Ali's Words of Wisdom: Read on Below...

My dad: 1939-2011

2011-06-19T00:26:00.002+01:00

Earlier this year my dad died very suddenly. An extremely fit and active man who was working full time at the age of 71, he was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia and died just four days later. In memory of him, this is the text of the tribute I read out at his funeral.
I shall never forget the surreal day he died. Just a week before he had been enjoying the final week of his holiday merrily riding on a boat at Iguassu Falls in Brazil. I had put together a selection of his holiday photos for him to enjoy in his hospital bed. But when I arrived at the hospital with my mum and my sister we were told that he had passed away just five minutes beforehand. His loss has left a big hole in my life in many different ways. But his spirit of curiosity and adventure well and truly lives on.

Grief is challenging, sometimes impossible, to navigate. It is like climbing a steep mountain shrouded in mist. It is odd how a feeling so empty can weigh so heavy. However hard you try, you can never quite shake it off.
Not many people leave the world at the age of 71 without retiring from work or life. He did.
In some ways being retired and sedentary would never have suited him. Far worse still to be bed-ridden and incapacitated, suffering and struggling for many weeks or months….with greatly diminished capability.
So, amongst the shock and sudden grief, maybe there was some mercy somewhere.
All of us here never really had the chance to properly say goodbye. But there are plenty of warm memories which we have to share.
For me, every day I spent with my dad, sometimes every hour almost, there was an abundance of moments to make me smile.
We are not only here to mourn a death. But also to celebrate a life.
So let us irrigate our sadness and illuminate our grief with one or two cheerful recollections:

Early LifeNot many people finish their working days on the same land a stone’s throw from where they were born having devoted nearly 50 years to the same business. From an early age it was clear he liked being outside.
By the age of 12 he could be found looking after 2 pigs, a flock of flapping hens and driving a tractor.
I shudder to think what boy of 12 in this day and age would be allowed anywhere near such things without reams of risk assessment paperwork or child safety regulation compliance
My father was a remarkably active, tough and energetic man. Perhaps the most active and boyish 71 year old you knew of.
Incredibly dedicated to his business. When it came to the work-life balance there was none. They were the same thing.
Less than one year ago he was in this church for my sister’s wedding…one of the rare moments in his life when he was actually rendered speechless.
He greatly enjoyed playing and watching sport. First rugby - always a keen and knowledgeable watcher - and then later on cricket and football as an Arsenal supporter.
Last November I took him to watch Arsenal. They beat Aston Villa 4-2, painful for me but entertaining for him.
Barely 18 months ago I was stood proudly with him on the summit of Snowdon, no mean achievement for a septuagenarian.
In his working life…
He was always up a ladder or down a ditch or with his head submerged under the bonnet of a piece of old machinery
He had a knack for fixing and repairing things
I’d seen him bang his head or slice his hand open, which he would casually and cheerfully shrug off.
His hands would often be coated in mud but they belonged to the soil
He lived and breathed the outdoor life, ploughing the furrows of a full and active subsistence. Always enthusiastically absorbed and with purpose in whatever he was doing.

Being in his company was rarely anything other than entertaining.
With a furrowed brow he once asked me where his glasses were. Had I seen them? I replied that yes I had seen them. They were sitting on his forehead.
On another occasion - having stopped to take a photo of a French chateau on holiday - his glasses managed to smoothly pour themselves out of his shirt pocket and deposit themselves in a roadside ditch
And on a similar theme…He once came home and managed to drop his keys in the dustbin.
People’s names could be merrily mixed up or muddled around.
Foreign language forays were legendary. Unleashing his limited Italian vocabulary on the population of Spanish speaking Argentina was his most recent contribution.
Or ask my mother who watched him collect the wrong suitcase from the airport in Buenos Aires and drag it all the way up to the hotel room. Still, he always liked a challenge.
Modern technology presented its challenges. He had an email address but seldom managed to locate it. I remember once receiving 6 consecutive blank messages
Mobile phones were even worse. Once we had got beyond establishing what the green and red buttons did, I think we’d reached the ceiling of possibility.
My dad was the only man I knew who could answer a call by simultaneously terminating it!
Whether it was something he said or something he did, it usually left you with a smile on your face.

Aged 70, scaling Crib Goch ridge, Snowdonia

A few years ago we were descending a mountain in Snowdonia. I heard a noise behind me. When I turned round there was my dad sliding past me on his backside in a small stream. Somehow he managed to halt himself just in time. He picked himself up, shook himself dry then had a good laugh about it.
Laughter was often the best medicine for my dad.
The fates of the weather were central to his existence. He could often be heard to curse or marvel at the elements and often spent a great deal of his time and energy, at various hours of day and night, attempting to thwart or negate their effects.
In particular, the BBC weather forecast after the 10 o’clock news was a religious devotion. Sadly, more often than not it passed him by because he had surrendered himself into a deep noisy sleep in front of the fire, worn out by his exertions.

Nonetheless, my dad was a man of remarkable energy and action. Never one to sit still or hold back.
In his later years he found himself driving a tank and up in a hot air balloon to celebrate various birthdays. Itineraries for holidays left very little room for lounging or lazing on a beach
He was a man of adventurous spirit. It took him - and my mother - to many corners of the world. New Zealand, South Africa, India, driving independently around Cuba - again with no Spanish - and finally, and perhaps most dramatically, South America.
As recently as a few weeks ago he was bounding up mountains, marvelling at glaciers and enthusiastically driving a large truck across spectacular deserts in Argentina.
He often revelled in venturing into places he wasn’t supposed to go A trait which, for better or worse, I may have inherited.
The rougher the road the more rewarding the journey and the more absorbing the story.

Indeed of all the supposedly dangerous places I travelled to around the world he would nearly always express a keen interest in what they were like rather than concern for me being there.
Plunge in head first and give it a go. That was my dad’s approach.
He always encouraged other people to have a go too. Have a go at things. It is a wonderful attribute to carry with you in life. And what of his own character?
Well there was plenty of it.
He was never afraid of hard work. In fact, he knew no other way.
“Crack on! Don’t hang around! Get stuck in!”
These were his mottos. No time to waste.
Take the hands on approach and leave the Health & Safety manual in its rightful place gathering dust.
Yet he always had time for people, to chat to them, to give advice, even to lend a hand or fix something.
He was more than capable of seeing the good in all sorts of people, even those who sought to take advantage of his good nature.
He was unceasingly good-humoured, easy going and his company lively, always good value for giving as good as he got.
He was always willing to engage in banter or make a joke with his loud distinctive voice which seemed to dominate a room.
Yet he was also unfailingly curious and genuinely interested in the wider world. Eager to broaden his understanding.
He was whole-hearted in most things he did. Never shy to speak up, offer an opinion or put the world to rights.
So although his hands belonged in the soil, his mind, perhaps well-furnished by a lifetime of listening to Radio 4 and regular news watching and reading, was well-informed, engaging and perceptive.
He had a priceless ability and willingness to relate to and engage with others. Particularly young people. For more than a few people - myself included - he was the first employer.
I shall certainly miss his opinions, his insights, his advice, his humour, his encouragement…even his disapproval
So when I hear the words, “Rest in Peace”, I do reflect on the irony that peaceful resting was something he didn’t do an awful lot of. Always in a hurry, he hurried through his life and, you might say, he hurried through his death too.

Life is rich. Time is precious before it overtakes all of us.

The lesson of his life is don’t let life or time pass you by.

My dad and mum in Argentina, the country where she was born and finally returned to enjoy....just a couple of weeks before my dad died.

Libyan Lessons

2011-03-05T12:30:00.012Z

Gaddafi, Gaddafi. Everyone wants to get rid of the rotten old mangy dog. But no one knows how. In fact, no one knows an awful lot about Libya at all.
A short hop across the Mediterranean from Italy, yet Libya might as well be on a distant planet for all the knowledge and insight we have had about life inside its borders.

For several years we've heard virtually nothing of substance from inside the country. Very few people bothered to speak to the Libyan people who lived under his Gaddafi's mean, repressive regime. Their voices were muted. Until now.

