and obvious for the trained observer. The Asian crash (principally Thailand) of 1997, the crash in the Western world in 2008 (principally the US, but Europe is still paying heavily for it), Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand in 2001, Mitt Romney (George W. Bush Mark II!) in the US (almost certainly) in 2012.
Do we ever learn? Do we want to? But if you do not learn the lesson, you do not pass the exam.
After our Pyrrhic victory over the bureaucracy and the corporatocracy (74 Euro extra that we could not afford), the passport is sorted out, and as of Wednesday at 1410 I shall be with my wife on a plane to Bangkok. Three weeks holiday and family visit for her, three weeks reading and counting the days for me. Once in a while, when visiting the university where her sister teaches for example, I might get to open my mouth. Maybe I will finally get round to learning Thai. Someone who can manage French, German and Dutch should be able to manage that. But Thai is a tonal language, and my singing voice is not amazing!
No laptop - I have been told to leave that at home. No translation work - as not only my wife has said "no" to that, perhaps more disturbingly my doctor has also told me to take a break (German word "Pause").
In 2013 I need to find something else to do, a surer form of income. Some chance of that! Or rather no chance of that!!!!
And as of today I am putting this blog to sleep. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe forever. Its words will be still out there, its comments are worthy of study in many instances. Hopefully some people will have learned something, maybe I will have informed and entertained the world and will in my absence continue to do so.
Like Cincinnatus though the time has come to withdraw myself and my opinions to the shadows and anonymity of the real world.
So farewell, thanks for visiting and viel Glück!
Addressed principally to my small group of regular readers, although everyone is, as ever, welcome.
There are 365 items to date (before this article) on this blog. It would be possible for a reader to select one item per day to study each day of the year. As in a leap year you will need an extra item for February 29th, you create one more article (hence this) and let the reader decide what to read that day. Every four years, like a German election cycle or an American Presidential cycle.
I started writing this blog in 2010. My concern then as now was to get beyond the clutter of individual instances (the "tabloid" approach), and get to the grist of the issues (like the "quality" press). Facts. Analysis, long-term picture. Escape the situation where you cannot see the wood for the trees.
I have not always succeeded - I too get stuck in the here and now rather than looking to the future. Some of the best stuff IMHO I wrote when I first started out - only I seem to read that now, so .....
At times you are deadly serious, at times you are funny, at times you are cynical, at times you are downright pessimistic, at times despite all the events pointing to the contrary, you can see a light shining at the end of the tunnel. You need the latter - once that goes out .....
The impersonal mixes with the personal. The individual voice is suddenly part of the crowd. And suddenly everything fades to shadow and you are alone again, the voice of wisdom in a world dominated by stupidity, the selfless voice among the selfish cat-calls.
You mix history, politics, economics, various languages, various branches of science, geography, maths, music, the arts in general. All the learning required to understand the reality of what is happening out there. You blend, you mix, but you stay rational. Silencing your emotions is not always easy, but emotional shouting matches are never really won, remember that! Bitterness always remains for the loser.
So where are we?
See most polls out there where people can decide for themselves (exclude chronic dictatorships where voicing your opinion is not allowed), and you will hear that the world is headed in the wrong direction. So then we have an election and vote into power a load of people who do not understand this.
And the repeat errors are there and obvious for the trained observer. The Asian crash (principally Thailand) of 1997, the crash in the Western world in 2008 (principally the US, but Europe is still paying heavily for it), Thaksin Shinawatra in Thailand in 2001, Mitt Romney (George W. Bush Mark II!) in the US (almost certainly) in 2012.
Do we ever learn? Do we want to? But if you do not learn the lesson, you do not pass the exam.
After our Pyrrhic victory over the bureaucracy and the corporatocracy (74 Euro extra that we could not afford), the passport is sorted out, and as of Wednesday at 1410 I shall be with my wife on a plane to Bangkok. Three weeks holiday and family visit for her, three weeks reading and counting the days for me. Once in a while, when visiting the university where her sister teaches for example, I might get to open my mouth. Maybe I will finally get round to learning Thai. Someone who can manage French, German and Dutch should be able to manage that. But Thai is a tonal language, and my singing voice is not amazing!
No laptop - I have been told to leave that at home. No translation work - as not only my wife has said "no" to that, perhaps more disturbingly my doctor has also told me to take a break (German word "Pause").
In 2013 I need to find something else to do, a surer form of income. Some chance of that! Or rather no chance of that!!!!
And as of today I am putting this blog to sleep. Maybe for a few weeks, maybe forever. Its words will be still out there, its comments are worthy of study in many instances. Hopefully some people will have learned something, maybe I will have informed and entertained the world and will in my absence continue to do so.
Like Cincinnatus though the time has come to withdraw myself and my opinions to the shadows and anonymity of the real world.
So farewell, thanks for visiting and viel Glück!
Sunday, 28 October 2012
How far have we come? Looking at the Black Death
I was musing on a sentence last night, as writers are prone to do.
And yes, it was political.
It ran summat upon the lines that "Thatcherism was the worst thing to strike the world since the Black Death". I like to be reasonable and reasoned, and that statement is obviously unreasonable and illogical - for one thing, as gruesome and as awful as it was, Thatcherism was not as bad as Nazism or Stalinism, or wharrever Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet practised - in the 20th century alone.
Behave, don't exaggerate. Think!!!! And move on.
Anyway this morning, the clocks went back. It is the time for moving backwards apparently - taking American foreign policy back to the 1980s, social policy back to the 1950s and economic policy back to the 1920s (as was accurately quoted in a propaganda piece last week - advice that will be ignored by the majority of the American voting public when picking Romney as President next week, but as a foreigner I am not allowed to criticise (cough, splutter)). The UK is meanwhile trying to recall the good old days of the massive deflation of the Thatcher years. I wonder why the German government isn't trying to recreate the boom years of the 1950s and 60s, but that would sound too much like good news. Merkel, unfortunately, tends to look to Kohl rather than to Adenauer.
Time to check out the Black Death.
In its years of devastation in the 14th Century, it wiped out substantial chunks of the population of China, Western Asia, North Africa and Europe (in Europe Poland was spared, the rest of the continent lost 30% of its population, and for the Euro(xeno)phobes, particularly supporters of the EXP (UKIP if you insist), in the UK, the same happened to the UK as in the rest of Europe, as ever!).
That it started in China and spread is almost certain. The cause though is even now subject to controversy. The widely established reasoning created in the 19th century, that it was spread by fleas on the back of black rats in trading ships (hence its widespread impact) is now disputed. Quite what caused it is still then not 100% clear. Its impact though was devastating. What we now accept as sanitation of course did not exist, filth was everywhere, and under such conditions its spread could be very quick and very nasty.
The question as to why its spread suddenly halted, why the disease burned itself out, is also unanswered. It was to reappear in several local instances over the next 500 years though it never repeated its trans-continental spread thankfully.
The political and religious impact of the plague though is both interesting and sadly typical.
Wikipedia has an interesting paragraph called "Persecutions" which I quote chapter and verse without permission with intervening notes by myself in italics:
"Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death.
Yes, when you cannot see a rational solution to problems, turn to the irrational. It won't solve anything but you might feel better!
Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers and Roma, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis.
In fact blame anyone or anything that suits your prejudice. It reminds me of the 2008 crash (if you are a US Republican party supporter ignore this bit, as apparently the events of 2008 IYHO did not actually happen!) when the bankers, international gamblers on Stock Exchanges round the world usw who caused the crash got their money back, while people doing their normal jobs and working as hard as ever (and were in no way responsible for the crash) lost their jobs, maybe their homes and were often placed into huge amounts of debt that they could not afford. Those at the bottom of the heap, who had least to do with it, took most of the flak. Blame the victims not the perpetrators, a common line of economic thinking. The answer of course is to put the lunatics back in charge of the asylum!
Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.
Drastic, but obvious and easy targets. We wanted rid of them anyway, it solved nothing, but did we feel better for doing so!!!
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.
See my first note (Saturn must have been in the 12th House and other nonsense) and my comment on Jews below.
The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread.
Typical government incompetence (right, left, centre, you name it) - times do not change!
The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God's anger could produce such horrific displays.
Well in Europe at least we have learned some lessons in this respect. Some of the comments from some US politicians who are about to be elected to the US Senate though, persuade me that not everyone there has got the message.
