Abandoning Afghans doesn’t mean “peace” November 16, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in Uncategorized.Tags: Afghanistan, cartoon
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(Chris Riddle, Observer Comment, Sunday 15 November 2009.)
Karzai is disgusting but there’s no peace to be had by leaving – not for her, not for their children, not for us. They don’t want us to go.
As Neil D says on Harry’s Place, “Abandon Afghans? Not in my name”.
And I’m checking for what Kellie has to say.
Update: here’s what he says:
24,315 and 92,049 November 14, 2009
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Civilians estimated to have lost their lives as a direct or indirect result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, including at the hands of insurgents. I’m taking the lower estimates – the upper ones are higher.
They were caught up in the fighting, or unable to get what they needed to survive.
126 and 179 November 11, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in Uncategorized.Tags: Remembrance Day
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Here are our war dead.
War isn’t ever glorious, but soldiers are damn brave, they died for me, and I’m full of gratitude.
It’s why I wear a poppy. Rest in peace, soldiers.
George Osborne’s unjust Conservative public sector pay freeze October 6, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in Uncategorized.Tags: Conservatives, Tories
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Summary piece, with anticipated savings, on the very good Left Foot Forward blog, along with a link to a comparison with Labour’s.
Preparing for a pay freeze for the higher earners is definitely a good idea – but only public sector? Starting at the arbitrary wage of £18k? Osborne claims more in expenses for mortage interest than £18k.
Peston says that it’s not firm, that it’s a shot across the boughs in demand of some sensitivity in pay demands. And if you are going to take away the only currency most people understand by way of recognition for good work, how the hell can you think you can get away without replacing it with some other form of recognition?
From the post, the sustainable measures the Conservatives don’t intend to take:
- They will NOT withdraw the personal allowance on income tax for those earning over £100,000 (worth £1.5bn a year);
- They will NOT address the anomaly which sees a quarter of all pensions tax relief going to the top 1.5% of savers (raising £3.1bn a year); and
- They have NOT signed up to the 0.5% increase in all rates of National Insurance Contributions (raising £3.35bn a year).
More on Osborne’s plans:
- Stumbling and Mumbling’s Chris Dillow casts aspersion, based on his analysis of bond markets (I’m shrugging in ignorance), on the need for deep cuts.
- Robert Peston looks at the fine print, raises a lot of good questions eg (“Or do they pay what George Osborne has signalled as the new maximum – viz £197,689 (actually presumably it’s a bit less than that, since the Tories would impose a pay cut on all ministers)? But if a newly recruited boss of Royal Mail, or the BBC or the Bank of England were paid less than £200,000 a year, surely all his or her more junior colleagues would also have to see their pay slashed?“) and links through to the Stephanie Flanders and Nick Robinson.
- Bad idea on turn-off bitchery.
National Rail – avoiding the injustice of a penalty fare August 12, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in Uncategorized.Tags: National Rail, Gold Card, rail travel
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Goes without saying that dodging is a disgusting thing to do, which amounts to stealing a free ride from your fellow passengers and contributing to the poverty of the transport network.
I want to pay my fare, and I have an annual network Gold Card. In theory this entitles me to discounts galore. In reality, I have to pay again for this by arriving half an hour early at the station.
I have to queue to get my discounts – namely my travel up to boundary zone 4 and my 33% discount on the price of the ticket.
I have to wait in queues of sometimes 50 people, some of whom don’t understand the difference between ticketing and information, sometimes for 30 minutes. This is absolutely unacceptable and after reading this Evening Standard guide, I’m damned if I’ll do it again.
HT: Ibis
Catching up July 27, 2009
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You go away, completely unconnected, and when you get back it quickly becomes clear that in Iran, Honduras, Sri Lanka and many other places there has been no respite, no let up, no holidays in rural Wales.
For Iran, see Kellie and Modernity links to an account of the vigil for Iran in Boston.
Greg Weeks, the Latin Americanist Charlotte NC academic upon whom I have mostly relied for unbiased Honduras commentary, links to Honduras Coup 2009, a blog of:
“Responses to the Coup d’etat in Honduras on Sunday June 28, with special emphasis on producing English-language versions of commentaries by Honduran scholars and editorial writers and addressing the confusion encouraged by lack of basic knowledge about Honduras.”
