There's a cartoon going around which portrays Theresa May sulkily complaining that the French elected a centrist president just to interfere with the British parliamentary elections coming up in June. Ho! Hum!
In the real world Iain Duncan Smith has declared that Macron is an "absolute threat" to French prosperity and warned him to be constructive on Brexit if he wants to protect his country's trade. It's odd how these Tories seem to think that negotiation means making threats!
Read more at this link.
I misread some of his other stuff and thought that he was actually recommending that high earners should move themselves and their money abroad if the Labour party get in and impose new income tax rates. Just as I was about to accuse him of being singularly unpatriotic I realised that he was predicting that that is what would happen. He did, however, suggest that MacDonnell is too far to the left: "He’s always been a lover of Marx... he had a copy of Marxist thoughts and theories at the dispatch box."
This smacks of the kind of anti-communism that was around in post war USA. We have been talking about this sort of thing in my Italian class, despite our teacher Adalgisa assuring a visiting fellow Sicilian that her classes are not political. She just teaches Italian language and culture. If the mafia, political corruption and other such stuff comes up, it's purely incidental.
Anyway, part of this (co)incidental cultural stuff involved May Day celebrations, May Day being a public holiday in most places: International Workers' Day, la Festa dei Lavoratori, la Fête du Travail. But just a bank holiday in the UK and Loyalty Day in the USA. I checked up on the last one because I had half heard a thing on the news saying that the USA had moved Labor Day to the first Monday in September because they didn't want it to look as though they were supporting communists.
The first site I found tried to give the lie to that; the information there said that it was felt that there was a such long time between Independence Day in July and Thanksgiving in November that someone decided to give the poor overworked folk another day's holiday.
Not entirely true apparently!
Another website said that in the fifties, with the Cold War in full swing and a lot of anti-communist, anti-trades unions stuff around they did decide precisely to disconnect the 1st of May with anything that smacked of solidarity with the dreaded reds. And so the 1st of May became Loyalty Day. Much better!
Oddly enough, my research led me to Chicago in 1886 when a planned strike for May 1st, demanding a reduction to an 8 hour working day, led to violence in the streets with people dead and injured. It became known as the Haymarket Affair because most of the violence took place in Haymarket Square. A few years later an International Socialist Conference declared that the First of May should be henceforth be a day of political action: International Workers's Day. And the rest is history.
Which brings me back to my Italian class and a text we read about the Portella della Ginestra massacre in Sicily, one of the more violent acts in the history of modern Italian politics, when 11 people were killed and 27 wounded during May Day celebrations on May 1, 1947. Those held responsible were the bandit and separatist leader Salvatore Giuliano and his band – although their motives and intentions are still a matter of controversy.
It was at that point, as we discussed the mystery of the motives of MR Giuliano, that our Adalgisa's fellow Sicilian, here on a short visit, threw in a little bit of extra information. He told us that Giuliano was part of a separatist organisation that wanted Sicily stop being part of Italy, declare itself an independent state and become part of the USA!
Who knew?
Tuesday, 9 May 2017
Monday, 8 May 2017
Number crunching!
Emmanuel Macron is president elect of France. Phew! What a relief! Things could be worse. But they could also be better. It all depends on how youblook at it.
Here come some statistics:
Macron got 58.51% of the votes cast - 43.63% of the total number of registered voters.
Marine Le Pen got 30.01% of the votes cast - 22.38% of the total number of registered voters.
So less than half of the people who could have voted actually voted for Macron. And claims that almost a third of voters favoured Le Pen look less true when you see that in fact it's just over one fifth.
But then, statistics are always subject to manipulation. Spin doctors use the figures that suit them, as do we all to some extent. The difference is that most of us don't get to put OUR figures out there to influence people.
A thought struck me as I watched the TV news last night and the camera showed the exterior of the Élysée palace. When a new president of the USA ives into the White House we hear quite a lot about how the decor will be changed, what colour scheme will be chosen, which works of art the new POTUS will choose to hang on the walls. Does the same thing happen when a new president of France moves into the Élysée? (And what about 10 Downing street, for that matter?)
My knowledge of the interior of both these presidential residences comes from TV series: the West Wing for the White House and Hommes de l'Ombre (Spin is its English title). But somehow I imagine the Élysée to be very Frenchly unchanging, an institution to which the (p)resident has to adapt. After all, to my knowledge it's only in recent times in France that they have taken to referring to the French president's wife as the First Lady. Formerly we hardly heard of her. It's not all that long ago that French presidents managed to keep their extra-marital affairs as strictly private matters. And now, everything is known, almost before it happens!