There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities were destroyed.
Not just Hitler, was it? This is a ridiculously prejudiced line of thinking going back generations. The lesson - don't be a foreigner or a member of another religious belief, it isn't good for your well-being. And do not believe that this type of thinking still does not exist (to the same or a lesser extent) in different parts of the world with different beliefs or lack of them! Try becoming an atheist in Saudi Arabia.
The Brotherhood of the Flagellants a movement said to number up to 800,000, reached its peak of popularity".
Intriguing how silly human beings can be at times in trying to resolve issues that they do not understand.
Ask yourself what would happen if something like the Black Death re-emerged tomorrow and started spreading round the world. Do you believe we would react rationally, sensibly and with speed, or would the prejudices above take over? And I ask myself why I tend to believe the latter rather than the former, despite the fact that eventually it would not be in our best interests and would resolve nowt .....
And yes, it was political.
It ran summat upon the lines that "Thatcherism was the worst thing to strike the world since the Black Death". I like to be reasonable and reasoned, and that statement is obviously unreasonable and illogical - for one thing, as gruesome and as awful as it was, Thatcherism was not as bad as Nazism or Stalinism, or wharrever Pol Pot and Augusto Pinochet practised - in the 20th century alone.
Behave, don't exaggerate. Think!!!! And move on.
Anyway this morning, the clocks went back. It is the time for moving backwards apparently - taking American foreign policy back to the 1980s, social policy back to the 1950s and economic policy back to the 1920s (as was accurately quoted in a propaganda piece last week - advice that will be ignored by the majority of the American voting public when picking Romney as President next week, but as a foreigner I am not allowed to criticise (cough, splutter)). The UK is meanwhile trying to recall the good old days of the massive deflation of the Thatcher years. I wonder why the German government isn't trying to recreate the boom years of the 1950s and 60s, but that would sound too much like good news. Merkel, unfortunately, tends to look to Kohl rather than to Adenauer.
Time to check out the Black Death.
In its years of devastation in the 14th Century, it wiped out substantial chunks of the population of China, Western Asia, North Africa and Europe (in Europe Poland was spared, the rest of the continent lost 30% of its population, and for the Euro(xeno)phobes, particularly supporters of the EXP (UKIP if you insist), in the UK, the same happened to the UK as in the rest of Europe, as ever!).
That it started in China and spread is almost certain. The cause though is even now subject to controversy. The widely established reasoning created in the 19th century, that it was spread by fleas on the back of black rats in trading ships (hence its widespread impact) is now disputed. Quite what caused it is still then not 100% clear. Its impact though was devastating. What we now accept as sanitation of course did not exist, filth was everywhere, and under such conditions its spread could be very quick and very nasty.
The question as to why its spread suddenly halted, why the disease burned itself out, is also unanswered. It was to reappear in several local instances over the next 500 years though it never repeated its trans-continental spread thankfully.
The political and religious impact of the plague though is both interesting and sadly typical.
Wikipedia has an interesting paragraph called "Persecutions" which I quote chapter and verse without permission with intervening notes by myself in italics:
"Renewed religious fervour and fanaticism bloomed in the wake of the Black Death.
Yes, when you cannot see a rational solution to problems, turn to the irrational. It won't solve anything but you might feel better!
Some Europeans targeted "various groups such as Jews, friars, foreigners, beggars, pilgrims, lepers and Roma, thinking that they were to blame for the crisis.
In fact blame anyone or anything that suits your prejudice. It reminds me of the 2008 crash (if you are a US Republican party supporter ignore this bit, as apparently the events of 2008 IYHO did not actually happen!) when the bankers, international gamblers on Stock Exchanges round the world usw who caused the crash got their money back, while people doing their normal jobs and working as hard as ever (and were in no way responsible for the crash) lost their jobs, maybe their homes and were often placed into huge amounts of debt that they could not afford. Those at the bottom of the heap, who had least to do with it, took most of the flak. Blame the victims not the perpetrators, a common line of economic thinking. The answer of course is to put the lunatics back in charge of the asylum!
Lepers, and other individuals with skin diseases such as acne or psoriasis, were singled out and exterminated throughout Europe.
Drastic, but obvious and easy targets. We wanted rid of them anyway, it solved nothing, but did we feel better for doing so!!!
Because 14th-century healers were at a loss to explain the cause, Europeans turned to astrological forces, earthquakes and the poisoning of wells by Jews as possible reasons for the plague's emergence.
See my first note (Saturn must have been in the 12th House and other nonsense) and my comment on Jews below.
The governments of Europe had no apparent response to the crisis because no one knew its cause or how it spread.
Typical government incompetence (right, left, centre, you name it) - times do not change!
The mechanism of infection and transmission of diseases was little understood in the 14th century; many people believed only God's anger could produce such horrific displays.
Well in Europe at least we have learned some lessons in this respect. Some of the comments from some US politicians who are about to be elected to the US Senate though, persuade me that not everyone there has got the message.
There were many attacks against Jewish communities. In August 1349, the Jewish communities of Mainz and Cologne were exterminated. In February of that same year, the citizens of Strasbourg murdered 2,000 Jews. By 1351, 60 major and 150 smaller Jewish communities were destroyed.
Not just Hitler, was it? This is a ridiculously prejudiced line of thinking going back generations. The lesson - don't be a foreigner or a member of another religious belief, it isn't good for your well-being. And do not believe that this type of thinking still does not exist (to the same or a lesser extent) in different parts of the world with different beliefs or lack of them! Try becoming an atheist in Saudi Arabia.
The Brotherhood of the Flagellants a movement said to number up to 800,000, reached its peak of popularity".
Intriguing how silly human beings can be at times in trying to resolve issues that they do not understand.
Ask yourself what would happen if something like the Black Death re-emerged tomorrow and started spreading round the world. Do you believe we would react rationally, sensibly and with speed, or would the prejudices above take over? And I ask myself why I tend to believe the latter rather than the former, despite the fact that eventually it would not be in our best interests and would resolve nowt .....
Postscript (December 28th, 2021).
1. OK, OK, my pessimism about Romney being re-elected proved unfounded.
2. Now we are in the era of rampaging Covid-19, which also originated in China (!!!!) check out some of the claims out there from the lunatic fringe about its origins. Fortunately rationality is winning the argument on how to fight it. No auto-da-fes yet thankfully.
Saturday, 27 October 2012
If you were earning millions you would think differently
Actually in Germany that is not so easy a sum to achieve. I quote from an online magazine called Industry Week:
"Last year's biggest single earner was Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn, who earned a record 16.6 million Euro".
Let us settle for a paltry 6 million, which is equal to half-a-million a month. If what I have read is correct, the top tax rate is 45%. There may of course be other stoppages (retirement funds, health insurance usw).
Anyway for argument's sake let's say that I had to pay out stoppages of 80%. That would mean that I would have a miserable 100,000 Euro per month to live off.
Would I start screaming and shouting about all the deductions that I was obliged to pay out?
A clear and resounding NO!!!!
If you cannot live on 100,000 Euro a month, there is something seriously wrong with your approach to life and how you live and think - IMHO! Remember too that your health costs have already been covered.
The biggest outlay after that would be accommodation. We have at the moment a 74 square metre apartment. 2 bedrooms (one of which has become my wife's all-purpose utility room), a bathroom (which could do to be a bit larger), a kitchen (ditto), a spacious lounge. And really that is all we need. So an alternative on those lines in a more pleasant area maybe - but it wouldn't cost that much more (maybe 1,000 Euro a month rental altogether). More rooms that we would never use? Why?
The heating system where we now live is typical of an old house - we could do with a more modern, more environmentally friendly heating system, but over a period of time you would get your money back.
A few other things might be useful, the odd bit of furniture, both the PC and the laptop need replacing. And then there is the fact that my wife would like a car (although given the environmentally friendly and very convenient nature of public transport here, I do not see why). Some travel to interesting places (principally by train, I have grown to hate going anywhere near international airports with all the hassle involved).
Presto.
Not even one month's spending (see above) as far as I can see.
Then you can help charities and support other worthwhile causes quite happily.
But once you have everything that you need, why would you need more - just for the sake of having it?
The whole concept strikes me as being amazingly silly. Excess for its own sake, for me, equals waste!
