blighted

Niall Ferguson:
you can tell it clearly troubles him that there will soon be a minaret on the Oxford skyline. it gets a mention in his new book and i've read him note this some time ago somewhere else. it genuinely does seem to sit a little uneasily for him cos otherwise we wouldn't be having this new observation couched in much the same terms, and with the clear impression behind his writing that this is a bit of a scab for him. well, that's the inference i'm getting for at least the second time, following a decent passage of time.

in this new book, it looks like he's trying to pass it off as part of some neat aside, a pun if you will, about Edward Gibbon but - lor knows - that just sounds bollocks.

so have some fruit tea and leave it out mate.

(to be fair to Niall, he does describe himself as an optimist and Americans who don't want anything to do with the outside world get short shrift from him.)

MAKE IT IN THE STUDIO and NOT IN THE GARAGE

RIP DESMOND DEKKER
-

i didn't know until i read the obits but apparently Rugova's grandpa spent 20 years of his life building a kulla - a 'tower' - using marble blocks. some great photos here you see.
Rugova cited his grandfather as a patient influence.

well i'd have certainly taken some gemstones off the man!
and that scarf, always the scarf.
(Carl Barat in Burberry please.)

+

now then, Mark Mardell can be quite nimble.
days after i slag off Auntie, you have to hand it to him on the brandy tip.
9am, "clear grape brandy", "It's really very good: fiery and strong but very smooth and fruity as well".

_

I am Ramush Haradinaj and I am looking for Isuf Hoxha and Hajrullah Gashi

even by its own miserably low standards the lead editorial in Friday’s Daily Express was – to paraphrase General Melchett – perhaps a “crowning turd in the water pipe”.

unusually, some of their own correspondents wrote sympathetically in the face of human misery: the day’s front page was about people risking the much longer crossing from the Canary Islands to the European mainland, rather than trying the Straits because of changes in the Spanish enclaves etc.
it’s frankly quite rare for people emigrating from Mauritania or wherever, scrabbling toward Fortress Europe, to get humane coverage in the Express, so this was at least something to be grateful for.

but the editorial appeared to be unaware of any of this, and seemed quite different in tone and approach (though still with that reassuring lack of complexity and grey areas you get with the Express).

citing the usual laundry list of grievances and noting that the BBC now agreed with them (off the back of a Newsnight programme, apparently; i saw but seconds of the show in question, which had Jeremy Paxman spouting some noxious cobblers, so i switched over), you could tell the reader was in for a treat at the end.
(incidentally, have you noticed just how degraded some of the BBC’s domestic news programming has been getting of late. the Six O’Clock News has been getting increasingly parochial, more than ever it seems, over the last several months to few years or so.)

the final paragraph was magnificent, absurdly disingenuous, latching onto the ultimate ludicrous strawman as the writer reached their triumphant conclusion, that Maybe those worried by plans to allow crime-ridden Bulgaria and Romania to join the European Union next year and Turkey to follow can now voice such sentiments without being smeared as racist by Left-wingers, proven as wrong on migration in the 21st century as they were on the Cold War in the 20th.

the Express is a ‘you couldn’t make it up’-type tabloid, fond of the common sense approach, despairing at this mad politically correct world we now live in (one of their star columnists was today seeing a Third World despotism take over Britain).

well, no, you couldn’t, could you?

She was not a health tourist - she simply had the misfortune to fall ill here.

I accept that we have to have rules to stop people from taking advantage of the NHS but they should not discriminate against people with genuine need because of this obsession about immigration.

I think it is appalling that a civilised country like Britain treats someone like that.

Her death was unnecessary.

Richard Stein, who represented Ese Elizabeth Alabi.

labelled 'health tourist' by some, she died on Monday, aged 29.
she leaves behind three young children and the man who loved her.

three points, for now

some good news, being Gurbandurdy Durdykuliev was released last month (only found out today; he plans to sue the govt for compo to the tune of 5 mil American)

Alex de Waal is being clear about what he thinks may come out of the talks in Abuja; last month his mate Julie Flint was just as truthful here.

All Chadians have come out to make their choice, the choice of their hearts

Mr Deby, yesterday

-'The North Korean Government’s Control of Food and the Risk of Hunger': report

"Kuda mne devat'sia? S obshchestvennost'iu tak s obshchestvennost'iu"

Yeltsin meant to create a pure pyramid of power
-Lilia Shevtsova, 'Yeltsin's Russia: Myths and Reality'

Thus, Putin did not inherit a superpresidential order, he sought to build one.