And so now we wait to see what happens next in France. How will Macron manage to form a government as his party has no MPs yet and, what is more, as president elect he has distanced himself from the party he created? Interesting times for all!
I have some more figures to play with.
In the UK local council elections last week - was it really only last week? - Labour lost control of Glasgow, among other losses. Much was made of the Glasgow results in the press. Great defeat for Labour! Resurgence of the Tories! And so on! Then someone drew my attention to details of the Glasgow election results.
Number of councillors in Glasgow after the election:
SNP 39
Labour 31
Conservatives 8
Green 7
Quite clearly Labour in Glasgow has not "collapsed" and the Tories have not had a "resurgence". There are even suggestions that the SNP are less than jubilant. They wanted over-all control; that was their aim and they didn't get it. Studying statistics could drive you crazy!
And now here is a link to something more disturbing, all about how social media has been shown to have influenced results in the EU referendum, if not other voting situation as well. Whether you voted in or out of the EU, whether you are left or right in your political views, this kind of stuff is frightening.
However, before all this looking at figures drives me into serious depression, here is a little something I came across today:
"The Conservative Party won hundreds of seats in the local elections. And this is obviously bad news for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn supporters. But media coverage of the results has ignored one crucial factor: none of the people who’ve registered to vote in the recent registration surge were eligible to vote in the local elections. Furthermore, the media glossed over the fact that the turnout of registered voters was only around 36%. "
Perhaps the young people are going to save us!
Here come some statistics:
Macron got 58.51% of the votes cast - 43.63% of the total number of registered voters.
Marine Le Pen got 30.01% of the votes cast - 22.38% of the total number of registered voters.
So less than half of the people who could have voted actually voted for Macron. And claims that almost a third of voters favoured Le Pen look less true when you see that in fact it's just over one fifth.
But then, statistics are always subject to manipulation. Spin doctors use the figures that suit them, as do we all to some extent. The difference is that most of us don't get to put OUR figures out there to influence people.
A thought struck me as I watched the TV news last night and the camera showed the exterior of the Élysée palace. When a new president of the USA ives into the White House we hear quite a lot about how the decor will be changed, what colour scheme will be chosen, which works of art the new POTUS will choose to hang on the walls. Does the same thing happen when a new president of France moves into the Élysée? (And what about 10 Downing street, for that matter?)
My knowledge of the interior of both these presidential residences comes from TV series: the West Wing for the White House and Hommes de l'Ombre (Spin is its English title). But somehow I imagine the Élysée to be very Frenchly unchanging, an institution to which the (p)resident has to adapt. After all, to my knowledge it's only in recent times in France that they have taken to referring to the French president's wife as the First Lady. Formerly we hardly heard of her. It's not all that long ago that French presidents managed to keep their extra-marital affairs as strictly private matters. And now, everything is known, almost before it happens!
And so now we wait to see what happens next in France. How will Macron manage to form a government as his party has no MPs yet and, what is more, as president elect he has distanced himself from the party he created? Interesting times for all!
I have some more figures to play with.
In the UK local council elections last week - was it really only last week? - Labour lost control of Glasgow, among other losses. Much was made of the Glasgow results in the press. Great defeat for Labour! Resurgence of the Tories! And so on! Then someone drew my attention to details of the Glasgow election results.
Number of councillors in Glasgow after the election:
SNP 39
Labour 31
Conservatives 8
Green 7
Quite clearly Labour in Glasgow has not "collapsed" and the Tories have not had a "resurgence". There are even suggestions that the SNP are less than jubilant. They wanted over-all control; that was their aim and they didn't get it. Studying statistics could drive you crazy!
And now here is a link to something more disturbing, all about how social media has been shown to have influenced results in the EU referendum, if not other voting situation as well. Whether you voted in or out of the EU, whether you are left or right in your political views, this kind of stuff is frightening.
However, before all this looking at figures drives me into serious depression, here is a little something I came across today:
"The Conservative Party won hundreds of seats in the local elections. And this is obviously bad news for Labour and Jeremy Corbyn supporters. But media coverage of the results has ignored one crucial factor: none of the people who’ve registered to vote in the recent registration surge were eligible to vote in the local elections. Furthermore, the media glossed over the fact that the turnout of registered voters was only around 36%. "
Perhaps the young people are going to save us!
Sunday, 7 May 2017
Serious nonsense!
Here is a collection of silly things.