And the money that they have taken off you? Well, you never had it in the first place, and there are a lot of things out there that need doing, which we often take for granted. Ever wondered about the maintenance of the sewage system for example? Necessary work and it needs someone to look after it. And I feel no need to concern myself directly with anything like that. Let them get on with it.
About the only thing that does concern me about government spending (national or local) would be if it were spent upon nuclear weapons, the need for which seems to me extremely dubious. But in Germany that does not apply (no nukes here), so no need to worry.
As long as there are excellent police and prison services (so that the ne'er-do-wells are rounded up and kept out of the way of the law-abiding public), the health service provision meets all our requirements, excellent public transportation is available, the future generations have all the educational possibilities that they require (including a well-rewarded team of excellent teachers), possibilities are made available to get people back to work and have the self-respect that proper employment brings, and the elderly can live out their lives comfortably and without too much discomfort - then fine, the money will find itself being put to good use! No complaints from me.
"Last year's biggest single earner was Volkswagen chief Martin Winterkorn, who earned a record 16.6 million Euro".
Let us settle for a paltry 6 million, which is equal to half-a-million a month. If what I have read is correct, the top tax rate is 45%. There may of course be other stoppages (retirement funds, health insurance usw).
Anyway for argument's sake let's say that I had to pay out stoppages of 80%. That would mean that I would have a miserable 100,000 Euro per month to live off.
Would I start screaming and shouting about all the deductions that I was obliged to pay out?
A clear and resounding NO!!!!
If you cannot live on 100,000 Euro a month, there is something seriously wrong with your approach to life and how you live and think - IMHO! Remember too that your health costs have already been covered.
The biggest outlay after that would be accommodation. We have at the moment a 74 square metre apartment. 2 bedrooms (one of which has become my wife's all-purpose utility room), a bathroom (which could do to be a bit larger), a kitchen (ditto), a spacious lounge. And really that is all we need. So an alternative on those lines in a more pleasant area maybe - but it wouldn't cost that much more (maybe 1,000 Euro a month rental altogether). More rooms that we would never use? Why?
The heating system where we now live is typical of an old house - we could do with a more modern, more environmentally friendly heating system, but over a period of time you would get your money back.
A few other things might be useful, the odd bit of furniture, both the PC and the laptop need replacing. And then there is the fact that my wife would like a car (although given the environmentally friendly and very convenient nature of public transport here, I do not see why). Some travel to interesting places (principally by train, I have grown to hate going anywhere near international airports with all the hassle involved).
Presto.
Not even one month's spending (see above) as far as I can see.
Then you can help charities and support other worthwhile causes quite happily.
But once you have everything that you need, why would you need more - just for the sake of having it?
The whole concept strikes me as being amazingly silly. Excess for its own sake, for me, equals waste!
And the money that they have taken off you? Well, you never had it in the first place, and there are a lot of things out there that need doing, which we often take for granted. Ever wondered about the maintenance of the sewage system for example? Necessary work and it needs someone to look after it. And I feel no need to concern myself directly with anything like that. Let them get on with it.
About the only thing that does concern me about government spending (national or local) would be if it were spent upon nuclear weapons, the need for which seems to me extremely dubious. But in Germany that does not apply (no nukes here), so no need to worry.
As long as there are excellent police and prison services (so that the ne'er-do-wells are rounded up and kept out of the way of the law-abiding public), the health service provision meets all our requirements, excellent public transportation is available, the future generations have all the educational possibilities that they require (including a well-rewarded team of excellent teachers), possibilities are made available to get people back to work and have the self-respect that proper employment brings, and the elderly can live out their lives comfortably and without too much discomfort - then fine, the money will find itself being put to good use! No complaints from me.
Friday, 26 October 2012
Controlling deities, or the forces of fate, at work
If you check out some ancient Greek dramas some time, you will quickly gain the sense that fate is at work, and everything in life is inevitable.
So when Oedipus's father learned his offspring would kill his father and marry his mother, he took the actions necessary to make sure the son would not stay anywhere in the vicinity and was sent away.
Fate being fate, the son eventually returned, killed his father and married his mother - not knowing in either case that they were his real parents.
Fate? Believers in astrology may still believe in it, at least to a point. Where religious believers are concerned, some 2500 years on from the Oedipus myth, you would surely not expect a commitment to fate though, would you? Christians in the main push this "free will" stuff as an excuse for the evil in the world. God doesn't want it usw.
OK, try the comment from Republican candidate for the US Senate, Richard Mourdock. To quote from the Guardian online today, Mourdock apparently claims that "pregnancies from rape are "something that God intended to happen"".
Which sounds like God is responsible for every single act of conception on the planet. There is in fact no human responsibility at all, it is all God's will - except of course when we stray from the path, then it is free will - or am I getting confused?
Carry this logic one stage further it almost sounds like that God sent the rapist to impregnate the woman.
OK I am an atheist, but a socially responsible one (as most atheists are incidentally). But I have known Christians (including both my parents) who would have considered this whole line of thinking absurd. In their view humans are getting on acting according to their own free will, and God is sitting up in Heaven with his ledger, ticking and crossing every action taken in line with the moral rules that he established.
No decisions upon who should be conceived and how. If he is involved in the decision, the consideration of right and wrong where the rapist's actions are concerned fly out of the window. God decided that he should impregnate the woman, that way the child would be conceived, and thus THE RAPIST IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS. He was driven to carry out the action by a force beyond his control.
Even by Christian guidelines, as most of us know them, this surely must be mistaken. And the person pushing the agenda is either extraordinarily confused where his own logic is concerned, or believes that fate is an actual force that controls our actions.
This may have been fine where the ancient Greeks were concerned, but surely in the societies in which we live across the Western world, it doesn't really make any sense any more. Or does it?
And if it does please let me know - intelligent answers, well explained and elucidated, please. Not dogma or the usual "believe it or else" nonsense!
So when Oedipus's father learned his offspring would kill his father and marry his mother, he took the actions necessary to make sure the son would not stay anywhere in the vicinity and was sent away.
Fate being fate, the son eventually returned, killed his father and married his mother - not knowing in either case that they were his real parents.
Fate? Believers in astrology may still believe in it, at least to a point. Where religious believers are concerned, some 2500 years on from the Oedipus myth, you would surely not expect a commitment to fate though, would you? Christians in the main push this "free will" stuff as an excuse for the evil in the world. God doesn't want it usw.
OK, try the comment from Republican candidate for the US Senate, Richard Mourdock. To quote from the Guardian online today, Mourdock apparently claims that "pregnancies from rape are "something that God intended to happen"".
Which sounds like God is responsible for every single act of conception on the planet. There is in fact no human responsibility at all, it is all God's will - except of course when we stray from the path, then it is free will - or am I getting confused?
Carry this logic one stage further it almost sounds like that God sent the rapist to impregnate the woman.
OK I am an atheist, but a socially responsible one (as most atheists are incidentally). But I have known Christians (including both my parents) who would have considered this whole line of thinking absurd. In their view humans are getting on acting according to their own free will, and God is sitting up in Heaven with his ledger, ticking and crossing every action taken in line with the moral rules that he established.
No decisions upon who should be conceived and how. If he is involved in the decision, the consideration of right and wrong where the rapist's actions are concerned fly out of the window. God decided that he should impregnate the woman, that way the child would be conceived, and thus THE RAPIST IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS ACTIONS. He was driven to carry out the action by a force beyond his control.
Even by Christian guidelines, as most of us know them, this surely must be mistaken. And the person pushing the agenda is either extraordinarily confused where his own logic is concerned, or believes that fate is an actual force that controls our actions.
This may have been fine where the ancient Greeks were concerned, but surely in the societies in which we live across the Western world, it doesn't really make any sense any more. Or does it?
And if it does please let me know - intelligent answers, well explained and elucidated, please. Not dogma or the usual "believe it or else" nonsense!
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Taking responsibility - professionally and personally
I would first of all point you in the direction of an item that I wrote way back when I was starting out on this blog. The item was called "Personal Responsibility" and is dated November 2nd, 2010.
Two years down the road my views have not changed much. We should take responsibility for our lives and our decisions. At the same time though that requires an economic circumstance where that is possible, not one where there are far more applicants than jobs, more cheap labour than adequately paying employment, and not one where people are written off as "too young" or more significantly "too old"!