The country erupts in revolt against its leader and we don't have a clue what to do about it.

Gaddafi is an evil, nasty man, right? So the consensus now goes.
But he wasn’t so evil or mad when Tony Blair was embracing him, when Berlusconi was giving him the Bunga Bunga treatment, when Peter Mandelson was shamelessly spending lavish weekends with his playboy son on Corfu yachts; when the London School of Economics was financially brown-nosing itself to his shadowy ways, when BP (remember them?) was eagerly salivating over his oil millions.

The problem with Gaddafi was that he, his family and their acolytes became the state. The people of Libya existed to serve him instead of the other way around. They feared him. How ironic that he is now the one living in desperate, aggressive fear of his own people.

Like dictators and tyrants everywhere, he was simply too insecure to take criticism. Then, like a cornered lunatic, he became desperate. Gaddafi seems happy to buy in rent-a-thug militias from neighbouring Africa countries to coldly shoot and murder his own people.

Even the saintly Nelson Mandela misguidedly lavished praise on Gaddafi, warmly greeting him as his ‘brother leader’.
Because Gaddafi could be contained he could be condoned. Those oil millions made it easy for a succession of foreign leaders to do a deal and overlook the blood on his hands.
Never mind the revolting acts of bombing the Lockerbie plane and paying for the bombs of Irish terrorists. Look south across the Sahara into Africa and you will find Gaddafi’s grubby and bloody fingerprints all over the making and shaping of some of Africa’s nastiest, most brutal dictators and butchers: Charles Taylor in Liberia (now on trial in the Hague; how long before Gaddafi joins him?). Foday Sankoh in Sierra Leone and bloody involvement in Dafur.
All of this casually overlooked, outshone by those flashing dollar signs in the eyes of giddy leaders.
Blair, Mandelson, Rothschild and their greedy ilk…all of them are as unrelentingly shameless as they are self-justifying.
The shit might change but the flies stay the same.

It is very easy for many politicians to cosily hide behind the idea that international organisations like the UN are the most effective way to deter Gaddafi from murdering his own people. A strange sort of cosy consensus seems to have emerged that the UN can make everything right. Don't count on it.
If I was a Libyan on the streets of Tripoli or elsewhere fighting for my country's liberation from brutal despotism and freedom I wouldn’t count for one moment on the UN, the EU, or indeed the passive, pondering Barack Obama, helping me in any meaningful way. Fine words usually followed by impotent actions.
Remember that the UN happily allowed Libya to sit on its Human Rights Council until only a few days ago. That tells you plenty about the way the UN operates.

And when it comes to the EU, can its foreign policy representative, Baroness Ashton, gives serious, straight-faced lectures about democracy when she has never been democratically elected to anything in her entire life?

My solution?
Send in Gaddafi’s old chum Tony Blair. Lock them in a room together and let Tony talk him into exiled retirement. He’s probably got a room or two going in his Egyptian Red Sea mansion. Erect the tent extension. The two of them could sit by the sea and reminisce their good times.

Perhaps Tony Blair should also be asked to provide detailed disclosure of every visit he’s made to Libya, how much he was compensated and where exactly that money came from.

You sense that a small, but significant slice of Gaddafi’s (or rather the Libyan people’s) oil money has (via rich American banks) been channelled into funding Blair’s exotic global lifestyle. Come clean Tony.

Don’t let Gaddafi hide a thing. Don’t bomb him. Instead, flood the country with journalists and information: things he cannot fight or shoot. Instead of threatening and cornering him, why not entice him or confuse him. Why not seek to divide those around him?

There are many things we can do to enable and empower the many Libyan people bent on toppling Gaddafi. But they, the Libyan people, must do it for themselves.
The big failures of the West (as so often) has been the failure to be smart and anticipate what might be coming. The failure to sufficiently understand a country and all of its people from the inside. The failure to read and anticipate is not a Libyan failing. It is a failure all across the Middle East and beyond, down into Africa and across into Iran and Afghanistan.

That is what happens when governments (not just stuffy foreign mandarins but also the high-minded and worthy DIFD idealists) only deal with those in and around other governments instead of meaningfully engaging with ordinary people on the streets.
We criticise Gaddafi and his ilk. That is too easy to do. Yet we are as detached from his people (or subjects) as he is.

Political outrage is a common noise. And there is nothing like selective outrage too.
So to all those who condemn / deplore / express outrage over Gaddafi, why not Mugabe in Zimbabwe? Or King Abdullah in Saudi Arabia? Or Meles Zenawi in Ethiopia? Or Vladimir Putin in Russia?

Or indeed why not be outraged by the repessive, brutal dictatorship in China?
Why are any of them really any different? Or is it all a matter of degree?
Principles and values don’t seriously matter. Despite the fine words, stability and security interests nearly always trump them.

Think about that next time you hear a politician - from any party - using words like ‘totally unacceptable’ and ‘strong condemnation’, expressing outrage about how an unpleasant dictator treats its people. However much some would like us to, we cannot go around the world imposing our ways and values on other countries.

We choose our dictators, sorry allies, according to our strategic and economic interests. Many of them are far from virtuous. Lets just make our leaders be honest in admitting it.

The revolutions in the Middle East are all about the people. The best we can do is wish them well and wish them luck. They will need it.

The Audacity of Hope?

2011-02-03T11:59:00.034Z

"People should not be afraid of governments. Governments should be afraid of peoples." Egypt erupts and the world watches on. The audacity of hope...waiting to be fulfilled.

What is going to be the outcome? We can all interpret and speculate but nobody knows for sure what sort of Egypt will emerge from the debris. Like so many other countries in the Middle East (Israel included) we understand so little of the realities of day to day life inside.
Egypt didn't so much erupt as heatedly simmer over a long period of time before coming to an angry boil. It did so largely because its ruler and those dependent on him became far too detached from his own people.

Hosni Mubarak was kept afloat by £1.3 billion dollars of American aid money every year. For the Americans he provided stability. But that stability has now come at a very costly price for ordinary Egyptian people and now for the wider influence of America itself.

Mubarak is a rigid army man and, like many military dictators, his instinct will be of stubborn denial: to stay and fight to the end, however he can and whatever the cost. No humiliating exit for he. He will want to leave much later rather than sooner, if at all. By playing for time he might be able to restrengthen his grip once more, or at least secure a more comfortable and lucrative exit mitigating or eliminating potential retributions and prosecutions.

The problem extends well beyond Mubarak because of all the people within his corrupt regime who have strong vested interests in maintaining their power and privilege. The longer they manage to cling the more time they have to 'tidy' their financial affairs (international property empires and Swiss bank accounts no doubt) and bury the evidence of their wrongdoing.

One of the most striking things about the recent events in Egypt has been the caution bordering on appeasement of international politicians (particularly America) to speak up more forcefully and unequivocally for the Egyptian people.

But for decades America has decided to pick and choose its dictators. The double standards hypocrisy of preaching democracy to the rest of the world while indulging and financing nasty, repressive, but friendly allied, regimes is not easily forgotten on the Arab street. The hatred of American regimes has its roots.

Bank Ki Moon expressing his concern or Baroness Ashton, the EU foreign policy chief, calling for restraint is like a petrified pygmy trying to irrigate the Sahara desert with a watering can. These leaders are little less detached from the realities of everyday Egyptian life than Mubarak.

Tony Blair, belatedly in his role as Middle East peace supremo, decided to speak up on behalf of the Egyptian people. Perhaps he fancied stepping in for a quick, you-know-I'm-a- pretty-ordinary Egyptian kinda guy, stint as president from his Egyptian holiday home or a short commute from his Jerusalem mansion.

Yet the biggest failure of leadership here has come from Obama. He sounded more like the defence lawyer for the accused when he should have speaking up for the abused, especially when they were being battered by their own regime. What use was a nice speech about stability for the Egyptian people? Too little, too late.
Sometimes you need to call a spade a spade. You sense Obama would insist on calling it a long-handled earth moving implement until he was sure he could say otherwise.