When I was a child a source of income for us kids was scouring the local recreation grounds for discarded pop bottles. Provided they were reasonably clean, you could take the bottles to a shop that sold that brand and reclaim the three old pence deposit. Considering that my pocket money was not much above three old pence, this was a pretty good extra!
That was a perfectly good system of recycling. Together with returnable milk bottles, given back directly to the milkman, it kept bottles going round and around.
Over in the united states, as early as the start of the twentieth century, drink bottlers were criticised for not putting a deposit of their returnable bottles. Without the incentive of the returnable deposit it was beleievd that it was too easy to just throw bottles away. In 1905, for example, the Southern Carbonator and Bottler proclaimed: “The only sane, logical and lasting solution of the bottle question is the deposit system.”
And then companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola put their energy into backing the idea that roadside recycling, containers to put your empty bottles into, was a sufficient solution to the problem. They didn't want deposits because it might make their product seem too expensive!!! Well, that worked! And now Coca Cola alone produces 100 billion plastic bottles in a year. A large percentage of them are just thrown away, not recycled. It has been estimated that, on current trends, by 2050 the plastic in the oceans may weigh more than all the fish! No further comment!
No comment is needed in the article in this link. A well known newspaper published an item comparing the size of various famous women's bottoms. This is the twenty-first century?
There is a Turner prize-winning artist who created a centenary commemoration of the lost soldiers of the Battle of the Somme. Now he is working on staging a tribute to Beatle's manager brian Epstein as part of a series of events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Now, I love the album. I remember spending almost all of my first week's wages from the shoe shop where I was working my holidays from university on the album. But really, can we put the anniversary of the release of a pop record on the same level as remembering soldiers who died in a World War?
As I type I have been listening to stuff on the radio. At the moment it's a feature about Donald Trump's first 100 days. I have just heard a recorded item from the day after the inauguration, the day that Trump reckoned there were more people at HIS inauguration than at anyone else's. He was protesting that there were far more people than the press reported. Rain, he said, might have kept people away but then God decided not to rain on his speech and so rain did not keep people away. god decided not to rain on Trump's speech? What is that about?
And in the Newspaper I have just found a quote, from a Bolton voter: "Jeremy Corbyn talks about policies I want to vote for, but it's no good if you're never going to be in power". Oh boy! Double think is alive and well in this century!
The world is full of arrant nonsense!
Over in the united states, as early as the start of the twentieth century, drink bottlers were criticised for not putting a deposit of their returnable bottles. Without the incentive of the returnable deposit it was beleievd that it was too easy to just throw bottles away. In 1905, for example, the Southern Carbonator and Bottler proclaimed: “The only sane, logical and lasting solution of the bottle question is the deposit system.”
And then companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola put their energy into backing the idea that roadside recycling, containers to put your empty bottles into, was a sufficient solution to the problem. They didn't want deposits because it might make their product seem too expensive!!! Well, that worked! And now Coca Cola alone produces 100 billion plastic bottles in a year. A large percentage of them are just thrown away, not recycled. It has been estimated that, on current trends, by 2050 the plastic in the oceans may weigh more than all the fish! No further comment!
No comment is needed in the article in this link. A well known newspaper published an item comparing the size of various famous women's bottoms. This is the twenty-first century?
There is a Turner prize-winning artist who created a centenary commemoration of the lost soldiers of the Battle of the Somme. Now he is working on staging a tribute to Beatle's manager brian Epstein as part of a series of events marking the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. Now, I love the album. I remember spending almost all of my first week's wages from the shoe shop where I was working my holidays from university on the album. But really, can we put the anniversary of the release of a pop record on the same level as remembering soldiers who died in a World War?
As I type I have been listening to stuff on the radio. At the moment it's a feature about Donald Trump's first 100 days. I have just heard a recorded item from the day after the inauguration, the day that Trump reckoned there were more people at HIS inauguration than at anyone else's. He was protesting that there were far more people than the press reported. Rain, he said, might have kept people away but then God decided not to rain on his speech and so rain did not keep people away. god decided not to rain on Trump's speech? What is that about?
And in the Newspaper I have just found a quote, from a Bolton voter: "Jeremy Corbyn talks about policies I want to vote for, but it's no good if you're never going to be in power". Oh boy! Double think is alive and well in this century!
The world is full of arrant nonsense!
Saturday, 6 May 2017
Paying for things!
I have heard it said that a really good salesman could sell sand to Arabs. Well, I caught the tail end of a programme, or possibly just a news report, about an Australian company that does just that; they export vast amounts of sand to Saudi Arabia. The programme went on to show a nice little graphic with arrows flying all around the world. Loads of sand is exported from one country to another all the time!