Realise also that not everyone is a born salesman, not everyone likes running their own business (many do not), and gambling is something many of us would choose to avoid - except for buying the occasional not-too-expensive lottery ticket.
Which means that the alternatives to being employed are limited.
Which means we have to create more decent paying jobs for people who are keen to work hard, and jobs appropriate to their skills.
I am somewhat strange in my outlook on life in that I happen to think that professional responsibility is as important as personal responsibility. Which means if you are doing an important job, and not doing it well, then you should admit to the fact.
In this world though would you do that? Given the rarity of jobs out there, would you throw something in because of your inability to deliver?
In 1979 I did just that. If I ever had been a good teacher, I did not think that I was any more. The stress had eaten away at me, my ability to deliver the goods had seemingly disappeared, and given my responsibility to both the kids and their parents I recognised that it was time to leave.
One of the down sides to this is that the personal responsibility side (the need to maintain yourself without help as far as is possible) suffers while facing up to the demands of professional responsibility.
Yet how many people are there out there in important, or not so important jobs, who would recognise that they could not deliver the goods professionally any more (if ever) and should find summat else?
And for people in that situation who are married with children? What should they do?
We might want to believe that the private or public concern employing the individual in question would deal with the situation as kindly or as harshly as they saw fit.
But this does not always happen. When I left teaching I could quote a number of colleagues who were obviously less effective than I was. In over 20 years in IT I saw a good number of people who did not have the necessary talent to work in the industry. And some of the managers that I have seen, especially in the UK! How they ever got appointed in the first place??!!
But if the choice is staying, as bad as you are, or condemning yourself to a situation where there is no way that you can make ends meet! There is not much of a choice, is there?
Two years down the road my views have not changed much. We should take responsibility for our lives and our decisions. At the same time though that requires an economic circumstance where that is possible, not one where there are far more applicants than jobs, more cheap labour than adequately paying employment, and not one where people are written off as "too young" or more significantly "too old"!
Realise also that not everyone is a born salesman, not everyone likes running their own business (many do not), and gambling is something many of us would choose to avoid - except for buying the occasional not-too-expensive lottery ticket.
Which means that the alternatives to being employed are limited.
Which means we have to create more decent paying jobs for people who are keen to work hard, and jobs appropriate to their skills.
I am somewhat strange in my outlook on life in that I happen to think that professional responsibility is as important as personal responsibility. Which means if you are doing an important job, and not doing it well, then you should admit to the fact.
In this world though would you do that? Given the rarity of jobs out there, would you throw something in because of your inability to deliver?
In 1979 I did just that. If I ever had been a good teacher, I did not think that I was any more. The stress had eaten away at me, my ability to deliver the goods had seemingly disappeared, and given my responsibility to both the kids and their parents I recognised that it was time to leave.
One of the down sides to this is that the personal responsibility side (the need to maintain yourself without help as far as is possible) suffers while facing up to the demands of professional responsibility.
Yet how many people are there out there in important, or not so important jobs, who would recognise that they could not deliver the goods professionally any more (if ever) and should find summat else?
And for people in that situation who are married with children? What should they do?
We might want to believe that the private or public concern employing the individual in question would deal with the situation as kindly or as harshly as they saw fit.
But this does not always happen. When I left teaching I could quote a number of colleagues who were obviously less effective than I was. In over 20 years in IT I saw a good number of people who did not have the necessary talent to work in the industry. And some of the managers that I have seen, especially in the UK! How they ever got appointed in the first place??!!
But if the choice is staying, as bad as you are, or condemning yourself to a situation where there is no way that you can make ends meet! There is not much of a choice, is there?
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
So is style all that matters?
To my American liberal friends, please skip the next paragraph. For other American readers, please take note.
OK, I am a foreigner, I am not American, it is not my business - at least until your next financial crash (see 2008 when a "made in America" financial crash brought most of the European banking system down with it (although that didn't reach Spain finally till this year)). Or until your next unnecessary war when we are supposed (in order to keep you happy) to send some of bravest young people to die or get maimed in a conflict which is otherwise of little strategic interest to us. If Israel and Iran want to have a go at each other, why is that our business? And frankly I think that the threat from Iran is overrated anyway. Unlike Israel they have no history of starting wars - at least not for the past 200 years.
Everyone back? Right.
I was reading odd things this morning about the 3rd of the Presidential debates, last night in Florida. Most neutral sources were informing me that in the post-debate polls, Obama had won and won clearly. And unlike in the second debate there was no question of the moderator being allegedly biased.
I went on to YouTube and picked out a snippet from the American network ABC (part of the "liberal biased" media, if I remember rightly, or at least I have been so informed) upon who came out ahead after the "match". According to their political commentator, the answer was Romney, because despite everything he "looked Presidential".
Really. No arguments in his favour, no issues where he impressed, no world-shattering pieces of knowledge emanated from him (in fact the fact that Russia is an enemy to be feared is a shock to most of us here in Europe, and we are far closer to the action where they are concerned).
No substance, only style. Even the debate that he allegedly won it was pretty much that. Apparently within 24 hours after the end of the first debate, he had retracted the best part of half of what he had said. Most of the message seems to be "look at me, trust me, and wait till after you have elected me before I tell you what I am going to do".
And 49% of potential American voters are happy to go along with that?
Well you don't like Obama, so Romney is bound to be better?
WRONG!
Obama may not be that good, Romney might be even worse, in fact very likely will be. You don't like unemployment at 8%, how does unemployment at 11% or 12% sound? You do not like a debt of 16 trillion Dollars, what does a debt of 19 trillion Dollars sound like (toss in Romney's tax cuts and massive increase in (unnecessary) defence spending, that is where the US national debt is heading with Romney in charge).
You haven't got a very good choice (Jill Stein and Gary Johnson would be a more interesting contest), but given the crisis that you survived in 2008 what should you expect? There is optimism, and at the same time there is living in denial, and unfortunately the latter is more the case here than the former!
I was sitting in the doctor's surgery this afternoon reading the relatively conservative German weekly magazine "Focus". In it two German economists (one "liberal", one "conservative") looked at the US economy and reached the same conclusion. For the US debt to be cut, spending has to be cut (including the bloated defence budget), and taxes (no specification where incidentally) have to be raised!
Arithmetic!
With Obama and Romney, you will get neither. The balance though is, from any neutral perspective, in Obama's favour. Most of Romney's "savings" are minimal and based upon a lot of wishful thinking. And despite the noises last night the chances are that Obama is less likely to get involved in a war with Iran, which will be enormously expensive.
It is not totally an American problem, this matter of style. I was also reading in "Focus", a comment on the SDP choice for Chancellor to run against Merkel next year. For me the best candidate (of the three available - Steinbrück and Steinmeier were the others) would have been Sigmar Gabriel - he seems to realise more what "ordinary people" are going through better than the other choices available. Somehow though he is considered "unelectable"! Being concerned about the issues obviously makes less impact than the suit that you are wearing and the platitudes that you are uttering.
Wherever you are!
OK, I am a foreigner, I am not American, it is not my business - at least until your next financial crash (see 2008 when a "made in America" financial crash brought most of the European banking system down with it (although that didn't reach Spain finally till this year)). Or until your next unnecessary war when we are supposed (in order to keep you happy) to send some of bravest young people to die or get maimed in a conflict which is otherwise of little strategic interest to us. If Israel and Iran want to have a go at each other, why is that our business? And frankly I think that the threat from Iran is overrated anyway. Unlike Israel they have no history of starting wars - at least not for the past 200 years.
Everyone back? Right.
I was reading odd things this morning about the 3rd of the Presidential debates, last night in Florida. Most neutral sources were informing me that in the post-debate polls, Obama had won and won clearly. And unlike in the second debate there was no question of the moderator being allegedly biased.
I went on to YouTube and picked out a snippet from the American network ABC (part of the "liberal biased" media, if I remember rightly, or at least I have been so informed) upon who came out ahead after the "match". According to their political commentator, the answer was Romney, because despite everything he "looked Presidential".
Really. No arguments in his favour, no issues where he impressed, no world-shattering pieces of knowledge emanated from him (in fact the fact that Russia is an enemy to be feared is a shock to most of us here in Europe, and we are far closer to the action where they are concerned).