The great pity here is that America has missed a wonderful opportunity here to redefine itself across the Middle East as being on the side of the ordinary, oppressed and stifled populations instead of being seen to be sticking up for repressive dictators.

This is precisely the sort of revolution - peaceful protests, secular, young, democratic - which America and Obama should be doing everything possible to encourage and enable instead of attaching themselves to an outdated, brutal regime.

The fact that Mubarak sent out his ugly rent-a-thugs to deliberately provoke violence was a tactic as clever as it was desperate. Organised anarchy. It is an old tactic used by dictators everywhere: sow the seeds of chaos and violence, then use the violence as a pretext to reimpose order and rule by emergency decree.

But, thanks to the remarkable will of the protestors and enabled by the power of modern technology, these despicable tactics have been transparently exposed.

The intimidation of foreign journalists - smashing cameras and beating up reporters - is also completely unnacceptable. Such bullying betrays the fear of a guilty regime caught bare-handed wanting to shoot and silence the messengers before they tell the world of the dirty truths they wish to hide and bury. Their self-preservation, it seems, comes at any cost.

Closing down the internet and shutting off mobile phone networks are not enough to silence the people. Where in the past dictators could hide many unpleasant things, in 2011 very little can remain hidden.

It is only a matter of time before Israel, a country whose regime itself exists on the perpetual reinforcement of fear and threat by pre-emptive aggression, starts scaremongering. Extremists on both sides need to empower and embolden enemies to justify their own ways and means. So why have Obama and co. been so slow, muddled and ambiguously timid in speaking up for the moderates?

It must be because they too are afraid of the consequences of losing a strategic ally. Never mind the fact that Mubarak has screwed his own people for 30 years. Lets gloss over that shall we? Because in the outdated simplicity of America's security and oil interests Mubarak was 'with' them rather than 'against' them.

The blood of the violence on the streets of Cairo is blood on the hands of Hosni Mubarak. He must be held responsible for the actions of his regime. International leaders could and should have taken a much firmer pre-emptive line in warning him that his actions in tacitly enabling the increase in violence would have retrospective consequences for him personally.

So watch now for exaggerated threats stemming from Israel about the Muslim Brotherhood turning Egypt into a supersized Hamas and Hizbollah combined. Or, even more outrageously, the prospect of Egypt becoming another Iran.

This is nonsense of course, but Israel knows that this sort of noisy threat rhetoric (deployed for years to justify the 'War on Terror') goes down well in America. So often people fear things they don't properly understand, or indeed want to understand.

Look at Turkey. It has an Islamist dominated government, but so what? The country is largely peaceful. It has free and fair elections. Its people have become significantly better off in the last ten years because the country is on the whole well governed and the economy well run. All those who like to demonise Islam and exist in fear of Islamic governments should go there to see for themselves.

Israel has a very real opportunity to address its own security issues much closer to home by opening up the prison-like entity of Gaza and engaging with Hamas. In fact, I think it is quite likely that under the next Egyptian regime, the Egypt-Gaza border will become more open. Israel can do nothing about this, nor should it.

It would be no bad thing to reassess how we think about Israel. Is it wise for American foreign policy to be dictated by a relatively small number of Zionist nutters distorting and poisoning the wider Middle East with their uncompromising, aggressive behaviour?

It cannot even be in Israel's security and economic interests to continue living in aggressive isolation from its neighbours
With a change in Egyptian regime to something far more representative of the people, Israel will have to think very hard about its own future, possibly one without such wholehearted American support for every action. Religious fanatacism must have its limits.

Obama is cerebral kind of guy. If he is to tackle the root causes of the cycle of conflict and violence in the Middle East he must start by tackling Israel itself.

Obama has an opportunity to push Israel much harder into making peace. He must stop appeasing its aggressive behaviour. He can and should withdraw or dramatically reduce the vast foreign aid America gives to Israel. He can tell them to stop the settlement building and end the apartheid of treating Palestinians as second class citizens.

Obama can stop the collective punishment, but will he?

Does Israel, hijacked by its own zealous extremists in government, really want to make peace. Does Obama have the desire to compel them to do so? Can he lose the blind committment to everything Israel does and open his eyes to the realities of Palestinians lives?

Sadly, there seems to be a large gap between what Obama says in his nice speeches and what he actually does. But then, I suppose that's called being a politician. So much for the progressive president and his audacity of hope.

Indeed can America as a country be less one-eyed and one dimensional in how it views this part of the world and the people here? If it cannot then it risks becoming irrelevant and more loathed.

The repression of stability is not what the Egyptian people want. When people lose their fear, governments that have no legitimacy are in trouble.

The lessons from Egypt and Tunisia are clear. When illegitimate governments don't respond to or even listen to the needs and aspirations or the people, they are going to be in big trouble. Bad goverance will lead to a change of governance, as it should do everywhere.

Imagine the consequences elsewhere if Egypt, the beating heart of the Arab world with 84 million people, can force out one of the world's most well backed and entrenched dictators. Dictators everywhere are already thinking harder than ever before about how to avoid a similar fate.

They ought to be very afraid. People ought to be emboldened.

Satellite television, mobile phones and internet technology have never been more prevalent in enabling information and knoweldge to be shared. Western governments should be doing everything they can to enable and bolster transparency and free expression in the darker, more repressive corners of the world.

Such things can help people start to hold their rulers to account and the rulers will have to respond.

Responding with force will have consequences. Cosmetic changes and buying off core supporters might not be enough. To bribe and bully are not enough. Military solutions to political problems don't work. Ask Hosni Mubarak.

Before, people were angry but they couldn't do anything about it. Now they can.

As one bloodied protestor said,

"Mubarak is the terrorist here. He is causing the blood on these streets! Barack Obama, are you with us or against us?"

What happened to the audacity of hope, Mr. Obama?

Opening Up The Middle East

2011-02-03T11:23:00.006Z

This is the summary extract from my book ‘Opening Up The Middle East’, which I wrote a few years ago. In light of recent events in Egypt, it seems oddly relevant.
http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/opening_up_the_middle_east/

Reflections: What Now For the Middle East?

‘Seize opportunity by the beard for it is bald from behind’
- a rather unlikely, but appropriate Bulgarian proverb.
It’s probably not a good idea to convey the meaning using such bodily
terms of reference in this part of the world, but it is accurate nonetheless.
Looking at the broad regional picture in the Middle East, many things are
complicated, but some things are clear. I don't come anywhere near to
holding all the answers, but, based on my experiences, these are my
thoughts.
The great irony of the Arab world is that, historically, it was once the
spearhead of what we now term 'globalisation'. In the West, rightly or
wrongly, today’s image of Arab people is of a people who are proud, but
angry. They once had a glorious, and at times comparatively enlightened,
past. They lived under comparatively enlightened empires and in golden
ages. But what of their future?
Firstly, for a long term solution, the entire region could revert to a very
short term US electioneering slogan Bill Clinton used in 1992,
– ‘It’s the Economy Stupid!’ Everyone becomes so preoccupied with talk of territory, guns, bombs and
religion, that economics has been virtually sidelined. Yet economics
matters. It really matters, and has been shown to matter, in other areas of
the world where long-standing conflicts are on the way to being resolved.
If a continuing sliding trajectory of economic growth, in somewhere like
the Palestinian areas, is prolonged it will do much to undermine the best
laid plans for peace.
Take China and Taiwan for example. Increased prosperity for the growing
numbers of middle class citizens has translated into greater stability.
Increased trade is an important component of acceptance and
reconciliation. When people become better off, they are less interested in
instigating or supporting violence as a means to achieve their ends. In the
words of one former Jordanian foreign minister,
‘The Americans seem to understand the importance of economics, but
their focus is never sustained.’
The irony of this, is that America became the world’s most powerful
superpower thanks in major part to the strength of its economic power.
The reality though, is that plenty of economic good can be done
internally, without the Americans.
Prosperity to the Rescue?