I suppose it depends on what the sand is required for. After all, not all sand is intended for beaches, although places like Paris must import sand from somewhere to create their inner-city beaches, which are rather like those pop-up shops that appear for a while and then are gone again. And there are different types and even colours of sand. So if you are using it for building purposes I imagine you might want black volcanic sand for some things and white sand for others. And if you can transport of stone - we know someone whose family exports Galician granite - then why not sand as well.
Anything can be sold. Some things probably should not be for sale. There was a report recently about women donating their eggs. Fertility treatment is very costly if you don't qualify to receive it via the NHS. It seems that some places offer either a reduction or even a waiving of fees if the women concerned agree to donate their surplus eggs which are harvested and then not used. In this way women who for whatever reason cannot produce their own eggs can still undergo treatment. Many women agree to donate their eggs anyway. Understandably so as they have personal experience of the heartbreak of wanting a baby and not being able to conceive. This has, of course, provoked a lot of debate about whether receiving treatment in return for donating amounts to women "selling" their eggs. How ethical is it to sell eggs?
And then there is organ-donating; films have been made about this one.
There was a discussion on the radio about people who undergo dialysis and are waiting for a suitable kidney donor to turn up. Because we all have two kidneys it is possible for a living donor to offer their services. Nowadays people are putting their stories on social media in an appeal to find a donor. And donors offer their services. Of course, not everyone is equally successful. It all depends how appealing you are. Children inevitably attract a lot of attention. And unfortunately not everyone who offers is a perfect match.
Now, to my mind, it would seem logical that if you have offered to donate a kidney to someone and then find that you don't match genetically, the logical thing would be for your data to be put in a database so they could match you to some other recipient. For some would-be donors this works fine. However, some people only want to donate to the person they have chosen from social media. How odd! Naturally the medical people are concerned that this is leading to a kind of renal failure beauty contest and they are rather worried about it. In America there is a company that matches donors to recipients, for a fee, but in the UK the ethics people are worried about that as well.
I must say that the prospect of a company making money out of the misfortunes of ill people does leave a nasty taste in the mouth. But I am pretty sure it would not be the first time. Don't big pharmaceutical companies work that way already?
Other things going on:
We now have a Labour Party mayor of Greater Manchester. Will life here be radically different as a result? We wait to find out.
Local council elections have taken place in various parts of the country, but not here, and we have seen UKIP losing hand over fist. Unfortunately their places have gone mostly to the Conservatives and Labour has also lost a large number of places.
Some say this is the price Labour pays for having Mr Corbyn as leader.
I am not entirely convinced!
I suppose it depends on what the sand is required for. After all, not all sand is intended for beaches, although places like Paris must import sand from somewhere to create their inner-city beaches, which are rather like those pop-up shops that appear for a while and then are gone again. And there are different types and even colours of sand. So if you are using it for building purposes I imagine you might want black volcanic sand for some things and white sand for others. And if you can transport of stone - we know someone whose family exports Galician granite - then why not sand as well.
Anything can be sold. Some things probably should not be for sale. There was a report recently about women donating their eggs. Fertility treatment is very costly if you don't qualify to receive it via the NHS. It seems that some places offer either a reduction or even a waiving of fees if the women concerned agree to donate their surplus eggs which are harvested and then not used. In this way women who for whatever reason cannot produce their own eggs can still undergo treatment. Many women agree to donate their eggs anyway. Understandably so as they have personal experience of the heartbreak of wanting a baby and not being able to conceive. This has, of course, provoked a lot of debate about whether receiving treatment in return for donating amounts to women "selling" their eggs. How ethical is it to sell eggs?
And then there is organ-donating; films have been made about this one.
There was a discussion on the radio about people who undergo dialysis and are waiting for a suitable kidney donor to turn up. Because we all have two kidneys it is possible for a living donor to offer their services. Nowadays people are putting their stories on social media in an appeal to find a donor. And donors offer their services. Of course, not everyone is equally successful. It all depends how appealing you are. Children inevitably attract a lot of attention. And unfortunately not everyone who offers is a perfect match.
Now, to my mind, it would seem logical that if you have offered to donate a kidney to someone and then find that you don't match genetically, the logical thing would be for your data to be put in a database so they could match you to some other recipient. For some would-be donors this works fine. However, some people only want to donate to the person they have chosen from social media. How odd! Naturally the medical people are concerned that this is leading to a kind of renal failure beauty contest and they are rather worried about it. In America there is a company that matches donors to recipients, for a fee, but in the UK the ethics people are worried about that as well.