No substance, only style. Even the debate that he allegedly won it was pretty much that. Apparently within 24 hours after the end of the first debate, he had retracted the best part of half of what he had said. Most of the message seems to be "look at me, trust me, and wait till after you have elected me before I tell you what I am going to do".
And 49% of potential American voters are happy to go along with that?
Well you don't like Obama, so Romney is bound to be better?
WRONG!
Obama may not be that good, Romney might be even worse, in fact very likely will be. You don't like unemployment at 8%, how does unemployment at 11% or 12% sound? You do not like a debt of 16 trillion Dollars, what does a debt of 19 trillion Dollars sound like (toss in Romney's tax cuts and massive increase in (unnecessary) defence spending, that is where the US national debt is heading with Romney in charge).
You haven't got a very good choice (Jill Stein and Gary Johnson would be a more interesting contest), but given the crisis that you survived in 2008 what should you expect? There is optimism, and at the same time there is living in denial, and unfortunately the latter is more the case here than the former!
I was sitting in the doctor's surgery this afternoon reading the relatively conservative German weekly magazine "Focus". In it two German economists (one "liberal", one "conservative") looked at the US economy and reached the same conclusion. For the US debt to be cut, spending has to be cut (including the bloated defence budget), and taxes (no specification where incidentally) have to be raised!
Arithmetic!
With Obama and Romney, you will get neither. The balance though is, from any neutral perspective, in Obama's favour. Most of Romney's "savings" are minimal and based upon a lot of wishful thinking. And despite the noises last night the chances are that Obama is less likely to get involved in a war with Iran, which will be enormously expensive.
It is not totally an American problem, this matter of style. I was also reading in "Focus", a comment on the SDP choice for Chancellor to run against Merkel next year. For me the best candidate (of the three available - Steinbrück and Steinmeier were the others) would have been Sigmar Gabriel - he seems to realise more what "ordinary people" are going through better than the other choices available. Somehow though he is considered "unelectable"! Being concerned about the issues obviously makes less impact than the suit that you are wearing and the platitudes that you are uttering.
Wherever you are!
Sunday, 21 October 2012
So should it matter?
There is no life after this.
There is no way that you will know what has happened anywhere, at any time, to anybody after you have died - all awareness goes when your brain stops working, and as interesting as it might be to know how people will cope when you have "gone", and how the world will turn out usw usw. You will not know. You will not be aware - everything will continue without you knowing.
Logically, rationally, that is the way it will be.
So why does it matter what happens if it does not affect you?
"Because I have a pronounced altruistic side" is my answer. What happens to my wife after I die is important. She is intelligent, she has a university degree, she has survived nearly eleven years of marriage to my intellect. There are not many positive ways forward for her, and I protect her a lot from the vicissitudes of this world, and I love her and it is important. And she is not a silly little bit of brainless fluff (thankfully) - though the same can be said of most women, actually!
"Yes, but all the politics?".
Because of the altruistic side. We need to have a better world, not for just me personally when alive. If things do not improve soon for the mass of humanity and all the other species on the planet, where are we headed? "We" here will not include me, I will not be aware of it, but there have to be better solutions, practical, working, significant. For all the species on the planet - I repeat.
"But it was never like that!". True. But you do not stop believing that it can be. Cynicism may be the order of the day. Saying one thing one day and taking a totally different position the following day might get you elected, but actions are what history judges. Lifting people up is more difficult than letting those that already have plenty help themselves to more. The modern day Ghengis Khans do not invade and pillage, they just open Swiss bank accounts. So it is not easy.
But it matters. Things have to get better, we have to address the issues, we have to resolve the problems, we have to learn to accept and be tolerant and not be too greedy. NIML (not in my lifetime)? No, it is too late (and as I nearly died in 2008, and death could happen any time). But believe me. It matters!
There is no way that you will know what has happened anywhere, at any time, to anybody after you have died - all awareness goes when your brain stops working, and as interesting as it might be to know how people will cope when you have "gone", and how the world will turn out usw usw. You will not know. You will not be aware - everything will continue without you knowing.
Logically, rationally, that is the way it will be.
So why does it matter what happens if it does not affect you?
"Because I have a pronounced altruistic side" is my answer. What happens to my wife after I die is important. She is intelligent, she has a university degree, she has survived nearly eleven years of marriage to my intellect. There are not many positive ways forward for her, and I protect her a lot from the vicissitudes of this world, and I love her and it is important. And she is not a silly little bit of brainless fluff (thankfully) - though the same can be said of most women, actually!
"Yes, but all the politics?".
Because of the altruistic side. We need to have a better world, not for just me personally when alive. If things do not improve soon for the mass of humanity and all the other species on the planet, where are we headed? "We" here will not include me, I will not be aware of it, but there have to be better solutions, practical, working, significant. For all the species on the planet - I repeat.
"But it was never like that!". True. But you do not stop believing that it can be. Cynicism may be the order of the day. Saying one thing one day and taking a totally different position the following day might get you elected, but actions are what history judges. Lifting people up is more difficult than letting those that already have plenty help themselves to more. The modern day Ghengis Khans do not invade and pillage, they just open Swiss bank accounts. So it is not easy.
But it matters. Things have to get better, we have to address the issues, we have to resolve the problems, we have to learn to accept and be tolerant and not be too greedy. NIML (not in my lifetime)? No, it is too late (and as I nearly died in 2008, and death could happen any time). But believe me. It matters!
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Businessmen running countries, or running a country like a business.
For those who think that this is a great idea, look at one very recent example -
try Italy and Silvio Berlusconi!
Now do you think that it is still a great idea?
try Italy and Silvio Berlusconi!
Now do you think that it is still a great idea?
Friday, 19 October 2012
Bring out the brioches
In my piece yesterday I brought up the French Revolution. Interesting subject that tried to change the way people thought - moving from a society dominated by the rich and powerful, attempting to raise up the people in the middle while placating the people at the bottom (sound familiar, anyone?).
I often think that Marie-Antoinette, the allegedly haughty arrogant Queen of France, who was much despised by the French public at large, got a bad press.
On hearing the plight of the starving peasants who had no bread to eat, tradition has it that she uttered the phrase "Let them eat cake".
The phrase actually pre-dates her marriage by four years (and was made by someone else entirely - she was 10 at the time), so whether she actually repeated the phrase is uncertain.
And the actual phrase was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"!.
Brioche is not actually cake. It is a type of bread. I quote from a recipe (!) on the site of the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) - "A slightly sweet, French yeast bread, rich with butter and eggs. The traditional shape has a fluted bottom and a topknot and is made in a special mould".
So bread of a better quality (which they could never have afforded), not actually cake!
Among other things to remember with Marie-Antoinette are firstly that she was actually Austrian (Princess Maria Antonia of the House of Habsburg), so whether she was quite as fluent in French (even if she obviously had learned the language) and could master its phraseology with the same wit and wisdom that she could manage with German is an open question. I personally can speak both French and German for example, but my sense of humour does not work so well in either as in English.
And she was married at the age of 14 (royalty used to pull this trick quite frequently in 17th and 18th century Europe - if they tried that now, think of the media response!), so she had to mature in a foreign country with all that involved.
You know the problems with immigrants!
Anyway looking down your noses (maybe that should read "their noses") at the lower classes is not an attitude restricted to the nobility in the past. It has passed down to all sorts of politicians round the world in the past fifty years whether it is Mitt Romney and his 47% (a quarter of whom will actually still vote for him!) or Margaret(-Antoinette) Thatcher in the UK who used to talk in grandiose terms of the "British people", while seemingly uninterested in the poor and the unwashed and the mass unemployed that she left behind in creating a country where the robber bankers could make fortunes, and the speculators could cheat to their heart's content.
Oh, and we don't like rules (some of these people might get found out for the crooks that they are, even though we have legalised a lot of dubious practices), and as the EU likes rules, we don't like the EU.
Wahnsinn!
I am surprised still that during the 1980s she didn't have agents wandering round the ridiculously de-industrialised high unemployment areas dishing out trays full of brioches!
In Germany they have not managed to produce many politicians who produce this sort of nonsense. They tend to be more careful what they say (whether they think along those lines, I would leave you to guess). They have raised the sum of money available to the poorest members of society (some 15-16% of the people living here apparently) in a programme called Hartz IV again next year, though the amount will hardly be adequate. The electricity companies have also announced their price rises for next year. The rise is way above the rate of inflation, and is frankly becoming a joke. Shop around for a cheaper supplier (privatised competition works?) - you won't find one.