The Arab region as a whole has a GDP which is less than that of Spain,
yet it has six times the population. Half its people are under 25 years old.
Many economies in the Middle East have been badly managed and are
endemically corrupt. This has benefited no one, apart from a select elite.
Countries like Syria and Egypt drown in a sea of unnecessary regulations
and rules, which stifle individual initiative and enterprise.
Trading is historically inherent to the people of the Middle East. They just
need to be freed up from the oppressive and centrally planned command
economic structures, which are consistent with inflexible authoritarian
and corrupt regimes. Economies can succeed with or without the
government, but they cannot succeed against the government.
There needs to be less interference and more freedom, for people to make their
own financial decisions. Then imagine what could be achieved.
Liquidity is a major issue which must be resolved. People and companies
cannot make decisions to invest and take risks, like so many people do to
keep our own economies motoring along, without access to capital. There
is too much wasted or ‘dead’ capital, which cannot be mobilised.
A fair and reliable system for owning property would also be useful. The
banking and credit systems – which we take for granted to do things like
borrowing to start businesses and take out mortgages – are inadequate.
Funnily enough, we even obtained the word ‘cheque’ from the Arab word
‘sek’, which means draft order.
Meaningful property rights, a key tenet of any economic development,
barely exist. The rule of law and institutions are not credible, or
independent enough, for people to rely on. This, in turn, breeds more
corruption.
Satellite TV and the internet are now ensuring that
authoritarian leaders can no longer guarantee the captive audiences they
have relied on to instil propaganda and fear into. Words like democracy
and elections are sprouting up in next doors' gardens.
Politicians and arms manufacturers do not create (and cannot impose)
wealth and prosperity, and never have done. The people do, organically
from within. They do it best without the incompetence and self-serving
corruption of their own leaders and foreign occupation. Historically, the
people in this part of the world have entrepreneurial instincts, which they
should be allowed to unleash once again.
In some East Asian countries, particularly South Korea and Malaysia,
authoritarian regimes were able to gain some degree of legitimacy,
because their people became better off. However, the distance between
the rulers and the ruled in the Middle East is too much of a one way
relationship and the gap must be narrowed.
Politically, the issues of legitimacy, accountability and fair representation
are particularly sensitive ones – but why? Most leaders in this part of the
world are authoritarians without legitimacy. They are accustomed to
packaging failure as success in a very New Labour way. No one can
meaningfully argue with them, or dispute what they say. Many times the
people of this region have had to stand back from the roaring flames of
bonfires fuelled by hollow rhetorical promises, vows and pledges on
democracy and opening up, which quickly burn to miserably charred
ashes.
Looking at a bigger picture then, perhaps the Bush administration has
misunderstood and misjudged what fundamentalist Islam represents in the
Arab-Muslim consciousness. Benign ignorance of Islam became fearful
ignorance after 9/11.
The key now, as it always has been, is the Arab middle class, whom the
US should be concentrating its energies and resources supporting, not
alienating, rather the dictators who rule them badly (Saudi Arabia, Egypt
particularly). Consistent with this, will be the formation of credible
institutions and a reliable rule of law.
The billions of dollars of American aid money could be better spent elsewhere - why not graduate from aid to trade? It is folly to suggest that Israel, for instance, still needs economic assistance. It can look after itself, and the $1.5 billion used to build settlements on Palestinian land under ‘humanitarian aid’ should be more
vigorously scrutinised, not least by American taxpayers.

What I found interesting, and slightly surprising, was that of all the
countries I travelled in during my journey through the Middle East, none
of them could really be labelled a strictly Islamic country. Of course
religion plays a vital role in many of them, but each has its own
characteristics.
Syria is officially secular. Egypt is also wary of extremist
elements in the Muslim Brotherhood; Palestine, where the people are
more concerned by territory and living ordinary lives than religion;
Turkey where the importance of religion is increasingly being traded in
for opportunities of material improvement. The problem is that so many
people in the West lump together all these countries under the Islamic
banner, when the reality is more complex.

Is Democracy the answer?
Democracy is an incredibly powerful and contagious thing. Modest, but
notable steps seem to be occurring in the right direction. On the other
hand, to prescribe liberal democracy as the one-size-fits-all solution
straightaway for everything would not be the answer, especially if it
needs to be imposed from the outside rather than being encouraged to
organically develop from within. In this respect, maybe something is
stirring. President Bush may express his ideology in rather unsubtle and
simplistic terms, and can be inconsistent in applying his credentials
around the world, but it does at least set a benchmark, or a well lit
signpost.
However, if you choose to force democracy - since embryonic democracy
cannot normally be nurtured without a change of circumstances - then
you must accept its consequences. Maybe it is better perhaps, to stand
away and let a ripple effect take place aided by the desire to be truly
independent, like Lebanon. The powerful rhetoric of ‘resistance’ is not
likely to lose its potency for a while yet. This might involve bringing the likes of Hamas and Hizbullah for example, properly into the mainstream.
But will they want to wholeheartedly evolve into mainstream politics?
At the other end of the political spectrum, can despots become trusted
democrats overnight? Probably not. Can new leaders be truly democratic,
legitimate and accountable? In the long run it is possible. Politicians and
systems can evolve and mature. They have to if the public appetite for
change has been sufficiently whetted.
It brings us back to the very beginning of my journey and Turkey. The
extremists soften their policies in office and are often best placed to carry
their constituencies with them on a modernising journey. Turkey could be
the testing ground for the argument that Islam is compatible with a
secular liberal democratic system. It would benefit everyone for the EU to
make sincerely inclusive overtures to Turkey, rather than harshly
exclusive ones, especially ones termed in prejudiced and religious tones.
Alienation risks unpredictable consequences. Why not engage them
instead? Who knows? Turkey may be more of an asset, than the burden
many people fear and governments expect.
However, further south and east, the Americans have an inherent
addiction to selling tanks and fighter jets to satisfy a thirst for oil.
America spends $420 billion each year on defence. Think how big that
figure really is, but they still struggle to rustle up a single spokesman
capable of putting across its message in Arabic on Al-Jazeera.
We should not misunderestimate, as George Bush might say, the colossal
political power, in the medium to long term, of these two domestic
lobbies in America - the right to drive huge vehicles and sell weapons -
and the broader implications these addictions have externally.
But particularly the dependence on foreign oil. Americans’ love for cheap
petrol props up those economies, which rely on selling oil. So in an era of
higher oil prices, all that extra money from the pockets of American
citizens goes straight into the bank accounts of Middle Eastern
governments, some of which (Saudi Arabia, Iran) are indirectly financing
the terrorists the president pledges to destroy. How much simpler life in
international politics would be for America if it could significantly reduce
its dependence on oil from the Middle East.
Peace might be more destabilising for many people in powerful positions
with vested interests on all sides. We should be honest in admitting this.
Over inflating the Fear Factor does not really bring much clarity to the
situation - it is mutual vulnerability. You cannot defend or fortify every
single soft terrorist target and it obscures the more important economic
problems.
Demographics
The population growth of the region is also a problem - 60 % of the Arab
world is under 25 years old. If a country like Syria keeps growing at the
present rate, its population will double in a generation, and the economy
cannot grow fast enough to keep up. The rate at which average incomes
are rising is less than the rate at which the population is growing, which
might spell trouble. Those who work have to support a lot of dependents.
On the other hand, the Middle East looks likely to continue to suffer from
the ‘Brain Drain’, where all the most talented people of working age
desert their countries in search of better lives elsewhere. And the ones
who don’t desert, without meaningful economic opportunity, often turn to
religion. Secular education would empower these young people and
possibly divert more of them away from the radical madrassas. Swap
passion and emotion for the nuts and bolts of policy and debate.
Have we reached the point where the structure of hate is now too
ingrained and endemic for the necessary co-operation and compromises
to succeed? Where people resort to emotion before reason, and violent
extremism becomes the norm? Unremitting bitterness, reciprocal violence
- the breakdown in trust could become permanent. Is it a case of
choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable? A world in which
using human shields, putting bombs in ambulances, targeting schools and
bombing religious sites becomes the norm?
A perpetual war is a dreadful prospect, especially if the world diverts its
gaze from Iraq, and gives the Israeli-Palestinian conflict an escalated
international and religious dimension. Many Arabs, rightly or wrongly,
already see no distinction between Israel's occupation of Palestinian
territory and America's occupation of Iraq. Both conflicts are portrayed
on Arabic satellite channels as similar dramas of national or Islamic
resistance. They undeniably fuel boilings of anger hundreds of miles
beyond the epicentres. An apocalyptic scenario might fancifully envisage
Al Qaeda setting itself up in the Palestinian territories to attack Israel,
followed by forceful, disproportionate US retaliation on Israel’s behalf,
inflaming even moderates in the Arab world.
I don’t buy the argument that poverty and desperation equals suicide
bomber, but there is a contributory effect, and it is depressing to think of
children growing up, knowing nothing different to hatred, violence and
death - fertile growing conditions for the ingredients of violence to grow.
Which again emphasizes how essential it is to get the economic bit right.
However, it must be stated very clearly and loudly that nearly all Arabs
and, indeed Muslims, are not remotely anything like Osama Bin Laden.
The most effective fighting tool against Bin Laden and his ilk is the
bravery, integrity and decency of the immense majority of the world's one
and a half billion Muslims.
It is very tempting to say that religion is not as big a deal as people make
it to be from the outside. Most people in this region have broadly secular
instincts. Religion is nothing more zealous than a source for moral
guidance. They simply want legitimate, accountable leaders to represent
them. Not democracy through fear, intimidation, assassination, fraud, and
total control of the media - the Russian way. Does the new generation of
political leaders have the stomach for the right kind of fight – opening up
and reforming to make their people more prosperous? The jury is still out.
As one former Egyptian minister said,
‘They [Arab governments] can make the right gestures, but even a small
relinquishment of authority produces ugly withdrawal symptoms’.
Rhetorical talk of impending reform from the top may be no more than
skin deep. It will be especially shallow, if the real balance of power might
become threatened by change, at which point the well practised survival
instinct digs in again.
Having preserved power for so many years, many of the regimes of
Egypt, Syria and the like, are nothing if not muscular, cunning and
ruthless. In Egypt the people have become so used to fraudulent and
manipulated voting that they might be warily cynical and deservedly
distrustful of the benefits of voting. Things that we take for granted, like
being able to properly scrutinise government spending, a hostile press,
independent courts, full emancipation of women and impartial police
remain a long way off. Expedient, vested gradualism is the chosen path.
You have to be very optimistic to believe all these diversely converging
problems can be resolved smoothly, and any window of opportunity will
not stay open for long. However, as well as the threats and fears, there
does exist promise and opportunity, in the form of different, emerging
leadership, and the greater potential for reform they can provide.
Then we might just begin to see another side to the Middle East through
our news screens and in our newspapers. So instead of always associating
the Middle East with death, bombs and terrorism, we can also talk about
life as well. And perhaps returning to what Confucius said, the Middle
East is not simple and, in analysis, we should complicate it more.
So it may be time to seize opportunity by its beard. Is the Middle East
waking up to something significant, or merely rolling over in its sleep?
As someone once pronounced, it is best to never prophesise, especially
when it concerns the future.
But one thing you can be sure of in the Middle East, is that the coarsely
evolving momentum of events will always keep things bumpily rolling
along with unpredictability, as they always have done. Just like my
travels. It will be worth following.
So in the end, there were no kidnappings or suicide bombings. I had
certainly spent an uncomfortably excessive amount of time in the
company of people with guns employed by dubious governments. I had
also become undesirably intimate with an unhealthily excessive amount
of animal excrement. But these were the worst things to happen to me in
the Middle East.
There was little time to sit comfortably. But I wouldn’t have done any of it much differently. The pounding pulse of life in the Middle East remains compellingly vivid and vibrant. There is still plenty of Middle Eastern promise. It deserves to be properly sampled.