I must say that the prospect of a company making money out of the misfortunes of ill people does leave a nasty taste in the mouth. But I am pretty sure it would not be the first time. Don't big pharmaceutical companies work that way already?
Other things going on:
We now have a Labour Party mayor of Greater Manchester. Will life here be radically different as a result? We wait to find out.
Local council elections have taken place in various parts of the country, but not here, and we have seen UKIP losing hand over fist. Unfortunately their places have gone mostly to the Conservatives and Labour has also lost a large number of places.
Some say this is the price Labour pays for having Mr Corbyn as leader.
I am not entirely convinced!
Thursday, 4 May 2017
Paranoia and crises!
We seem to have been seeing prime ministerial behaviour that smacks of trumpism! First of all there was the story of the meeting in Leeds where the people who worked in the factory were sent home and the place was filled with Conservative supporters. And now we have a visit to Cornwall where reporters were said to have been locked in a room so that they could not film her visit. Later reports said that they were not actually locked in but it was admitted that they were shut in a room and banned from filming.
The press appear to have got their own back by posting very unflattering photos of Theresa May eating chips and looking very uncomfortable about it.
Here is a link to a report of the Cornwall visit.
This deciding who can report fully sounds a little like POTUS selecting which reporters can ask him questions. And there have even been reports of our Theresa only allowing questions that have been pre-vetted.
Here's another bit of odd behaviour. EU people have been saying, rather predictably, that Britain is not going to get an easy ride in the Brexit negotiations. Our Theresa reacted by saying that such comments amounted to interfering with the forthcoming elections. I suppose the fear is that people will hear this and immediately vote against Mrs May. That way paranoia lies!
But now the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, who usually seems rather pro-Conservative and much more anti-Corbyn, has been speaking out against Mrs May, even accusing her of lying! Here is an excerpt from an article about it:
"Fighting talk
The Prime Minister accused the EU of interfering with the UK’s general election on 3 May. Sources had leaked damning accounts of a dinner May attended with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker a couple of days before. The details of that meeting were humiliating for the Prime Minister. So May accused the “bureaucrats of Brussels” of meddling in the coming election. She also said that such interference showed how “tough” Brexit talks are going to be. And May urged people to vote Conservative, promising a stern position from her party in those negotiations
How are you not dizzy, May?
But even the Tories’ usual cheerleader, Kuenssberg, had to point out that there was nothing stern about May’s stern warning. As it was in itself a U-turn from that very morning. The BBC‘s political editor asserted that May’s Brexit Secretary and Chancellor had claimed the government won’t engage with “megaphone diplomacy” earlier in the day.
Yet by mid-afternoon, May was doing exactly that. Directly outside 10 Downing Street no less. As Kuenssberg wrote:
'She just used one of the most powerful microphones in the country for blunt diplomacy indeed.'"
Today, as a kind of dry run for the government election in June, we had elections for the Mayor of Greater Manchester. We began to get a little paranoid ourselves as our voting papers failed to arrive at the house. We knew we had registered and so we went along to the polling station, complete with ID just in case it was needed. All was well. We were allowed to vote. Our fears that someone might have stolen our votes (after all, there are so many stories of election fraud going around at present) proved to be unfounded. Crisis over!
And another crisis has been averted: British-grown iceberg lettuces and other salad ingredients are back on supermarket shelves this week – many at bargain prices – ending the much talked about "vegetable crisis" triggered by the wet Spanish weather earlier in the year messing up heir market garden businesses.
Phew! What a relief!
The press appear to have got their own back by posting very unflattering photos of Theresa May eating chips and looking very uncomfortable about it.
Here is a link to a report of the Cornwall visit.
This deciding who can report fully sounds a little like POTUS selecting which reporters can ask him questions. And there have even been reports of our Theresa only allowing questions that have been pre-vetted.
Here's another bit of odd behaviour. EU people have been saying, rather predictably, that Britain is not going to get an easy ride in the Brexit negotiations. Our Theresa reacted by saying that such comments amounted to interfering with the forthcoming elections. I suppose the fear is that people will hear this and immediately vote against Mrs May. That way paranoia lies!
But now the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg, who usually seems rather pro-Conservative and much more anti-Corbyn, has been speaking out against Mrs May, even accusing her of lying! Here is an excerpt from an article about it:
"Fighting talk
The Prime Minister accused the EU of interfering with the UK’s general election on 3 May. Sources had leaked damning accounts of a dinner May attended with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker a couple of days before. The details of that meeting were humiliating for the Prime Minister. So May accused the “bureaucrats of Brussels” of meddling in the coming election. She also said that such interference showed how “tough” Brexit talks are going to be. And May urged people to vote Conservative, promising a stern position from her party in those negotiations
How are you not dizzy, May?