Try living without electricity?
We have slashed our gas heating costs by turning the heating down to a minimum except upon the coldest days, but saving electricity? It is, from a practical point of view, far more difficult. And remember that this impacts commercial premises as well, so production costs are obliged to rise driving up everyone's cost of living further!
I will repeat what I have said before. Firstly we need to raise people's standard of living, at all levels maybe but particularly at the bottom (create aspirations, do not inflict criticism! And we need jobs that pay a living wage, not unemployment or cheap labour!). Secondly we need to make costs affordable - create a way that people can live within their means. Rapidly rising costs in areas over which people have no control are IMHO indicative of the failure of the so-called "market economy".
Continue down the road down which we are going and the results are going to be drastic. There probably will not be enough brioches to go round for starters!
I often think that Marie-Antoinette, the allegedly haughty arrogant Queen of France, who was much despised by the French public at large, got a bad press.
On hearing the plight of the starving peasants who had no bread to eat, tradition has it that she uttered the phrase "Let them eat cake".
The phrase actually pre-dates her marriage by four years (and was made by someone else entirely - she was 10 at the time), so whether she actually repeated the phrase is uncertain.
And the actual phrase was "Qu'ils mangent de la brioche"!.
Brioche is not actually cake. It is a type of bread. I quote from a recipe (!) on the site of the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk) - "A slightly sweet, French yeast bread, rich with butter and eggs. The traditional shape has a fluted bottom and a topknot and is made in a special mould".
So bread of a better quality (which they could never have afforded), not actually cake!
Among other things to remember with Marie-Antoinette are firstly that she was actually Austrian (Princess Maria Antonia of the House of Habsburg), so whether she was quite as fluent in French (even if she obviously had learned the language) and could master its phraseology with the same wit and wisdom that she could manage with German is an open question. I personally can speak both French and German for example, but my sense of humour does not work so well in either as in English.
And she was married at the age of 14 (royalty used to pull this trick quite frequently in 17th and 18th century Europe - if they tried that now, think of the media response!), so she had to mature in a foreign country with all that involved.
You know the problems with immigrants!
Anyway looking down your noses (maybe that should read "their noses") at the lower classes is not an attitude restricted to the nobility in the past. It has passed down to all sorts of politicians round the world in the past fifty years whether it is Mitt Romney and his 47% (a quarter of whom will actually still vote for him!) or Margaret(-Antoinette) Thatcher in the UK who used to talk in grandiose terms of the "British people", while seemingly uninterested in the poor and the unwashed and the mass unemployed that she left behind in creating a country where the robber bankers could make fortunes, and the speculators could cheat to their heart's content.
Oh, and we don't like rules (some of these people might get found out for the crooks that they are, even though we have legalised a lot of dubious practices), and as the EU likes rules, we don't like the EU.
Wahnsinn!
I am surprised still that during the 1980s she didn't have agents wandering round the ridiculously de-industrialised high unemployment areas dishing out trays full of brioches!
In Germany they have not managed to produce many politicians who produce this sort of nonsense. They tend to be more careful what they say (whether they think along those lines, I would leave you to guess). They have raised the sum of money available to the poorest members of society (some 15-16% of the people living here apparently) in a programme called Hartz IV again next year, though the amount will hardly be adequate. The electricity companies have also announced their price rises for next year. The rise is way above the rate of inflation, and is frankly becoming a joke. Shop around for a cheaper supplier (privatised competition works?) - you won't find one.
Try living without electricity?
We have slashed our gas heating costs by turning the heating down to a minimum except upon the coldest days, but saving electricity? It is, from a practical point of view, far more difficult. And remember that this impacts commercial premises as well, so production costs are obliged to rise driving up everyone's cost of living further!
I will repeat what I have said before. Firstly we need to raise people's standard of living, at all levels maybe but particularly at the bottom (create aspirations, do not inflict criticism! And we need jobs that pay a living wage, not unemployment or cheap labour!). Secondly we need to make costs affordable - create a way that people can live within their means. Rapidly rising costs in areas over which people have no control are IMHO indicative of the failure of the so-called "market economy".
Continue down the road down which we are going and the results are going to be drastic. There probably will not be enough brioches to go round for starters!
Thursday, 18 October 2012
Changing the date
To start with let me take you back into ancient history when I had just embarked upon my university studies, and dinosaurs walked the earth and there were pterodactyls flying overhead .... And I was reading French poetry as part of my studies.
From the French poet, Charles Baudelaire (to this day still my favourite poet), the first stanza of a poem called "Spleen":
Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,
De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux
Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière
Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.
Which is essentially a fascinating way of saying in French that it is January or maybe February and it is dark and cold and pouring with rain! Fortunate that it wasn't snow, but anyway!
"Pluviôse" ("Rainy") was one of the 12 months of the calendar established following the French Revolution. As the revolutionaries wanted rid of all symbols of the nobility and the church, they reinvented the calendar, starting with 1792 as the year I (Roman numeral), and having 12 months each of 30 days starting from approximately September 22nd, (with additional celebration days to bring the number up to 365 or 366). There were also 10 days in a week (3 weeks a month). Employers would love that - one weekend less off per month for their employees to waste! Pay people still for a 40-hour week, think of the costs that you will save.
Not enough time to explain the entire system, Wikipedia is, for once, good on this though, so try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
or in German
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz%C3%B6sischer_Revolutionskalender
All the month names have natural (as in "belonging to nature") leanings, so the month of my birth is the month of fruitfulness (how appropriate!) - Fructidor. According to this my wife and I no longer share the same month of birth, so she will not be too happy if we readopt this format.
As an atheist and linguist though it has often crossed my mind that we should look at revising date formats to take out the religious influences. Across the Western world it is 2012 AD (yes I realise that AD is not used in all Western countries). As a computer specialist (another of my hats), I realise the difficulty of changing millions of computer systems (from 2012 to CCXXI if we adopt the French revolutionary calendar for example), but for an atheist keeping the "D" in the "AD" makes no sense. We could resolve the problem quickly by simply changing AD to AAD (the second "A" standing for "allegati" - Latin Genitive form for "alleged"!). As for what you would place in front of the "C" in BC, or equivalent in other languages, please offer a suitably imaginative, yet accurate (and non-insulting) alternative!
As for the days of the week, I expect that some of you never realised that Norse mythology (in Northern European languages) or Roman mythology (in the Romance Languages of Southern Europe - French chosen in following text for convenience) were still around. Tuesday / mardi - named after Tiw or Mars, Wednesday / mercredi named after Wotan or Mercure, Thursday named after Thor or Jupiter, Friday named after Freya or Vénus, Saturday named after Saturn (interestingly Roman not Norse in English) or Saturne.
My German readers are laughingly pointing to Mittwoch ("Wotan's day or le jour de Mercure") as simply the middle of the week, no mythological influences - well for NOW at least. It has been around since the 10th century apparently. Time to stop laughing though, Jungs und Mädels - according to Wikipedia (source of all wisdom today!) - "Der Mittwoch galt im Volksglauben als Unglückstag"! Probably as there was no Norse God to pray to ....
Why would we stick with days celebrating Gods who have long since been discarded is an interesting question. It is probably an indication how much we are creatures of habit. Maybe it is time to think about changing them. The names of the French revolutionary days are nothing like as interesting as the months, so maybe we should organise a competition to come up with something appropriate.
Or maybe we need to starting asking Thor for help. Today (the day that I am writing this) would be as good as any!
Postscript - to my occasional readers in Thailand, I am fully aware that this year is actually 2555 and not 2012. To my very rare readers in Israel (probably supporters of Yosse Beilin and not the current government) I realise that it is 5773. And (tempting fate putting Muslim countries next to Israel, but I at least am open-minded! And I do not think that many people in that part of the world are that receptive to my opinions!), in the Muslim world it is apparently 1433.
From the French poet, Charles Baudelaire (to this day still my favourite poet), the first stanza of a poem called "Spleen":
Pluviôse, irrité contre la ville entière,
De son urne à grands flots verse un froid ténébreux
Aux pâles habitants du voisin cimetière
Et la mortalité sur les faubourgs brumeux.