FIFA: It's a Rich Man's World

2010-12-02T23:56:00.003Z

Well done to Russia and Qatar for paying, sorry earning, the right to host the world cups of 2018 and 2022. But the nature of their 'triumph' raises more questions than answers.

The way football's governing body FIFA runs the secretive vote you half expected plumes of white smoke to emerge marking the winner. FIFA and the Vatican have plenty in common as it happens. Both of them secretive, senile autocracies who have hoarded vast concentrations of ill gotten wealth.

The decision about the world cup is largely about the ego of one man: Sepp Blatter and his Swiss-dominated quasi-dictatorship over the governing of football. And you can almost here the joyous jangling of the pockets of those bloated, sycophantic jobsworths who swim in the murky cesspit of FIFA's unaccountable millions.
So good luck to the fans travelling to enjoy those two world cups!

Ethiopia

2010-03-03T12:30:00.014Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8535189.stm

Interesting article. Something to think about the next time someone in a developed country asks, or insists you give money to 'help' or 'save' an African country. The money is very likely to 'help' some people much more than others and most of us shut our eyes and ears to it. We hand over our money and go back into our own busy worlds. Not for a moment, do the vast majority of people stop to think, where exactly has our money gone to and was it really well spent?

Children at an indepenent school for deaf children in Addis Ababa, which the Ethiopian government wants to shut down. Why? Simply because it is not run by the government.

I have spent the best part of a month slogging my way around Ethiopia. In some ways it is an amazing and eye-opening country. In others it is depressing for the very large numbers of people who do little more than subsist. Hard questions need to be asked about the way the country has been governed and why it remains so wretchedly and miserably poor.

Ethiopia's population is quietly exploding. It has virtually quintupled in lass than a century. Half of the people cannot read or write. They live very primitively off the land. Schools and health services are woefully under-provided in large swathes of the country. Is that really because we in the west (poverty always seems to be about 'us' doesn't it?) have not poured in enough money? I don't think so.

Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, seems strangely beyond criticism. But I wonder if it was wise for him to decide to spend large amounts of his country's (already slim) budget on fighting two major wars with Eritrea and interfering within Somalia instead of on schools and health services for his own people. Wars which America and Britain happily supported by the way.

'What is my president doing for me?'

There is a very intersting debate to be had (not that we are likely to have it in this country any time soon) about the consequences of shovelling large amounts of money into very poor (and very corrupt) countries. Can we be honest enough to ask ourselves, is it really a good thing?

I can assure you that the consequences are very far from favourable. In fact - and this is hard to believe but it is true - they have even been detrimental and regressive to a country like Ethiopia's development. Aid dependency and the corruption it engenders has severely hindered the lives of ordinary Ethiopians.

There is a very important and relevant discussion to be had about these aid and development issues, which I am sure I will return to another time.

But bare in mind one thing: most of the people you hear talking (or should I say lecturing) about these issues in the mainstream media have their own agendas to promote. They wear their development hats or NGO badges. It always pays to look at who pays their salary.

They are unable to be truly objective and rational in analysing the effectiveness of aid and development policy. They live a very nice and relatively comfortable life in the countries they are so earnest about saving.

For me, the biggest and most relevant challenge in reducing poverty is not about how much money we 'should' unburden ourselves with. It is reducing corruption and improving bad governance. African poverty should not be about our guilt complexes and our 'must-do-something-anything' culture. It should be about the many and deep failures of African governments to do effective things for their own people. It should be about making them more transparent and accountable to the people they govern.

Forget the coloured wristbands, the emotionally blackmailing slogans and the day trip celebrity guilt tears. We do not have a hope of making poverty history unless we are searchingly honest about understanding the real causes of it. From inside the places where it exists and is perpetuated.

So what is Saint Bob Geldof's response? 'Just keep giving money!'

Just keep giving money. Keep pouring it in. Throw enough of it at Africa and all poverty will magically dissapear and we can all ease our guilty wealthy consciences. How simple. How naive. How wonderful for Africa's corrupt leaders. How disrespectful to the people of Africa.

Give me the valuable currency of real life experiences over the cheap currency of celebrity moralising every time.