But even the Tories’ usual cheerleader, Kuenssberg, had to point out that there was nothing stern about May’s stern warning. As it was in itself a U-turn from that very morning. The BBC‘s political editor asserted that May’s Brexit Secretary and Chancellor had claimed the government won’t engage with “megaphone diplomacy” earlier in the day.
Yet by mid-afternoon, May was doing exactly that. Directly outside 10 Downing Street no less. As Kuenssberg wrote:
'She just used one of the most powerful microphones in the country for blunt diplomacy indeed.'"
Today, as a kind of dry run for the government election in June, we had elections for the Mayor of Greater Manchester. We began to get a little paranoid ourselves as our voting papers failed to arrive at the house. We knew we had registered and so we went along to the polling station, complete with ID just in case it was needed. All was well. We were allowed to vote. Our fears that someone might have stolen our votes (after all, there are so many stories of election fraud going around at present) proved to be unfounded. Crisis over!
And another crisis has been averted: British-grown iceberg lettuces and other salad ingredients are back on supermarket shelves this week – many at bargain prices – ending the much talked about "vegetable crisis" triggered by the wet Spanish weather earlier in the year messing up heir market garden businesses.
Phew! What a relief!
Tuesday, 2 May 2017
Perceptions!
The ups and downs of campaign trails go on. In France, Marine Le Pen, addressing supporters on May Day, pinched bits of a speech by one of her rivals, François Fillon but her aides said it was not plagiarism but praise. Imitation, or copying, is the sincerest form of flattery. Her rival for next Sunday's second round elections, Macron, still seems to lead in polls; I remain fearful and sceptical. Pundits say he would be good for France and Europe but bad for Britain and Brexit. Are any of them really likely to make Brexit easy for us though?
Over here, we have Diane Abbott giving a disastrous interview and, quite separately, Tony Blair threatening to go out on the campaign trail. What chance does Labour really have? On the other hand, we have also seen film of Theresa May trying to do some knocking on doors and getting no response. And there was an occasion recently when she apparently talked about fighting against tourism when she really meant terrorism. It's hard when your tongue betrays you. So much for strong and stable!
Over the water Donald Trump "has expressed confusion as to why the American civil war took place and claimed that President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the war started, “was really angry” about the conflict". Lots of us have big gaps in our knowledge of our country's history. The trick is not to make big public statements that display that knowledge!
Here's another transatlantic story:
"An Australian man has been handcuffed and locked up in a US detention centre after apparently breaching his visa conditions by just over one hour.
Sydney man Baxter Reid, 26, was in the US on a five-year visa and had travelled to Canada as part of a requirement for him to exit and re-enter America every six months to keep his visa valid.
But his American girlfriend Heather Kansco said Reid was arrested by US Border Patrol officers on 23 April after delays receiving clearance to cross into Canada meant he breached his visa conditions by just over an hour."
That sound a little bit like some dirty dealing to me. However, the young man's father, Tom Reid, said his son seemed “in good spirits”. He went on, “He’s a kid with a sense of adventure, travelling overseas and living life so he doesn’t deserve this.”
I find it interesting that the Australian father describes his 26 year-old as a kid. In Mexico he would be well past childhood. In some states there they ignore the law that says 18 should be the minimum age for marriage for both men and women. The defiant states maintain that 14 is fine for girls and 16 for boys. As regards informal unions, even younger girls are escaping from a possibly abusive home and poverty, dropping out of school and into a relationship, usually with an older man. "Of the 320,000-plus Mexican girls between the ages of 12 and 17 who are cohabiting, nearly 70% are with a partner who is at least 11 years their senior, according to a report commissioned by the Ford Foundation."
It's amazing how perceptions differ from one place to another!
Over here, we have Diane Abbott giving a disastrous interview and, quite separately, Tony Blair threatening to go out on the campaign trail. What chance does Labour really have? On the other hand, we have also seen film of Theresa May trying to do some knocking on doors and getting no response. And there was an occasion recently when she apparently talked about fighting against tourism when she really meant terrorism. It's hard when your tongue betrays you. So much for strong and stable!
Over the water Donald Trump "has expressed confusion as to why the American civil war took place and claimed that President Andrew Jackson, who died 16 years before the war started, “was really angry” about the conflict". Lots of us have big gaps in our knowledge of our country's history. The trick is not to make big public statements that display that knowledge!