In particular there is a translation of the San Jose Accord, a promising statement of mysterious origin, pledging support for a government of national unity. Also a communique from the Honduran armed forces which reaffirms support for the constitution, and the San Jose Accord. There is commentary, to the effect that the coup is cracking despite Micheletti’s bombast.
I also hope to find time to read the primer on Honduran politics.
I would like to write more on Roma in Prague and on Tamil refugees in Sri Lanka, but it’s nearly bedtime.
Because nothing is a no brainer, currently looking for unbiased commentary and analysis on the closure of the Vesta wind turbine factory in the Isle of Wight. Yes, vox-pops. Yes, testimonies. Yes, ideals. But as well as these, please, can’t we also have the facts?
Neighbours, friends and parents July 5, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in Uncategorized.Tags: Isabella Purves
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This one’s for Isabella Purves.
My neighbour, Mr P, had another heart operation. He used to walk, with many pauses, round the block aided by his frame. These days, between family visits, the nearest he gets to going out is sitting on a stool in his tiny sun-baked porch in his shirt and no socks. Our street is a bit of a backwater so it must be very boring. He is the epitome of frail, but his mind is very sharp. I offer anything they need. Mrs P says “You are busy” and Mr P demands imperiously that I write him a daily itinerary and then arrange it. He is trying it on.
I went to invite another long-retired neighbour round for a beer. Turned out he had just returned from cooking dinner for a friend who had an operation and couldn’t bend. He wanted some me-time.
My dad retired on Friday, from the only job of his career (I think this is very cool). He views his retirement as a beginning.
In fact, I’m not confident about what I need to be doing here. In my younger days I was over-dutiful, partly because I spent too much time reading my dad’s old childhood books replete with excellent role models for boys and terrible role models for girls (meek, long-suffering). I was prone to over-commit, burn out, and now I’m in the wary phase of that pendulum swing. I know any number of women who have quietly and nobly picked up responsibilities of caring for family members, friends, neighbours – but relatively few men (my father in sin and our neighbour being exceptions) and I’m not about to quietly go along with this. But it is time to start thinking about what it is to be neighbourly, a more physically-able friend, and an adult with parents.
Isabella Purves died and her body lay unfound in her flat for five years. She seemed like a private person. Nobody says whether it’s more likely she fell ill and died through neglect of her illness, or whether her death was sudden. So it’s not clear whether she died because nobody was looking out for her, but it is clear that she could well have and this is a terrible thought. If that happened to anybody I know in my road I’d feel I’d failed on a very fundamental level. But what about the people I see but don’t know? There’s a man I tend not to speak to because he clearly dislikes me and told me the area was getting too cosmopolitan.
I’m not sure whether to take various reports about Isabella Purves’ taciturness at face value, or what it would imply if one didn’t. I looked at Age Concern and Help The Aged Scotland and there was nothing in their campaigns about the loneliness or isolation which affect so many solitary older people. But for people who value their independence and privacy, there’s a substantial report about emerging smart solutions which don’t involve giving the neighbours a key and feeling obliged to take phone calls lest you trigger an unwanted knock at the door. Smart homes have motion sensors and if you don’t do certain basic activities of daily living such as opening the fridge, say, or going to the toilet, somebody you have designated (neighbourliness can come in here) calls you, and if you don’t pick up, can activate an entry system to see if you are OK. These technologies are socially situated, but their power for good is evident. They were around when Isabella Purves died in 2004, and hopefully they will make up part of new forms of neighbourhood care which will help those people who want to make use of them remain in their own homes living life at their own shaping for as long as they want to be there.
Steve Cohen – a celebration of his life and political achievements June 30, 2009
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Reports that Ahmedinejad came third June 23, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in democracy.Tags: #iranelection, Ahmedinejad, Iran, marjane satrapi, Mohsen Makhmalbaf
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After reading Nora Mulready on Iran, and what was coming out of Chatham House and St Andrews’ Institute of Iranian Studies, and the Stop the War’s (sic) incongruous neutrality*, I got to wondering about Marjane Satrapi, author of the animated graphic novel Persepolis. Marjane’s family suffered during the upheaval of the late ’70s and early ’80s – some were tortured and executed by the Shah, some by the clerics. Persepolis was so perceptive about the 1979 revolution, counter-revolution, betrayal of the Iranian left and the lassitude of the European left. What did she have to say about the Iranian election?
