Like many atheists (and unlike Roman Catholics of whom it is seemingly expected) I am not into confessions much - in my case I do not need to confess to anything much apart from the hidden urge to eat chocolate, particularly when my good lady is not home. It is my nature to come out with the facts, so where is the need to confess?
Anyway a number of confessions for you:
1. I have never read the children's book "Heidi". I think that I saw a TV dramatisation when I was a child, but they are never to be trusted to be faithful to the text.
2. I am an out-and-out urban dweller. My take on living in rural areas runs pretty much on the lines of "if you have seen one cow eating grass, you have seen them all". And that is about as exciting as living in the countryside gets as far as I can see. And yes, I did spend five (terrible) years of my life teaching in a mainly rural area.
3. I am not prone to look upon either life in the countryside or the behaviour of children (rural or urban raised) with rose-tinted spectacles.
Now that was difficult, but my breast seems clearer as a result.
So what is the point of this, you may ask? Well apart from the fact that you want to push for a pro-urban agenda and all the associated politics usw?
Stop yawning!
My latest adventure onto the Internet revolves around Johanna Spyri, the author of the children's book "Heidi". Almost without question the most significant children's book to come out of Switzerland. Written about children for "those who love children" apparently.
With a bit of an agenda under the surface. Heidi, the orphan girl, lived high in Alps eventually with her crusty old grandfather, who had fallen out with the local villagers. Her closest friend, Peter, was a goatherd (rural kids didn't go to school in Switzerland at the time, it seems, so he could not read or write).
All well and good until when she was 8 or 9, when her actual guardian, her Aunt Dete, picked her up and carted her off to be the companion to an invalid girl in (shock, horror) an urban area. And not just any old urban area. Where this really hits home - Frankfurt! (am Main, not an der Oder).
Shock, horror. Poor child, removed from an idyllic life in the mountains surrounded by goats and thrust into .... Well I am not sure that the place was inhabited by half the German banking community in those days or whether the gruesome Bahnhofsviertel existed in owt like its current form, and the upmarket shopping area may still have been in its infancy.
But anyway Heidi started to see her health suffer (urban smog, rather than clean Alpine air? Well not these days, but then maybe?), she started having nightmares, sleepwalking (as one does when one is unhappy), and eventually Clara's doctor had her sent back to the Alps and grandfather and Peter and the goats, and ....
"Happily ever after" of course followed. Her grandfather left his seclusion and made peace with the villagers with whom he had been at odds for years. Heidi taught the illiterate Peter to read and write. And she kept in touch with Clara. The latter was recommended by her doctor to spend the summer in Switzerland where she could grow stronger on goat's milk and fresh mountain air.
And finally the coup de grâce. Peter (in a fit of rural pique - tut, tut, this spoils the image) kicked Clara's wheelchair down the mountain. Which meant that the poor invalid girl had nowt to do but learn to walk. And guess what .... A miracle straight out of the sort of stuff you get from American evangelists, eh?
Wonderful. Urban life - Sch*ße, rural life - miraculous, yea, yea, yea! Or as they used to say in MAD magazine: "YECCCCCCH!".
The only difference I personally saw between teaching kids in the city and those in the countryside, was that urban kids, on balance (avoiding stereotypes), tended to be more alert to the world in general. One kid I knew in my teaching days in the rural area was already truanting half the time as he was working on his father's pig farm, and constantly informed people that he didn't need to know much else. Try that in Sheffield or Manchester.
As for the exam results achieved, it usually came down to the school, its intake, and the internal organisation. If inner-city schools had their problems, so did the ones in rural areas, or some of them at least. The final school in which I taught had principally an intake from the affluent suburbs and parental expectations were high, and the results, surprise, surprise, were outstanding.
Not Heidi's sort of school (or the UK equivalent).
