European empires

Visualizing empires decline from Pedro M Cruz on Vimeo.

Cookie tin guitar

Tip of the hat to BoingBoing.

Changing the guard at Buckingham Palace

On 9 Aug 11:00: Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace

What can I say? They get away with it. Found this through some person in Japan following them . Not a royal watcher. Someone slightly cool, but sadly for us anti-monarchists the royal family are slightly cool. Not because they are in with the in crowd but because they tweet things like "Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace". Like brogues. Difficult to get rid of.

Not so bad on climate change policy

I was expecting the UK to be near the bottom.

Pretty outrageous

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/video/2009/jun/21/fit-watch-kingsnorth-arrests

Whatever you think of these people's political views/activism, this is wrong. Police should always be publicly identifiable and it is clear to me that those "stress positions" were being used violently. I get the feeling that this sort of thing is widespread and quite routine, not just peace protesters but all sorts of people who annoy the police.

The batton has passed

From Tomoji to Henry. Engineering is a good profession.

David Curry`s expenses

An interesting attempt by the Guardian to crowd source expense scrutiny:

Eg. the Skipton MP, David Curry. Apparently, Mr Curry paid for public service broadcasting out of his public service expenses.

I had a correspondence with Mr Curry about all this when MPs, including Mr Curry, were trying to obstruct access to these details.:

Me:

Dear David Curry,
I am writing to you from Japan but you would be my local MP in any UK election, via postal ballot. I am writing to ask you to vote against the draft Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 this Thursday and to sign Jo Swinson's Early Day Motion.
I feel strongly that the public money spent on MPs expenses should be subject to the greatest degree of transparency and accountability possible. Democratically elected representatives spending money given to them by the taxpayer should be in a position to share with their constituents precisely how that money is spent. The measure being decided on Thursday would have the opposite effect and the arguments for it are essentially attempts to justify the concealment of expenses that MPs could not justify publicly. If MPs have embarrassing expenses, they should still have the courage to vote against this order because the measure is wrong in principle. I am appealing to you to vote against it.

David Curry:

I am sorry but I believe you are wrong. No-one is trying to conceal expenses. It is a question as to what is a sensible level of detail. As for EDM I cannot see the earthly point of signing an EDM when the issue has to be voted on in the Commons itself. It has the whiff of sanctimoniousness about it. DC

Me:
Dear David Curry,
Thank you for replying to my message about the draft Freedom of Information (Parliament) Order 2009 this Thursday. I realise you must get hundreds of messages from your constituents every week and I appreciate the time you spent in making your position clear. I have no expectation of a second rebuttal but would like to give one pence extra to my initial tuppence worth. I have no detailed knowledge of Commons procedure and I must accept your point that the Early Day Motion is unnecessary and sanctimonious.
On the substantive point, you seem to be relying on the word "sensible" for the entirety of your positive argument for voting for the concealment from the voters of the precise detail of how their money has been spent. As I understand it, the information has already been collected and will be fairly easy to publish if MPs do not vote to stop it. So, the "sense" you talk of (but do not specify) must not be a claim about what is practicable but rather some sort of privacy claim about MPs' right to blur or generalise the information they give the taxpayer.
I am afraid that many members of the public will take the simple position that democratic representatives using public money should fully account for every jot and tittle that they spend and that they should account for it to their voters rather than in a private auditing process. We hear all sorts of gumph from politicians seeking to be elected. One piece of information that would seem to be relevant to our choice is precisely how they spend our money on their own expenses and how they define what is a claimable expense.
One of the Government ministers supporting the order is quoted in a newspaper as saying: "MPs' expenses should not be an entertainment show for the public." Failing any significant saving of public money or building of openness between representative and voter, I can't see any earthly reason why we should not at least get some entertainment from the money we are paying. I feel many, perhaps most, voters would agree with me, especially in the current economic climate.David Curry:

There is a real issue of cost and it is a recurrent cost because of the neeed to scan every single receipt etc. into the machine. There is a vital word in all legislation which is "reasonable" - what is a reasonable level of disclusure taking into consideration the cost and the benefit.. The costs are, of course, incurred by the taxpayer. I have no great personal isue riding on this- my expenses are a long way below the maxima. DC

So far, I think, more than 400,000 pounds worth of expenses have been repaid.