She is a supporter of the reformist candidate Mousavi. With fellow luminary Iranian director, Mohsen Makhmalbaf, she has called the election a coup and presented the results of a count which declared Mousavi the winner.
Here they are testifying in the EU Parliament in Brussels back on June 17th, Makhmalbaf in (I think) Farsi, with Satrapi translating:
“The document said liberal cleric and former parliament speaker Mehdi Karroubi came second in the election with a total of 13.3 million votes, while president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came third with only 5.49 million votes.
However, there is no certainty about the legitimacy of the document.
“Ahmadinejad received only 12 percent of the vote, not 65 percent,” said Marjane Satrapi, who was the director of Oscar-nominated film Persepolis.
Makhmalbaf, a representative for Mousavi abroad, called the declaration of Ahmadinejad’s victory a “coup d’etat” and appealed to the international community not to recognise it.
He explained that Mousavi had called him from Tehran, asking him to inform the world of what is really going on in Iran.
“What happened is not an electoral fraud, but a coup d’etat,” he said.
Makhmalbaf claimed that Mousavi was informed of Ahmadinejad’s victory by the interior ministry and told to prepare a speech.
“Few minutes later, an army general entered his (Mousavi) office, and told him that they would not allow a green revolution (green is the colour used by Mousavi for his campaign),” he said.
“It did not take long, until the State TV declared Ahmadinejad winner with more than 65 percent”.
“If anyone asked themselves whether the Iranian people are ready for democracy, the answer is yes, and we showed it by voting, but we were robbed of the vote. Now we need international support.”
*Stop the War’s web site is sporting a cheering banner declaring ‘IRAN NEEDS YOUR HELP’. If you click its About This Banner link, you get:
“The banner was created by the owner of the stopwar.org.uk domain in response to the StWC loss of direction and hypocritical response to the Iranian election compared to an arguably comparable situation in the US in 2004.
In particular, the domain owner believes that the current attitude of StWC as per its statement, fails to realise the opportunity that we must all seize to make the world safer, especially for the citizens of the Middle East.
The domain owner believes StWC is losing its way, losing its vision, and losing its soul, by letting so-called ‘leftist’ rhetoric and nonsense prevent it supporting vigorously (as it once would have) the democratic wishes and freedom-of-communication of the peoples of Iran, who are crying out for the world to support them at this time.
As Hossein Mousavi’s external spokesman Mohsen Makhmalbaf said:
“We [Iranians] are a bit unfortunate. When we had our Obama [meaning President Khatami], that was the time of President Bush in the United States. Now that [the United States] has Obama, we have our Bush here [in Iran]. In order to resolve the problems between the two countries, we should have two Obamas on the two sides. It doesn’t mean that everything depends on these two people, but this is one of the main factors.”
—
There is some history here. The owner of the stopwar.org domain has been attempting to communicate with the StWC office for several months, to arrange transfer of domain ownership to them, without response. The StWC statement on the Iranian situation was so poor, so lacking in the vision, soul, and objective morality that created the Coalition, that this action was deemed appropriate, until the Iranian situation is resolved.
Peace.”
Update: more fishy numbers.
Hiatus April 30, 2009
Posted by fleshisgrass in Uncategorized.comments closed
Thought it would be polite to mention that I’m going to have a blogging hiatus for a while. There’s nothing I want to say that I can articulate, and that’s frustrating, and I feel it means it must be time to stop trying and read more instead. See you on your blogs and if I comment, you’ll see me too.
Update: or (given that I already have a dozen things I want to record) maybe this blog will become a filter blog for a bit. Links. Mainly because I want more people than I can be bothered to email to see this 1935 colour film of the Thames, via Kellie. Mick Hartley links to more early C20th film studies of London. The British Film Institute has still more on its YouTube channel, upon one of which a commenters has submitted:
“a wonderful film from back when we had an Empire and it was shown in pink in all the atlas’s , those bits that weren’t pink …… i damn well coloured in myself.
Wonderfully nostalgic …. thanks for posting.”