When will we learn? It's not about the money, the impressive pledges, the warm slogans or the good intentions. It must be about understanding the realities on the ground.

Khartoum

2010-01-23T11:35:00.003Z

Its where the two Niles meet. It has been described as the world's largest waiting room. From personal experience this is not unfair.
Nothing happens in a hurry here. The word for 'urgency' does not exist. You just keep your patience, wait and wait. Otherwise it can drive you slowly mad. Even without doing very little of note, the city seems to exhaust you and wear you down.
I got pulled over yesterday in Omdurman market by a stern plain clothed man. It was a fairly innocuous area. But he told me he was from the Tourism Police. I was not to take photos, he insisted. He demanded to see my passport. After trying hard not to laugh at his title, I had no choice but to comply. He didn't seem in a mood to argue.
Sure, I said, no more photos. I walked on down the road. After waiting until he was well out of sight, I continued taking photos. This side of the Sudanese government is unpleasant and extremely counter productive to the enjoyment of being in a fascinating country.
It is also a total contrast to the wonderful nature and generosity of the vast majority of the Sudanese people. They are several worlds away from their government in so many senses of the world. Sanctions have punished them in the same way they have punished the ordinary and poor people of Burma.
I wish more people had the capacity or initiative to take their curiosity beyond the simplistic and often misleading news headlines, to climb over the easy and lazy negative assumptions we make and solidify about countries we know so very little about from the inside.
And yet, the notoriously slow and unhurried Khartoum appears to be changing. Or at least undergoing a dramatic visual facelift. The Chinese haven't just arrived. As quietly and discreetly as they always seem to do, they have built themselves upwards and concreted their way into influence and power here.
Colonel Gaddafi has erected an outrageously attention grabbing shiney tower. Maybe he knows a thing or two about what is going to happen in this big and mysterious country.

Inside Sudan

2010-01-17T15:22:00.003Z

'Ah, you are British.' said the uniformed official as he looked me up and down with suspicion. 'You are the colonisers!'
I didn't know what to say.
Then with a big flourish he imitated a large handlebar moustache and afforded himself a chuckle.
'Welcome to Sudan!' he beamed.
I can assure you that the Republic of Sudan is not at all what you might think it to be. In fact, it could be so far away from cliched and negative perceptions that it is a mystery why we understand so little of it. Africa's largest country - 8 per cent of its the continent's total land mass even - and still one of the most closed off and well hidden.
Next door Egypt receives something like 12 million tourists every year. I would be surprised if Sudan receives more than 1,200. I've only witnessed a handful of other Westerners so far as I follow the River Nile south through the desert.
The landscapes are extraordinary. The people are luminous and warm spirited. The roads are generally good (thanks to the Chinese - more on that another time). The biggest challenge seems to be the bureaucracy. There's so much of it. Everywhere I go I have to register. Imagine that. I need permission to move from one place the next. Yet so much of the form filling and box ticking is utterly pointless and irrelevant. Often I write it out myself. I could write anything on some of the forms and the policemen would not raise an eyelid. Such is the structure of Sudan.

Egypt

2010-01-06T15:37:00.003Z

Having travelled through (a very cold) Europe by train to Istanbul, and through the Middle East for a second time, I am in Egypt heading down the Nile and waiting for my Sudan visa. It might be a long and expensive wait!

Obama's War

2009-12-06T11:36:00.005Z

I like Barack Obama. He says a lot of fine things. But I am starting to wonder if the warm rhetoric can be bolstered by effective judgement. And I amm not the only one.
Things are about to get increasingly bloody. He's decided to pour another 30,000 soldiers into Afghanistan as if their presence there will magically give the illusion of a war being won just in time for the next presidential election in 2012.
It sounds so seductively simple doesn't it? Just add more military power and the 'war' can be won. But you could very easily add another 300,000 soldiers and it won't make very much difference. Because Afghanistan has never been and never will be a country which can be readily conquered. It is too complex, too tribal and too hardened to resisting occupation.
The price worth paying, in terms of blood (Afghan and Western) and money is way too high for the ends which might be achieved.
There are many better, much smarter and more effective things which can be done to improve Afghanistan.
First, start with the corruption and pitifully low legitimacy of Hamid Karzai's government. Compel him to devolve power. Force him to expose and punish large scale corruption where it has taken place.
Second, think economics. The reasons many young Afghan men fight for the taliban is money. They are not necessarily comitted to the radical ideology of wanting to murder all infidels. They just get paid more in a desperately poor country where alternative opportunities to earn money are virtually non-existent.
Third, remember that intervention and occupation in a foreign country will always be unpopular as long as the ordinary people can see no benefits. If they have no water, electricity or indeed security, then of course they will be angry and more motivated to get rid of foreign occupies trying to impose their own values and ways on them.
Think more about political and economic solutions rather than military ones.
Fourth, lets just either drop or demolish this frequent and righteous line that having more soldiers fighting in Aghanistan somehow makes the streets of Britain safer. It is tenuous at best and misleadingly disingenuous at worst.
The taliban are not about to invade us any time soon. We may not like them, but then there's lots of rulers around the world who we may not like. We don't go around making excuses to get rid of them. Nor should we. Unpalatable as it will be, we may have to deal with the taliban politically.
Besides when it comes to terrorist attacks on British soil and keeping 'the streets safe' (the favourite phrase of lazy politicians), it was the breeding of homegrown extremism which was the principal fuel.
British soldiers are in Afghanistan because we always have to follow what America does. Our leaders have been too timid in being candid about the realities of winning in Afghanistan and understanding both day to day inside the country and also its history.
Finally, something that is mentioned very infrequently. Fighting wars and occupying other countries is extremely expensive - something like one million dollars per soldier per year. Could that money not be better spent on something more effective at home?
Both America and Britain have never been closer to bankcruptcy. They cannot really afford grandiose foreign adventures. America is losing its leverage and influence in the world just like Britain lost its after Suez in 1956.
Is it not better to accept and manage that reality sooner rather than later before hundreds more people lose their lives for no sensible reason?
How about less invading and more intelligence?

Next book...coming soon...

2009-12-04T15:20:00.024Z

Is This Burma?

Sit yourself comfortably for an eventful ride. Let the journey take you down rivers, up mountains, inside monasteries and inside people’s lives. Let it introduce you to remarkable characters. Let it take you where no foreigner is allowed to go, by motorbike right up to the Chinese border.
Here is a very exceptional country in every sense of the word. On the outside, a closed off pariah, very far away in our consciousness. Yet, if you can let go of your preconceptions, on the inside there is so much to discover.
Above all let this book shed intimate light on a little known country and people so cruelly shut off and isolated from the world as we casually know it. Prepare to be surprised by a very exceptional country. This is the Burma we can discover a little more about from the inside.

Contents

Should I Go?
1 Yangon - The End of Strife
2 Yangon - All That Glistens Is Not Gold
3 The Golden Rock Rollercoaster
4 Lights Out in Mawlamyine
5 Hpa-An - Monks and Monkeys up a Mountain
6 Bago: Mr. Bald, Mr. Funny & the Goat’s Fighting Balls
7 Kalaw - Win Win the Lottery
8 Mandalay - The Moustache Brothers: No Joke!
9 Snakes and Horses: The Deserted Cities of Mandalay
10 Pyin U Lwin - The Footsteps of Empire
11 The Chapatti Interviews
12 The Heavy Hand of History in Burma
13 The Slow Train to Hsipaw
14 Mr. Book: Crying For An Education
15 The Forgotten Palace Meets the Forging Empire
16 Motorbike Misadventures One: Switzerland & Back
17 Motorbike Misadventures Two: China and Back
18 The Wrong and Winding Road
19 I’m a Tourist. Get Me Out Of Here!
20 Whispers in the Shadows of Mandalay
21 River of Destiny to Bagan
22 Bagan: Dusty Desert of Forgotten Gold
23 Questions From A Monk
24 On the Way to Pyay
25 Bay of Bengal - End of the Bumpy Road
26 The Japanese Original with Fried Fish
27 A Land to Savour and Set Free
What Now? Is This Burma’s Future?