Which is essentially a fascinating way of saying in French that it is January or maybe February and it is dark and cold and pouring with rain! Fortunate that it wasn't snow, but anyway!
"Pluviôse" ("Rainy") was one of the 12 months of the calendar established following the French Revolution. As the revolutionaries wanted rid of all symbols of the nobility and the church, they reinvented the calendar, starting with 1792 as the year I (Roman numeral), and having 12 months each of 30 days starting from approximately September 22nd, (with additional celebration days to bring the number up to 365 or 366). There were also 10 days in a week (3 weeks a month). Employers would love that - one weekend less off per month for their employees to waste! Pay people still for a 40-hour week, think of the costs that you will save.
Not enough time to explain the entire system, Wikipedia is, for once, good on this though, so try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar
or in German
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz%C3%B6sischer_Revolutionskalender
All the month names have natural (as in "belonging to nature") leanings, so the month of my birth is the month of fruitfulness (how appropriate!) - Fructidor. According to this my wife and I no longer share the same month of birth, so she will not be too happy if we readopt this format.
As an atheist and linguist though it has often crossed my mind that we should look at revising date formats to take out the religious influences. Across the Western world it is 2012 AD (yes I realise that AD is not used in all Western countries). As a computer specialist (another of my hats), I realise the difficulty of changing millions of computer systems (from 2012 to CCXXI if we adopt the French revolutionary calendar for example), but for an atheist keeping the "D" in the "AD" makes no sense. We could resolve the problem quickly by simply changing AD to AAD (the second "A" standing for "allegati" - Latin Genitive form for "alleged"!). As for what you would place in front of the "C" in BC, or equivalent in other languages, please offer a suitably imaginative, yet accurate (and non-insulting) alternative!
As for the days of the week, I expect that some of you never realised that Norse mythology (in Northern European languages) or Roman mythology (in the Romance Languages of Southern Europe - French chosen in following text for convenience) were still around. Tuesday / mardi - named after Tiw or Mars, Wednesday / mercredi named after Wotan or Mercure, Thursday named after Thor or Jupiter, Friday named after Freya or Vénus, Saturday named after Saturn (interestingly Roman not Norse in English) or Saturne.
My German readers are laughingly pointing to Mittwoch ("Wotan's day or le jour de Mercure") as simply the middle of the week, no mythological influences - well for NOW at least. It has been around since the 10th century apparently. Time to stop laughing though, Jungs und Mädels - according to Wikipedia (source of all wisdom today!) - "Der Mittwoch galt im Volksglauben als Unglückstag"! Probably as there was no Norse God to pray to ....
Why would we stick with days celebrating Gods who have long since been discarded is an interesting question. It is probably an indication how much we are creatures of habit. Maybe it is time to think about changing them. The names of the French revolutionary days are nothing like as interesting as the months, so maybe we should organise a competition to come up with something appropriate.
Or maybe we need to starting asking Thor for help. Today (the day that I am writing this) would be as good as any!
Postscript - to my occasional readers in Thailand, I am fully aware that this year is actually 2555 and not 2012. To my very rare readers in Israel (probably supporters of Yosse Beilin and not the current government) I realise that it is 5773. And (tempting fate putting Muslim countries next to Israel, but I at least am open-minded! And I do not think that many people in that part of the world are that receptive to my opinions!), in the Muslim world it is apparently 1433.
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
No need to get excited - it's only a game
I don't talk about football (North American = soccer) much, but today it is appropriate. Yes I am interested (originally from a working class family in the North of England, what would you expect? Rugby League if you want an alternative - not that the sport seems to exist in Germany). But there are more important matters on the face of this earth than sport. Eventually the world does not go into an economic slump if your team loses.
One of the more intriguing things about living in Germany is that the excitement ratio is low. Even when important matters like elections are on, the viciousness and name calling that you get in other countries tends to be more restrained ("restrained viciousness"? Intellectually possible actually. Saying something nasty in a moderate tone of voice using a clever phrase).
Whereas the quality press in the UK is dwarfed by the overwhelming daily nastiness of the tabloids, here there is one national tabloid (Bild) and a load of interestingly intelligent quality papers. There is plenty of lively gutter stuff on television if you want it, though (as my wife has discovered to her delight and to my consternation - usually I am left wondering whether it is real or fabricated).
The tone though, in most of the Western part of the country at least, is pretty restrained (that word again!). So when the major opposition party, the SDP, pick their candidate (Peer Steinbrück) to run against the Chancellor next year, they pick someone who is fiscally conservative, hardly emotionally challenged, and could easily sound like a member of the conservative CDU.
My own choice if I could vote would be Claudia Roth. If she won it would at some point lead to an interesting meeting - Green German Chancellor meets US President Mitt Romney, who used, for convenient political reasons, to believe that global warming exists, and now, for convenient political reasons, believes that it doesn't. Frau Roth would make him look stupid, but then that is not difficult! Why having clean air to breathe and a healthy environment to live in is such a bad idea, I do not understand. It would cost jobs? Since when has Bain Capital been concerned about jobs being cut, or if jobs are going to be created (according to their philosophy) let them be created in cheap-labour, highly polluted China!
Move on.
My wife is not that happy with her boss. Usually I offer her the platitudes that it cannot be that easy for him, all the stress and the schedules and the deadlines to meet usw. Yesterday though I could have throttled him.
She works a split system at the airport. This normally means 3 to 4 morning shifts, followed by 3 to 4 afternoon/evening shifts (always 7 or 8 days in total), then 3 to 4 days off. Yesterday, after 4 days on mornings, she was supposed to switch to afternoon/evenings. The day before, he informed her that his teams were out of balance (due to illness) and he needed her in the morning instead.
This should affect me? Alarm clocks going off for four consecutive days at your peak sleeping time (about 0320) do affect you, and when you are prone to insomnia, getting back to sleep is a problem. Yesterday afternoon I was walking round the park in Bockenheim feeling as ill as I have at any time since I came out of hospital in 2008, but this was probably the 5 days worth of interrupted sleep taking their toll.
As significant as this was though, more importantly I had planned to spend the evening watching the football (North American = soccer) international between Germany and Sweden. She hates football (given her background that is hardly surprising), and while I can normally hide myself in the bedroom while it is on, she has the habit of going to bed quite early (given the fact that she got up yesterday at 0320, going to be bed at 2130 was late enough for her).
Consequently I managed to watch the first half, during which the German side resembled the team that they were in the World Cup in 2010 when they drubbed England and Argentina. 3-0 at half-time, switch off, let her sleep. Went to bed early, but as chronic insomnia does not allow your mind to switch off, I lay there awake thinking of business contract translations and what was happening in the match in Berlin.
Finally at 2320. I rose to check www.kicker.de to find out the final result. 5-0, 6-0?
No. 4-4. A draw (North American = tie). How the Swedes who had looked so bad in the first half .... And at one point it had been 4-0. No particularly dramatic excited comments on the German news on ZDF this morning (though no doubt the sports page of Bild will be foaming at the proverbial mouth!), more a sense of shock. The defence unit suddenly fell apart.
Well as the goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, (often described here as the "best goalkeeper in the world" - personally I do not think that he is even the best goalkeeper in Germany, that honour, and his place in the national team, should go to Hamburg's Rene Adler), made one ghastly error and as for the rest .... If they were not used to playing together at international level, it could be understood, but as the goalkeeper, three of the back four, and the two defensive midfielders all play for the same club team (Bayern München), that explanation does not work (unless you blame Arsenal's Per Mertesacker, and I would hardly expect that he alone played badly).
Anyway congratulations to the Swedes for a gutsy performance.
And let us repeat till we are blue in the face that it is, eventually, only a game. Even if over-excitement often takes over at such events (one of the rare occasions in Germany - see the beginning of this piece!), even if the ugly spectre of football hooliganism is beginning to rear its head more frequently again here, even if huge amounts of money are involved (don't mention how much these guys get paid to my wife, she is liable to throw a tantrum!). It isn't war, it isn't the end of the world when your team does not win.
At the end of the day the wrong side winning a political election (e.g. Romney winning the US Presidential election, maybe Merkel winning here again in 2013, although Steinbrück will not be much of an improvement) is far more significant. Sports events do not impact people's lives directly. Sadly politics and economics do often affect them radically, and very often make them worse!