Intriguing about Spyri's book was the discovery in 2010 that she may not actually have been responsible for the original ideas and many of them may have come from another novel written by (don't say it too loudly - the Swiss will not thank you for this) a German (!) called Adam von Kamp some 50 years earlier. Spyri's biographer even agreed that there may have unintentional copying (should we avoid the word "plagiarism" here - after all we are not talking about German politicians and their dubious doctorates).
To quote from the (UK) Daily Telegraph in 2010:
“The Swiss have rallied to the defence of their literary icon, saying that many 19th century writers in central Europe were preoccupied by the drift to the cities and the possible harmful effects on children”.
So the mythical values of living in the countryside prevailed. They may have been illiterate and poor, and stuck with inadequate transportation, a simple diet and not much by way of advanced facilities, but they were cheerful and happy and everything always turned out for the best.
Fine, now give me modern urban areas and facilities and transportation, and some decent or half-decent schools (ever the problem with cash-strapped education authorities) and try to persuade me that kids cannot grow up in urban areas and be happy and successful.
The Alps are amazing to visit - as a tourist.
For somewhere to live, then please give me Hamburg or Berlin or Köln/Cologne - or even Frankfurt. Everything you will ever need is there and is easily reached thanks to the excellent local transportation facilities. So much so that even people from the local rural areas are only too glad and come take advantage of what is there!
Sunday, 17 November 2013
Friday, 15 November 2013
Quote of the day
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
So what's in a number?
Tacloban in the Philippines is a city of approximately 220,000 people.
As anyone watching news bulletins around the world will know it was at the centre of the typhoon, Haiyan, which passed through in the past few days wreaking immense damage in the process.
Large numbers of homes and business properties have been destroyed. Many of its people have been forced to live on the street or in emergency accommodation and have nowhere else to go.
And many people have died. The original figure issued by the authorities in the city was approximately 10,000. Close on 5% of the population of the city.
Enter Benigno Aquino, President of the Philippines, to survey the disaster (and for once "disaster" is an appropriate word). According to the aforesaid gentleman with regard to the number of dead, the figure was "too much" and the actual figure would be closer to 2,000 to 2,500. That would only be 1.25 to 1.5% of the local population.
Good news?
Well I know that politicians are fond of this "silver lining" approach (remember the old Margaret Thatcher comment about all the jobs they had created as UK unemployment topped 12%?), but this really touches rock bottom.
10 people dying in a disaster of this enormity would be a relief to the politicians maybe but still a loss to their families and friends. 2,000 dying is, by any calculation, an appalling loss of life and many people will have been damaged by the consequences of the storm.
And take the number of injured and the conditions to which many others have been reduced.
It will take years to put people's lives back together. Many will find the loss of their loved ones an enormous emotional burden for a very long time - ask any mother who has lost a child under any circumstances about the impact of such an event.
There is no "silver lining" in this situation, and merely flipping around a figure indicative of the great tragedy involved and replacing it with a smaller figure which hardly diminishes the nature of that tragedy is cynical in the extreme! But unfortunately typical of the political class with which we seem to be stuck worldwide!
As anyone watching news bulletins around the world will know it was at the centre of the typhoon, Haiyan, which passed through in the past few days wreaking immense damage in the process.
Large numbers of homes and business properties have been destroyed. Many of its people have been forced to live on the street or in emergency accommodation and have nowhere else to go.
And many people have died. The original figure issued by the authorities in the city was approximately 10,000. Close on 5% of the population of the city.
Enter Benigno Aquino, President of the Philippines, to survey the disaster (and for once "disaster" is an appropriate word). According to the aforesaid gentleman with regard to the number of dead, the figure was "too much" and the actual figure would be closer to 2,000 to 2,500. That would only be 1.25 to 1.5% of the local population.
Good news?
Well I know that politicians are fond of this "silver lining" approach (remember the old Margaret Thatcher comment about all the jobs they had created as UK unemployment topped 12%?), but this really touches rock bottom.
10 people dying in a disaster of this enormity would be a relief to the politicians maybe but still a loss to their families and friends. 2,000 dying is, by any calculation, an appalling loss of life and many people will have been damaged by the consequences of the storm.