Here's another transatlantic story:
"An Australian man has been handcuffed and locked up in a US detention centre after apparently breaching his visa conditions by just over one hour.
Sydney man Baxter Reid, 26, was in the US on a five-year visa and had travelled to Canada as part of a requirement for him to exit and re-enter America every six months to keep his visa valid.
But his American girlfriend Heather Kansco said Reid was arrested by US Border Patrol officers on 23 April after delays receiving clearance to cross into Canada meant he breached his visa conditions by just over an hour."
That sound a little bit like some dirty dealing to me. However, the young man's father, Tom Reid, said his son seemed “in good spirits”. He went on, “He’s a kid with a sense of adventure, travelling overseas and living life so he doesn’t deserve this.”
I find it interesting that the Australian father describes his 26 year-old as a kid. In Mexico he would be well past childhood. In some states there they ignore the law that says 18 should be the minimum age for marriage for both men and women. The defiant states maintain that 14 is fine for girls and 16 for boys. As regards informal unions, even younger girls are escaping from a possibly abusive home and poverty, dropping out of school and into a relationship, usually with an older man. "Of the 320,000-plus Mexican girls between the ages of 12 and 17 who are cohabiting, nearly 70% are with a partner who is at least 11 years their senior, according to a report commissioned by the Ford Foundation."
It's amazing how perceptions differ from one place to another!
Monday, 1 May 2017
Some thoughts about parks, garden sheds and reading!
In the park in Uppermill at weekends and on bank holidays there is a man blowing bubbles. I use the term "blowing bubbles" very loosely. He uses a string attached to two sticks, dangles the string in a bucket of bubble water and occasionally produces huge bubbles. Often he produces no bubbles at all. Just once in a while he successfully manoeuvres the bubble making equipment to put a bubble round a bubble round a bubble, a quite impressive feat usually ruined by some child coming along and popping them all. In pursuit of his chosen profession he wears a brightly coloured coat and a felt jester's hat, complete with bells. People with small children stop and tolerantly watch his performance, encouraging the children to,put coins in his collecting box.
He has been doing this for years and I have always found his antics rather disturbing. Our daughter is much more accepting of him now than she was a teenager. Back then she referred to him as "that creepy bloke who blows bubbles in the park". Now, presumably informed by her experience in teacher training, she tells me that he is probably somewhere on the special needs spectrum. She almost admires his willingness to play the fool, especially as he probably comes in for some abuse from local teenager, although from what I have seen most of them limit their activity to popping his bubbles, at least while there are adults around.
Also in the park is Granny Annie's ice cream van. I used to wonder why it was called Granny Annie's when the ice cream seller was so clearly an ice cream MAN. That was before I realised that the ice cream MAN was in fact a stoutish, rather muscular woman with a masculine haircut and a deep, gruff voice. Her heart, however, seems to be in the right place; she is always kind and friendly to the children and gets very agitated about the speed at which some drivers enter the carpark! Here is a bit of a conversation I overheard at the ice cream van yesterday:
Father to small boy: This is proper ice cream, this is.
Granny Annie: Indeed. I don't sell any of that Mr Softee, Tasty Freeze rubbish.
Father: Frozen sterilised milk, that's all that is.
Granny Annie:They say pregnant women shouldn't have it. That shows it's bad.
Father: .....
Granny Annie: Mrs Thatcher invented that Mr Softee stuff. That's enough to put me off it!
Well, I have heard Mrs Thatcher blamed for many of the ills of the modern world but bad ice cream is a new one. However, I am quite prepared to accept this addition to the list. So out of solidarity I bought a 99! (For the uninformed, a 99 is an ice cream cone with a Cadbury's flake stuck in it, best eaten without coloured sauce or sprinkles!)
I read yesterday about a new trend in getting away from it all. You can rent a log cabin for a weekend, or presumably longer, of relaxation and roughing it in a countryside location. Not quite my idea of a fun holiday these days. I think our camping (or even glamping) days are done.
Former prime minister David Cameron, on the other hand, is reported to have invested something like £25,000 pound in a garden shed, complete with furnishings, including a bed, and painted and decorated tastefully, the decor chosen by his wife. As we know she is fashion trained! In fact it is not just a garden shed but a shepherd's hut. He must have been listening to the Archers; I am pretty sure that Linda Snell has one in her garden and lets it out to B&aB clients. Mr Cameron plans to use his as a retreat to write in but Mrs Cameron would like to use it as a sewing room or some such and one of his offspring would like to have it as a wendy house and another as an alternative bedroom!