One of the more intriguing things about living in Germany is that the excitement ratio is low. Even when important matters like elections are on, the viciousness and name calling that you get in other countries tends to be more restrained ("restrained viciousness"? Intellectually possible actually. Saying something nasty in a moderate tone of voice using a clever phrase).
Whereas the quality press in the UK is dwarfed by the overwhelming daily nastiness of the tabloids, here there is one national tabloid (Bild) and a load of interestingly intelligent quality papers. There is plenty of lively gutter stuff on television if you want it, though (as my wife has discovered to her delight and to my consternation - usually I am left wondering whether it is real or fabricated).
The tone though, in most of the Western part of the country at least, is pretty restrained (that word again!). So when the major opposition party, the SDP, pick their candidate (Peer Steinbrück) to run against the Chancellor next year, they pick someone who is fiscally conservative, hardly emotionally challenged, and could easily sound like a member of the conservative CDU.
My own choice if I could vote would be Claudia Roth. If she won it would at some point lead to an interesting meeting - Green German Chancellor meets US President Mitt Romney, who used, for convenient political reasons, to believe that global warming exists, and now, for convenient political reasons, believes that it doesn't. Frau Roth would make him look stupid, but then that is not difficult! Why having clean air to breathe and a healthy environment to live in is such a bad idea, I do not understand. It would cost jobs? Since when has Bain Capital been concerned about jobs being cut, or if jobs are going to be created (according to their philosophy) let them be created in cheap-labour, highly polluted China!
Move on.
My wife is not that happy with her boss. Usually I offer her the platitudes that it cannot be that easy for him, all the stress and the schedules and the deadlines to meet usw. Yesterday though I could have throttled him.
She works a split system at the airport. This normally means 3 to 4 morning shifts, followed by 3 to 4 afternoon/evening shifts (always 7 or 8 days in total), then 3 to 4 days off. Yesterday, after 4 days on mornings, she was supposed to switch to afternoon/evenings. The day before, he informed her that his teams were out of balance (due to illness) and he needed her in the morning instead.
This should affect me? Alarm clocks going off for four consecutive days at your peak sleeping time (about 0320) do affect you, and when you are prone to insomnia, getting back to sleep is a problem. Yesterday afternoon I was walking round the park in Bockenheim feeling as ill as I have at any time since I came out of hospital in 2008, but this was probably the 5 days worth of interrupted sleep taking their toll.
As significant as this was though, more importantly I had planned to spend the evening watching the football (North American = soccer) international between Germany and Sweden. She hates football (given her background that is hardly surprising), and while I can normally hide myself in the bedroom while it is on, she has the habit of going to bed quite early (given the fact that she got up yesterday at 0320, going to be bed at 2130 was late enough for her).
Consequently I managed to watch the first half, during which the German side resembled the team that they were in the World Cup in 2010 when they drubbed England and Argentina. 3-0 at half-time, switch off, let her sleep. Went to bed early, but as chronic insomnia does not allow your mind to switch off, I lay there awake thinking of business contract translations and what was happening in the match in Berlin.
Finally at 2320. I rose to check www.kicker.de to find out the final result. 5-0, 6-0?
No. 4-4. A draw (North American = tie). How the Swedes who had looked so bad in the first half .... And at one point it had been 4-0. No particularly dramatic excited comments on the German news on ZDF this morning (though no doubt the sports page of Bild will be foaming at the proverbial mouth!), more a sense of shock. The defence unit suddenly fell apart.
Well as the goalkeeper, Manuel Neuer, (often described here as the "best goalkeeper in the world" - personally I do not think that he is even the best goalkeeper in Germany, that honour, and his place in the national team, should go to Hamburg's Rene Adler), made one ghastly error and as for the rest .... If they were not used to playing together at international level, it could be understood, but as the goalkeeper, three of the back four, and the two defensive midfielders all play for the same club team (Bayern München), that explanation does not work (unless you blame Arsenal's Per Mertesacker, and I would hardly expect that he alone played badly).
Anyway congratulations to the Swedes for a gutsy performance.
And let us repeat till we are blue in the face that it is, eventually, only a game. Even if over-excitement often takes over at such events (one of the rare occasions in Germany - see the beginning of this piece!), even if the ugly spectre of football hooliganism is beginning to rear its head more frequently again here, even if huge amounts of money are involved (don't mention how much these guys get paid to my wife, she is liable to throw a tantrum!). It isn't war, it isn't the end of the world when your team does not win.
At the end of the day the wrong side winning a political election (e.g. Romney winning the US Presidential election, maybe Merkel winning here again in 2013, although Steinbrück will not be much of an improvement) is far more significant. Sports events do not impact people's lives directly. Sadly politics and economics do often affect them radically, and very often make them worse!
Tuesday, 16 October 2012
Why the Taliban should kill me and several million other people
The Taliban is rightly described an Islamofascist group.
Fascist on the include/exclude principle. If you are part of us, you are superior (see Hitler and the master race), if not you are to be enslaved, tortured and/or killed.
Change Hitler's master race for the Taliban's version of Islam - Islamofascist.
Easy enough to define, and historically accurate.
They have now claimed (as Fascists are wont to do) that they were perfectly at liberty to attempt to murder somebody. In my book attempted murder is attempted murder, and all parties involved in pursuing it (including encouraging someone to commit murder) should be prosecuted with all the force that the civil law should throw at them, so the Pakistani government in this instance should be rounding up all possible suspects.
Anyway their claimed justification of the attempted murder of Malala Yousufzai falls into three categories:
Anyway on with the motley.
Take my case and compare where I stand.
And I suspect that on this issue millions will agree with everything that I have just said.
Fascist on the include/exclude principle. If you are part of us, you are superior (see Hitler and the master race), if not you are to be enslaved, tortured and/or killed.
Change Hitler's master race for the Taliban's version of Islam - Islamofascist.
Easy enough to define, and historically accurate.
They have now claimed (as Fascists are wont to do) that they were perfectly at liberty to attempt to murder somebody. In my book attempted murder is attempted murder, and all parties involved in pursuing it (including encouraging someone to commit murder) should be prosecuted with all the force that the civil law should throw at them, so the Pakistani government in this instance should be rounding up all possible suspects.
Anyway their claimed justification of the attempted murder of Malala Yousufzai falls into three categories:
- Because she had spoken out against the group.
- She had praised U.S. President Barack Obama.
- She was propagating against Islam.
Anyway on with the motley.
Take my case and compare where I stand.
- I think that the Taliban are a load of murderous, ignorant, barbaric, pre-medieval, good-for-nothing, mediocrities. You cannot compare them with slime, slime is far better than that. Wiping them off the face of the earth would be one of the best things that could happen to everything on the planet! Does that sound enough like speaking out against them?
- Obama is not amazing, but he is better than Bush ever was, better than Romney can ever be, he had his priories right in Iraq, has not made the mistake of invading Iran, ordered the end of the Islamofascist leader Bin Laden, has the US economy in a stronger shape than it would ever have been if left to the US Republican Party (12-15% would be the rate of unemployment now, and the debt would not have been any lower with a GOP President, and the auto industry would have been considerably reduced in size with all the associated lost jobs), which in turn helps the world economy from sinking any further. He is a nice guy, a good father, and he has his head screwed on. Another term (which sadly he won't get) and he might get close to matching Clinton - the best US President of my adult life. Is that enough praise for you?
- She was propagating against Islam. I do not think that she was, so let me start instead. Like all religious beliefs, Islam is a load of superstitious garbage with no scientific basis, and nothing to hold it together except fear. Allah, let us state quite clearly, does not exist and hence is incapable of revenge! Only the brainless and the brainwashed could ever accept such a load of ridiculous codswallop as Islam, though the prospect of being killed if you dare to oppose or renounce it (as any sensible person with any brains normally would) tends to keep even the most talented of the proverbial of sheep in the proverbial pen. There is no need to believe in the proverbial (and non-existent) Hell. Two days living under a strictly Islamic state should be enough to ensure that you believe that Hell really exists on Earth. Something you could not say about a country like Germany or the Netherlands. And as for Shariah Law - if ever there was a load of antiquated junk upon which every textbook should be destroyed as an insult to humanity .... Enough propagation for you?
And I suspect that on this issue millions will agree with everything that I have just said.
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