A full screen, high quality version of Obama's Muslim world speech at Cairo University

I wanted to watch a full version of Barack Obama's big speech to the Middle East at Cairo University. Most versions are cut and spliced with journalistic comment but this one seems to be straight. Double click to watch full screen:

"We have a wretched govern­ment here which has completely mucked up the system and caused the resignation of me and many others, because it was this government that introduced the Freedom of Information Act and it is this government that insisted on the things which caught me on the wrong foot, which if I'd been cleverer it wouldn't have done."

Wretched the government may be, in other ways, but isn't Sir Anthony Steen missing the point? He seems to be living in a completely solipsistic world.

"Cameron also forced the former Tory minister Sir Peter Viggers to announce his retirement after Viggers claimed £1,645 for a floating duck island."

These Conservatives really are going to be a hard blast of fresh air when they get into office, aren't they?

PS. Interestingly, that top quote disappeared from the article moments after I linked to it.

Could the financial sycophants please...

... shut up for a decade. (Another version of the same thing on Youtube.)

"The Great Vowel Shift"

Anybody learning English and struggling with our ridiculous spelling/pronunciation can, to some extent, blame "The Great Vowel Shift". Between the 1400s and 1700s, English pronunciation was totally revolutionised. It happened astonishingly quickly and it is not completely clear why:

The upshot has been that the Anglo-Saxons lived (like the Scottish still do) in a 'hoose', and the English live in a 'house'; the Anglo-Saxons (like the Scottish) milked a 'coo', and the English milk a 'cow'; an Anglo-Saxon had a 'gode' day and the English have a 'good' one; an Anglo-Saxon had 'feef' fingers on each hand and the English have 'five'; they wore 'boats' on their 'fate' while the English wear 'boots' on our 'feet'.

Some theories have it that the massive population movements into the South East of England after the Black Death may have led to the shift, with regional accents mixing with and influencing that region's standard pronunciation. There was also great social mobility in and around London following the plague, allowing previously marginalised pronunciations to influence the standard speech of a region that has since huge influence on accepted English. Others argue that the dropping of French by aristocrats in England may have influenced pronunciation. The toffs may either have tried to create their own posh accent more on the French model or, conversely, attempted to speak English in a way they felt was further from French (because France was an enemy).

The shift may be continuing. How do you pronounce "route"? Some Americans can rhyme it with "out". The English are still mired in a distinctly Anglo Saxon "boot". Anyway, all this change is one reason why English spelling is such a nightmare. It was standardised during this shift and therefore has little or no reliable connection to actual pronunciation. For more on that, see "ghoti" and English spelling reform.

On Subsidies

from Calvin and Hobbes.

Turns out those boring people who went on about maintaining our manufacturing base were right after all

or Reports of our death have been greatly understated.

By A Very Fearful Fellow Who Does Not Have a Clue What he is Talking About

The situation: British people buy a lot of their stuff from abroad. Electronics, toys, food; it feels like most of the things we live on come from abroad. However, most British people do not make anything that foreigners might want to buy. We have been paying for our inflated lifestyles by selling foreigners paper. Let's not get into why they bought it but they did.

The crux: The underlying value of that paper, our money, essentially relies on what things foreigners can buy with it from us. Unfortunately, Pounds Sterling is not worth very much because we do not produce things that foreigners might want to buy. We used to make ships and cars and things but we gave that up a while back. Pity really, because they would be really cheap now that our overweight currency has collapsed. I suppose we still have that financial expertise and cutting edge management advice that we used to sell to people. Enough said. What have we got left? A few Harold Pinter plays? So the Pound is basically worth very little and has been worth very little for a long time.

The revised situation: There are huge piles of Pounds in foreign vaults and those Pounds are worth nowt. The economy is going tits up so the Government is printing more of that paper to try to give it a "kick start". Sadly, there is no engine on the bike apart from debt. The printing of more money is just going to make our money worth even less. Drastically less.