And take the number of injured and the conditions to which many others have been reduced.
It will take years to put people's lives back together. Many will find the loss of their loved ones an enormous emotional burden for a very long time - ask any mother who has lost a child under any circumstances about the impact of such an event.
There is no "silver lining" in this situation, and merely flipping around a figure indicative of the great tragedy involved and replacing it with a smaller figure which hardly diminishes the nature of that tragedy is cynical in the extreme! But unfortunately typical of the political class with which we seem to be stuck worldwide!
Sunday, 10 November 2013
Annual vacations
Well we returned from our annual vacation yesterday.
Last year we had 3 weeks visiting my wife's family in Thailand.
This year Thailand disappeared early from the agenda (not enough money), while the UK disappeared shortly after (see earlier posts on this subject, thankfully we decided not to feed the British paranoia about foreign nationals, that said even I would never have imagined that the UK would get so paranoid that it had even started spying upon modern democratic Germany - theoretically an important ally!).
So eventually it became a return trip to .... Köln/Cologne. For 4 days. In a cheap hotel near the Mauritiuskirche. In between Neumarkt, the Rudolfplatz and the Zülpicherplatz for those who know the city. Four days wandering all over the main part of the city, revisiting haunts that we used to frequent when we lived there in 2003 and 2004 (the ones that were still there at least), visiting my former landlady, a Doctor in Psychology (great having conversations with really intelligent people - nice as well that she hadn't forgotten us after nine years).
And reminiscent of Manchester (UK, not NH), where I also used to live, it rained almost non-stop for four days. Managed to get a glass of Kölsch (Cologne's local beer) on my final day to remind myself of good times past. Pity that the good times always seem to be in the past .... Now with some economic positivism and creating the sort of economic environment about which I am always talking - capitalism working for the masses and not just the mega-rich - then the good times could return.
As it is most people in Europe actually seem to support the Scrooge economy apparently (see the Pew Global Attitudes report on the subject), so don't expect the good times to return any time soon!
While supping on my glass of Kölsch and talking to a couple of total strangers in the bar where I was (one a native of Turkey - hope that he was a lapsed Muslim, or he will be permanently damned for drinking alcohol! My wife meanwhile was back in the hotel watching one of those awful talent shows that she loves so much, and which she could have watched at home in Frankfurt), I got round to thinking about vacations in general.
Europeans have longer holidays available to them generally than Americans. Out of this has sprung a major tourist based industry. Travel agencies provide thousands of jobs for people advertising holidays and booking them for people to use with the extra vacation time that they have available. This in turn creates large numbers of jobs in the airline industry, plenty of charter companies have sprung up to absorb the gaps in the schedules that the major airlines cannot provide usw.
Hotels in Spain and Greece get tons of business as a result (sunny, warm and relatively cheap). If you think that things are bad now in Spain and Greece, wait till you cut the vacation possibilities for people in other parts of Europe, and people haven't the time to visit.
What would happen to the tourist industry in Spain and Greece and how many more unemployed would there be?
But I keep hearing from Americans that Europeans don't work hard enough (totally wrong IMHO - particularly when you emphasise quality over quantity - an idiot can spend 16 hours working a day and produce nowt, a highly talented person can work for 3 hours and produce tons of good stuff - like I used to in my IT days). And they take too many holidays.
However, as taking those holidays produce employment elsewhere. Think about the consequences for a minute. There are spin-offs! See above.
Myself I never used to take the full holidays when working and I always disliked public holidays. As an atheist I have no hang-ups about working on Sundays or on "religious" holidays - why not work on December 25th? It is just another day on the calendar.
When working in Munich in 1995, I flew on Lufthansa to Berlin in the morning and back on the last flight available (about 1600 - they cut the evening shift). The crew were all working, very cheerful and not complaining at all! The one plus from my perspective was that the price was dirt cheap (they wanted to fill the planes, so ....). Just another day on the calendar. And a very enjoyable trip I would add.