Eugene Huskey, 2001

It's a scandalous thing when - just think about the figures - a fifth of the legal acts adopted in the regions contradict...basic law
Putin Announces Major Revamping of Senate, Rossiyskaya gazeta, 19/05/2000

victory

- how do you spell distortion?

the conservative and populist press seem to be almost relishing the chance to editorialise about the possibility of some disillusioned Labour voters switching to the BNP, noting Labour have only themselves to blame.

gripes about the scale of migration, housing, and who pays for what are wrong when they home in on scapegoating, and don’t sit too easily alongside protestations that these critics are kindly types who have the interests of immigrants at heart (obvious innit, why those chattering classes want freer borders, they trumpet).

there again, these are – you suppose – those sections of the media that are tirelessly arguing against the tagging of asylum seekers.

oh, no, wait a minute.

RIP Muriel Spark

Oliver in Minsk

There is nothing to justify this act

Jalal Eddin al-Sagheer

whatever the truth of the status quo or no heat and light, it can’t be denied that M. de Villepin enjoys a bit of shabby economic nationalism.

as it's to the immense credit of Italy in offering asylum to the outrageously persecuted Afghan Abdul Rahman, it would be good if other aspects of Italian asylum now came under similar intense international scrutiny.
but that's not going to happen is it

superb analogy in this week's Economist, Israel as middle-aged homeowner [results], that "relations with the neighbour seem beyond repair, but the house is sturdy."

Population 47,000, with 5,000 unemployed, 58 locals dead in the wars, and 15 factories shut.

Otpor member Mile Veljkovic describes Pozarevac in statistics

The water is up to my chest. The bosses got the time wrong. I can’t get back in time.
- the last words of Guo Binglong to his wife.

Guo spoke with his wife, who was in China, on a mobile phone. Guo was one of perhaps 23 people (21 bodies were recovered) who died in Morecambe Bay when they drowned in rising tides in 2004.

---

It was all over the press shortly after the tragedy, that the MP for Morecambe and Lunesdale, Geraldine Smith, had written to the Immigration Service in June of 2003 alerting ministers to the dangers that illegal cockle pickers in the Bay faced.

A letter she sent to London had urged the Immigration Service to become involved; saying one of her constituents was on the Bay when police swept the area for tax evaders.
Smith wrote that Unable to speak English and under the control of a gangmaster, these people were being paid one-fifth of the standard rate for their work. They were also being transported 20 to a boat in waters renowned for their currents and quicksands, where an experienced local fisherman would not consider carrying more than six.

Fiona MacTaggart – Home Office Minister – cited a lack of resources as why Smith’s letter would not be acted on.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) confirmed that Morecambe Bay was to be regarded as a place of work, and therefore under their jurisdiction. Telling an inquisitive journalist they were familiar with a “near-miss” that occurred in December 2003, involving Chinese workers, they assured the journalist they had offered “advice”. The deaths of these cockle pickers, regarded as an “industrial accident”, might have been prevented had the HSE served a prohibition notice. That, incidentally, would have been a statutory duty with any other business (in the days following the tragedy, able local policing was extremely effective in preventing anyone from getting out on to the sands).

P.S.
During the summer of 2003, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) shut the activities of the cockle beds on the Thames (The notoriously dangerous Morecambe Bay cockle beds are being intensively harvested because tests by the Food Standards Agency, which may have produced false results, have closed the best cockle beds elsewhere, as the Guardian noted), in the Wash and at Craner’s beloved South Wales.
Immediately at stake were the position of many workers and the future of much of the UK’s (worth £20 million to the economy annually) cockle trade.
The FSA took the decision to shut down beds at these places due to what it said was the discovery of an unidentified toxin in the cockles (to protect human health, we would do the same thing again, Dr Andrew Wodge of the agency later told the BBC’s John Humphrys). FSA scientists had been experimenting on mice, injecting them with cockle-meat. The meat was being made to adhere together due, basically, to toxic glue. The lab-mice were dying as a result.
That November, FSA researchers began to get rid of what they termed “solvent carry-over.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, after the elimination of this factor, other mice who were undergoing the experiments did not die.
With science this flawed, you might have thought that the FSA would perhaps rethink their approach and maybe even be a little contrite, but their Dr Wodge continued to insist to Radio Four that the agency had done nothing wrong.
The select committee for environmental, food and rural affairs – whose chairperson (at the original time of this post) is Labour man Austin Mitchell – was less friendly to the FSA than the Today programme. Citing a very real and unnecessary damage to cockling, the committee suggested the industry must be compensated, and ways should be found to do that.

more fun and games with Rita Verdonk

The grave unearthed in Crni Vrh (which means black peak in English) contained the remains of 629 men and boys.
One of the children was 18 months old when he was killed.

We'll stand trial as often as we have to. It'll continue as it has because the refugees and their needs actually set the agenda.

Jim Corbett