This is, of course, a problem with garden sheds. Everyone has a different use for them. When I was a kid we used my father's shed as a kind of gang hut when it rained, perching on his shelves and work surfaces to gossip.
When Phil and I bought our shed, having no garage in which to store overspill stuff from the house, our neighbour assumed it was a wendy house for the children. We put this misconception down to her being such an elderly lady, almost ten years younger than I am now but seemingly ancient to our younger selves!
Yesterday the 'week on books' feature in the Observer had a piece on how people who declare themselves to be readers on dating apps are more successful at finding partners. It went on:
"And being a reader can confer even more advantages. In 2015, the Reading Agency charity analysed 51 papers and reports and discovered that reading resulted in benefits including increased empathy, better relationships with others, reduced symptoms of depression and risks of dementia and improved wellbeing throughout life.
So being an avid reader makes you more popular, more successful, happier, sexier and, all in all, a better human being than someone who isn't. But people who read a lot already knew this".
There you go!
He has been doing this for years and I have always found his antics rather disturbing. Our daughter is much more accepting of him now than she was a teenager. Back then she referred to him as "that creepy bloke who blows bubbles in the park". Now, presumably informed by her experience in teacher training, she tells me that he is probably somewhere on the special needs spectrum. She almost admires his willingness to play the fool, especially as he probably comes in for some abuse from local teenager, although from what I have seen most of them limit their activity to popping his bubbles, at least while there are adults around.
Also in the park is Granny Annie's ice cream van. I used to wonder why it was called Granny Annie's when the ice cream seller was so clearly an ice cream MAN. That was before I realised that the ice cream MAN was in fact a stoutish, rather muscular woman with a masculine haircut and a deep, gruff voice. Her heart, however, seems to be in the right place; she is always kind and friendly to the children and gets very agitated about the speed at which some drivers enter the carpark! Here is a bit of a conversation I overheard at the ice cream van yesterday:
Father to small boy: This is proper ice cream, this is.
Granny Annie: Indeed. I don't sell any of that Mr Softee, Tasty Freeze rubbish.
Father: Frozen sterilised milk, that's all that is.
Granny Annie:They say pregnant women shouldn't have it. That shows it's bad.
Father: .....
Granny Annie: Mrs Thatcher invented that Mr Softee stuff. That's enough to put me off it!
Well, I have heard Mrs Thatcher blamed for many of the ills of the modern world but bad ice cream is a new one. However, I am quite prepared to accept this addition to the list. So out of solidarity I bought a 99! (For the uninformed, a 99 is an ice cream cone with a Cadbury's flake stuck in it, best eaten without coloured sauce or sprinkles!)
I read yesterday about a new trend in getting away from it all. You can rent a log cabin for a weekend, or presumably longer, of relaxation and roughing it in a countryside location. Not quite my idea of a fun holiday these days. I think our camping (or even glamping) days are done.
Former prime minister David Cameron, on the other hand, is reported to have invested something like £25,000 pound in a garden shed, complete with furnishings, including a bed, and painted and decorated tastefully, the decor chosen by his wife. As we know she is fashion trained! In fact it is not just a garden shed but a shepherd's hut. He must have been listening to the Archers; I am pretty sure that Linda Snell has one in her garden and lets it out to B&aB clients. Mr Cameron plans to use his as a retreat to write in but Mrs Cameron would like to use it as a sewing room or some such and one of his offspring would like to have it as a wendy house and another as an alternative bedroom!
This is, of course, a problem with garden sheds. Everyone has a different use for them. When I was a kid we used my father's shed as a kind of gang hut when it rained, perching on his shelves and work surfaces to gossip.
When Phil and I bought our shed, having no garage in which to store overspill stuff from the house, our neighbour assumed it was a wendy house for the children. We put this misconception down to her being such an elderly lady, almost ten years younger than I am now but seemingly ancient to our younger selves!
Yesterday the 'week on books' feature in the Observer had a piece on how people who declare themselves to be readers on dating apps are more successful at finding partners. It went on:
"And being a reader can confer even more advantages. In 2015, the Reading Agency charity analysed 51 papers and reports and discovered that reading resulted in benefits including increased empathy, better relationships with others, reduced symptoms of depression and risks of dementia and improved wellbeing throughout life.
So being an avid reader makes you more popular, more successful, happier, sexier and, all in all, a better human being than someone who isn't. But people who read a lot already knew this".
There you go!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