Most people coming back to work from vacations tend to be more optimistic and tend to work better, in my experience. It is a false economy often to tie people to their desks or factory stools and grind work out of them. But as the world is increasingly driven by false economies, we should not be surprised if such attitudes come increasingly to prevail - to the detriment of businesses elsewhere.
Last year we had 3 weeks visiting my wife's family in Thailand.
This year Thailand disappeared early from the agenda (not enough money), while the UK disappeared shortly after (see earlier posts on this subject, thankfully we decided not to feed the British paranoia about foreign nationals, that said even I would never have imagined that the UK would get so paranoid that it had even started spying upon modern democratic Germany - theoretically an important ally!).
So eventually it became a return trip to .... Köln/Cologne. For 4 days. In a cheap hotel near the Mauritiuskirche. In between Neumarkt, the Rudolfplatz and the Zülpicherplatz for those who know the city. Four days wandering all over the main part of the city, revisiting haunts that we used to frequent when we lived there in 2003 and 2004 (the ones that were still there at least), visiting my former landlady, a Doctor in Psychology (great having conversations with really intelligent people - nice as well that she hadn't forgotten us after nine years).
And reminiscent of Manchester (UK, not NH), where I also used to live, it rained almost non-stop for four days. Managed to get a glass of Kölsch (Cologne's local beer) on my final day to remind myself of good times past. Pity that the good times always seem to be in the past .... Now with some economic positivism and creating the sort of economic environment about which I am always talking - capitalism working for the masses and not just the mega-rich - then the good times could return.
As it is most people in Europe actually seem to support the Scrooge economy apparently (see the Pew Global Attitudes report on the subject), so don't expect the good times to return any time soon!
While supping on my glass of Kölsch and talking to a couple of total strangers in the bar where I was (one a native of Turkey - hope that he was a lapsed Muslim, or he will be permanently damned for drinking alcohol! My wife meanwhile was back in the hotel watching one of those awful talent shows that she loves so much, and which she could have watched at home in Frankfurt), I got round to thinking about vacations in general.
Europeans have longer holidays available to them generally than Americans. Out of this has sprung a major tourist based industry. Travel agencies provide thousands of jobs for people advertising holidays and booking them for people to use with the extra vacation time that they have available. This in turn creates large numbers of jobs in the airline industry, plenty of charter companies have sprung up to absorb the gaps in the schedules that the major airlines cannot provide usw.
Hotels in Spain and Greece get tons of business as a result (sunny, warm and relatively cheap). If you think that things are bad now in Spain and Greece, wait till you cut the vacation possibilities for people in other parts of Europe, and people haven't the time to visit.
What would happen to the tourist industry in Spain and Greece and how many more unemployed would there be?
But I keep hearing from Americans that Europeans don't work hard enough (totally wrong IMHO - particularly when you emphasise quality over quantity - an idiot can spend 16 hours working a day and produce nowt, a highly talented person can work for 3 hours and produce tons of good stuff - like I used to in my IT days). And they take too many holidays.
However, as taking those holidays produce employment elsewhere. Think about the consequences for a minute. There are spin-offs! See above.
Myself I never used to take the full holidays when working and I always disliked public holidays. As an atheist I have no hang-ups about working on Sundays or on "religious" holidays - why not work on December 25th? It is just another day on the calendar.
When working in Munich in 1995, I flew on Lufthansa to Berlin in the morning and back on the last flight available (about 1600 - they cut the evening shift). The crew were all working, very cheerful and not complaining at all! The one plus from my perspective was that the price was dirt cheap (they wanted to fill the planes, so ....). Just another day on the calendar. And a very enjoyable trip I would add.
Most people coming back to work from vacations tend to be more optimistic and tend to work better, in my experience. It is a false economy often to tie people to their desks or factory stools and grind work out of them. But as the world is increasingly driven by false economies, we should not be surprised if such attitudes come increasingly to prevail - to the detriment of businesses elsewhere.
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