Extract from Chapter 23 - Questions From A Monk:

"Sat next to me was a venerable middle-aged monk wearing sunglasses. For a moment I wondered if someone high up had assigned him to keep an eye on me and make sure I stayed on my best behaviour.
From the inside, the bus was nowhere near as bad it looked from the outside. It seemed to move along without too much of a rough splutter, which was always an unexpected bonus on any Myanmar bus.
The seats were high so your legs could barely touch the floor. But then they never needed to touch the floor because the floor was piled with sacks and boxes of luggage. Giant white bags of rice consumed much of the aisle space. Getting on and off necessitated tackling a mini obstacle course. One man simply resorted to sliding his frame in and out of the window to free himself.
It was the hottest part of a hot day in a hot place. There was barely any air flow. Dust tickled the palm trees along the roadside. The air outside the window caressed my face like a constant warm hairdryer.
It made me drowsy to the point where I found my head slowly but surely rhythmically lolling onto the monk’s shoulder. I’m not too sure what the local etiquette should be in such a social situation when you wake up near dribbling over a monk.
His English was strained, but he tried very hard and we managed some conversation.
‘I think this bus is older than me!’ he joked. ‘It is hot, hot, hot on this bus!’
‘Yes, very hot. And slow, slow, slow!’
‘Today the bus is very fast.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, because no breaks on the road, no accidents, no failing the engine. Very fast today.’
‘Very fast?’ I found myself asking out loud. ‘What is your mother nation?’
‘England.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘What is your origin?’
‘Good question. I suppose I came from my mother in England too.’
‘And what is her origin?’
Unfortunately for me, after a couple hours of hot, sweaty and slow progress some distinctively unholy aromas of body odour drifted into my nostrils. Perhaps this was silent revenge for my sleeping misdemeanours.
On the television screen the movie Transporters was playing, starring Jason Statham. Two girls in front of me turned around to point out some sort of resemblance between Jason Statham and myself. Then they dissolved into fits of embarrassed giggles. The monk next to me seemed to be enjoying some of the action sequences and even the shootouts.
‘Do you have many gun problems in your country?’ the monk asked me.
‘Erm, some gun problems, yes. But not like in the film.’
‘In your country, tell me, is sex free? Is it liberated to make sex with other people or do you have many disciplines to stop this?’
He was curious this monk. These were good questions which made me think. Did we have many disciplines to stop people making free sex?
‘Well,’ I began just as the bus lurched into a noisy pothole, ‘I suppose the sex is liberated for some people, but not always free.’
‘Sometimes you have to pay?’
‘Erm, a few people do but no. Most people get married or live together and then the sex is free. Although not always free.’
‘Your country very glamorous, yes?’
‘Well, it depends where you go or who you are with!’
'Sex is very free!'
'Maybe we are not very free from sex.' I replied.
At the end of the film, which the monk and myself had sat through stoically, there was a long and intimate kissing scene. He felt obliged to politely look away at anywhere or anything apart from the screen directly in front of his eye line.
Outside dusk was sliding up on us. There was sand everywhere. I felt like we were crossing some sort of desert. My stomach was stirred and swirled by the unpleasant momentum.
‘Road is very bad now here. Many holes. A lot of jumping I think. Very slow.’
‘Great, I can’t wait!’
The sandy dust, the long unexplained stops. The villagers rattling collections tins as we entered and exited every through settlement. The local bus was feeling just a little too local.
Every Myanmar bus journey had its obligatory food and toilet stops. Where England had motorway service stations, the mostly dirt track main roads were usually broken by large dusty shacks. The food was never particularly appetising unless you were ravenously hungry.
Various meats swam in oily tanks. There were dollops of rice and piles of noodles with complimentary flies. There was always plenty of tea of course and occasionally a Myanmar beer could be served. And a bit of fruit could be found afterwards from one of the street vendors if you gave it a good dusting down.
Eventually the bus arrived in Pyay around one o’clock in the morning. It was only around three hours late, not that lateness had any significant meaning for users of Myanmar’s well worn transport system.
Although determined not to miss my stop, I had been lulled into a deep sleep. As I groggily fished my mind back into normal consciousness, I became aware of a strange presence next to me.
My monk friend was sat with Zen like calm, crossed legged, gazing straight ahead. I wondered how he was able to give off the air of such relaxed serenity. It was almost as if he was floating above the ground and the white sacks of rice, like a meditating spectacled Buddha.
What a splendid religion Buddhism must be, I reflected, if it enabled you, or taught you, to sit so calm and serenely unaffected by thirteen hours of bumpy, dusty, noisy Myanmar bus travel.

See more: www.alitravelstheworld.com/myanmar
http://www.lulu.com/alistaircaldicott

Sanctions punish people

2009-12-04T15:01:00.006Z

SHOULD I GO?

Before I go anywhere, it’s a valid question which needs addressing. The answer can never be a resounding, unhesitating yes. It seldom is in life. Travelling to countries with unpleasant governments does not meet with the approval of everyone. Let me explain why I strongly believe it is the right thing to come to a country that very few people know much about from the inside.
I met a man who had been travelling in Burma nine times in nine years. Not once in all that time did any person in the country tell him he shouldn't have come. Tony Blair - amongst other so-called esteemed (but obviously not informed) experts - called for people to boycott this country. Please remind me how many times he has actually visited this country. How many times has he spoken to or listened to any ordinary people living inside the country?
Are we all supposed to unquestioningly defer to such high profile people and lose all ability to think and act independently for ourselves? Why should the likes of Tony Blair and Bono, or indeed any hectoring campaigner, dictate where we should and should not go in the world? Who gave them the right to preach to others and impose their own morals?

Travel - and I write here with a conviction based on no shortage of extensive and diverse experiences - is an incredibly powerful force for good. It can be extremely effective in raising awareness, deepening understanding and broadening knowledge and sharing vital insights.
Travel, tourism and trade, if conducted with a sufficiently open, well-informed mind, independent thought, cultural sensitivity and a discretionary purse, can affect things in a very positive way and do a great deal to open up a country.

In particular travel and tourism can afford a country’s people the precious opportunity to open up their lives to the outside world.
To some people, just by going to the country I am effectively contributing to the human rights abuses of the Myanmar government. Of course a small amount of money is likely to unavoidably end up in their pockets. But I am extremely discreet and careful where I choose to spend my dollars.
I always try to travel as locals do. I try to eat where they eat and so on. And I talk to people, lots of people. I listen eagerly and respectfully to what they tell me. I am offering an income to them and an opportunity to opine which they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
How exactly can people ever be free when we keep them isolated? You tell me in which other ways are we going to so fully and comprehensively inform ourselves about a country whose regime thrives on being 'isolated'?
This country is anything but isolated to those who run it and the sooner we stop pretending that sanctions - over twenty years worth - are doing anything good for the ordinary people in Myanmar, the better. Lives depend on it. They depend on us being well-informed, realistic and genuinely open-minded. The sanctions have been in place for two decades and they patently have not worked. What has occurred, or been allowed to occur, over the last half a century has been the sad dilapidation of a proud country.