The foreigners who own rooms full of paper are realising it is worth nothing and are selling it for what they can get. The price of our money is going down very quickly and is likely to stay down. The financial sector of our economy, which has warped our public policy for decades and has provided the fig leaf for our national lethargy, is going down with us (or, to be more precise, just slightly ahead of us).

The crisis: The printing of money, the piling of debt upon debt and the inevitable (and partly consequent) fall of the Pound will all result in hyper (or at least super) inflation and further currency collapse.

The resolution: Panic! If you have any money, buy land! I mean land you can grow carrots on.

Or, don't panic. We are not in this alone. The rest of the world is damned too if this system collapses. I would not be surprised if the Dollar does the same sort of thing the Pound is now doing. And that would not be a sideshow, that would be the the Big Top falling over. The producers in the East are going to be just as screwed as we are if the global trading system stops working and we enter the Second World Depression (I suppose, like "The Great War", they will have to change the name of the first depression). So, perhaps, somehow, they will cover over the cracks with all that useless paper and allow us to stagger on a little further as the world economy's necessary fat men.

I still say land where you can grow carrots would be a good idea though. You could always build a mobile phone kiosk or a dodgy mortgage brokerage on it if things don't go so badly.

Disclaimer: I know nothing at all about what I am talking about. My opinions may go up as well as down, on a daily basis.

The Northern Rock problem

It seems there is a bit of a problem with Northern Rock, the bank that sponsors that other great and discredited north eastern institution Newcastle United. The solution is so blindingly obvious that it amazes me that no one has thought of it before me: put Kevin Keegan in charge.



While they are at it they might put the whole of the UK mortgage sector in the hands of the Messiah.

Inside "the surge"

Achtung Shweinehund

Great little insight into the childhoods of my generation of British boys on the back of the TLS. I was a great reader of Commando. In fact, I am a little ashamed to admit that the last copy I bought was about 3 years ago when I saw it in a newsagent. Read it cover to cover.

It is striking how little modern violence there is in children's toys in Japan. I suppose it is predictable, given their recent experience of war, but boyhood aggression is almost all channeled into either samurai stuff or science fiction fighting heroes like Ultraman.



I think more recent generations have less of a taboo about modern war. There are now a few manga and films about WWII. But the only things I have found for making a war mongering nut out of my son are the odd packet of little plastic ninja and samurai figures and a very basic polystyrene British Spitfire. Perhaps I should add a subscription to Commando to my TLS. It is now going for £1.20 a copy. Jeekers! Could nearly have bought a model of the Enola Gay Superfortress for that back in the old days.

Earthquake!

Very odd reading this from where I am sitting. Like the world had been turned on its head. I was trying to work out if I knew anybody who might have been effected.

Lithuania's favourite personality:

PC 1064 of the Norfolk Constabulary.

Religious observance

Somewhat relieved to report that my two-year old son`s religious fanaticism seems to be on the wane. For the last few months he has been insisting on stopping at the temple on the way to and from the nursery, walking right up into the gateway, pressing his hands together, bowing and doing his "namu namu namu namu" (praying) mumble mumble mumble "o-rikosan desu" ("I am a good boy"). Think he must have learned it on a nursery trip or from his O-baasan or something. He was quite punctilious. If we walked past without doing our observances, we would have to retrace our steps to assuage the divine. If Dad didn`t do his "namu namus" he was roundly told off and put straight.

Anyway, over the last couple of days, we seem to have become a bit lax in our devotions, little more than a "namu"mumble mumble "...riko...", as we run past the temple. Have to admit to a slight lifting of the heart as we pass. Quite frankly, it is a damn sight more British (and more Japanese) to keep this organised spirituality thing in its place. I wasn`t sure I fancied having a 3-year-old religious zealot in the household. Not sure the Buddha fancied it either.

Fifteen Britons in a sea of intrigue

I found this helpful in trying to understand what is going on in Iran at the moment.