Under which of the following circumstances do you think a government is more likely to repress its people?
a) with no one allowed in to see anything?
b) with international visitors, like me, walking around asking awkward questions, probing for answers, taking photos, recording memories and conversations, interacting with local people...?
Ultimately, is it not better to be as well informed as possible instead of keeping things concealed in the dark?
How exactly am I legitimising a nasty government when I intend to do no more than share with you what I see, hear and what people I meet tell me? If people want to feel ethically better about themselves for choosing to boycott and to help massage a troubled conscience, that’s up to them.
But do you know what most boycotts and sanctions tend to do? They make the poor poorer while the rich and powerful elite drive fancier cars and live in more luxurious houses. The people at the stop show not the slightest inclination of being particularly discomfited by gaping discrepancies in wealth. They thrive.
Who really pays the price of isolation? Who really has to make the big life-changing sacrifices of having sanctions imposed against them. You've guessed it, the people at the bottom. Who really gets punished? The people who don’t matter and are easily forgotten about.
So why keep pushing a country, any country, backwards? The only things we end up sanctioning - if we take a long, hard, cold and critical look at the effectiveness of sanctions - are the regime's own propaganda, when we should be doing all we can to help demolish it. There are many similarities with Iran.
Boycotts can never be perfect or consistent anyway. Nor are they ever strictly adhered to anywhere near as much as their proponents and supporters like to convince (or delude) themselves they are. Rather like communism perhaps, an attractive and appealing sounding idea in strict idealistic classroom theory but totally unworkable and even counter-productive in real life practice.
Who is going to be brave (or foolish) enough to tell the Chinese that they should stop doing business with a country on their own doorstep? Or the Indians? Who is going to tell the French and the Germans that they have no morals for going on government-controlled expensive package tours? They'll all just laugh at you dismissively.
I happen to buy a cup of coffee in a government owned hotel and suddenly, according to some noisy idealists bashing me with their righteous morality, I am responsible for the mass murder of innocent babies.

By the same perverse logic, are all smokers responsible for the deaths and exploitation of children in developing countries by big tobacco companies because they purchase cigarettes? Are all American taxpayers responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq because they happen to pay taxes to the American government?
Besides, it matters very little what we ethically chose to do about Burma anyway because of one word: China. China controls much of the economy here already. It quietly got on with asserting itself and because we all stayed away, held our noses put our fingers in our ears and covered our eyes we are near blind to it.
Tourism is anyway a drop in the economic ocean to this government, peanuts in its fingers compared to the revenue feasts it generates from selling gas, teak and oil to the likes mainly China, but also Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Japan.
Through apathy, misguided and ill-informed ideology and complacency we have left an entire people in near muted silence. We should be encouraging as many people as possible to go and see and listen for themselves.
Its like one Burmese man said to me:
"We are alive and I can feed my family because of tourists. Why is my country so neglected and forgotten? Please ask more people to come and speak to us."
And the words of another:
"Go and see for yourself. Listen for yourself. Then you can decide. What will you know, or anyone know, if you never come and never speak to us and us to you?"

Myanmar is a country where the government seeks to do all it can to stop outsiders going to places it doesn’t want them to go. The generals want to stop people looking and seeing, hearing and reporting.
The government of Myanmar tries to hide things and our governments and politicians in the west have helped them to hide things by continuing to isolate them more and more. Western governments, pushed on by noisy lobbyists, have kept adding the cement of sanctions to the immovability of an unpleasant dictatorship.
Many people in my own country might think we are isolating or punishing the nasty generals. The reality is that the people who are isolated and punished the most are the ordinary people trapped inside the country. But who will, or who can, come and speak to them and listen to them?
I am not aware of many government representatives, or indeed journalists, either willing or able to go out of their way and come and find out for themselves the realities of life for these isolated people inside their own isolated country.
If we are honest, often it is easier or more convenient for us to see a different country or the people from it in a more unfavourable light. Doing so makes us feel slightly better and more reassured about our own country and upbringing. We cannot help but think of certain people from certain countries in certain ways.
Yet, it is all but impossible for us to be objective in making sweeping judgements or definitive definitions. Stereotypes are easily reinforced through (largely negative) media reporting and in some ways they help to reassure us of our own identity by reminding us how much more developed or civilised our own ways of life are. Supposedly.

But because most people never have been and probably never will be exposed to the realities of life inside a country as foreign and exotic as Burma, our understanding of it (and similar closed off places like Iran and Afghanistan) will inevitably be limited and simplistic.

For me, this is a strong part of why I like to travel: to try to see a country and its people as they really are.
Frankly, it is just silly and naïve to somehow claim that by isolating people you are somehow going to eventually make them more free. How exactly are people going to be more free when they become more and more isolated and closed off?

People inside Myanmar have been made to live in hindered silence. We have been doing little more than making them almost totally mute altogether. Is muting people and deafening ourselves really smart and constructive policy?

There are plenty of reasons not to come to Burma, many of them deceptively seductive. It is easy to be put off. You don’t come to Myanmar for the food, the shopping or the nightlife. Those that do come are more likely to be here for the business or political reasons.
As well as having as many conversations with as many Myanmar people as I could, it also occurred to me to ask other Western travellers or tourists, when I encountered them, why or how they had chosen to be in a country which plenty of people thought it was wrong to visit.
‘How can it be wrong to be giving an income to ordinary people?’ one woman told me. ‘How can it be wrong to talk to them, to listen to them and share information and experiences?’
‘It doesn’t make sense to punish them, normal people, just because they don’t have a very nice government. In fact, can you tell me a country that does have a nice government, a perfect and well behaved government?’ I couldn’t. ‘I mean if people were only allowed to travel to countries with nice governments there wouldn’t be many countries in the world we could go to!’
The more people I spoke to and engaged with inside Myanmar, the more assured I felt in doing the right thing.

I cannot repeat this any more clearly or more often:
Ordinary people everywhere just want the freedom to get on with their lives. They don’t particularly care about governments. They do care about their families and they do care about having enough money to eat. They care about being able to work and live without fear.

When we, on the outside, inadvertently or unintentionally, make life harder for the ordinary people, we risk not only making them worse off but also losing their support.
As a Burmese friend of mine said to me,
‘Go and see for yourself. Listen for yourself. Hear our stories. Then you can decide. Tell me, what will you, or anyone else, know if you never come and speak to us? What will you learn from staying on the outside?’

And, as one of the brilliantly effervescent Moustache Brothers told me with startling candour, ‘We are alive because of tourists. We want you all to come. We want a Trojan horse!’

Hope for Africa

2009-10-01T19:49:00.003+01:00

Here's the remarkable and uplifting story (how often do you say that about Africa?) of a boy, William Kankwamba, in Malawi who created electricity for his village:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8257153.stm

We hear a lot about the need to eradicate poverty in Africa and elsewhere. And yet there are too many people who still cannot think critically enough about the most effective ways to do so.
Simply pouring millions of Western money into the country will never achieve the intended result. Enabling people to trade will.
A few years ago, the government of Tanzania, one of the world's poorest countries, recieved £30 million in aid from Britain. Not long after they purchased a military air traffic control system for around a similar amount of money, in effect British aid money. It is a classic example of how well intentioned aid simply does not work and can even makes things much worse.
The solutions to poverty in Africa and elsewhere will come from things like the freedom afforded by more accessible technology, particularly mobile phones and internet access. And also from the spirit of the people within the countries themselves and their determination in spite of their corrupt governments. We should be doing all we can to enable their efforts to better themselves by encouraging trade rather than containing them solely with corrupt aid.

Iran Sanctions

2009-09-26T09:08:00.006+01:00

I wonder if Gordon Brown has finished stalking Barack Obama yet after he cornered him in the UN kitchens for a face-to-face. For an awkward moment there as they greeted, so keen was Brown to be seen as Obama's best buddy, I thought he might attempt to slobber him with a full on kiss.
Anyway it turns out Iran may have another nuclear facility. The world leaders, prominent among them World Statesman of the Year (I'm still trying to work that one out!) Gordon Brown, are once more full of bluster, feigning exaggerated astonishment and strong, serious sounding words condemning Iran. Condemnation is cheap and easy.
Stronger sanctions will be imposed, we hear, as if they are an effective tool. They are not and hardly ever have been. I've said it before on a number of countries, but sanctions don't work. They make for great headlines and do wonders for swelling the egos of politicians who want to sound tough and be seen to be doing something.
But they can never be comprehensively enforced. Sanctions do more to punish ordinary poor people than they do to their leaders.

Alas, words alone only take you so far. In our soundbite driven, attention seeking media world it is easy to forget that actions are more important than words. there is regularly a gaping chasm between the two. Stoking up fear suits politicians and the media. It is a brilliantly effective way to get support for things, making them easy to view in simplistic black and white terms and grab people's attention.
Ever since I visited Iran (I drove right past the Nuclear facility in Natanz) I've maintained the opinion that really there is nothing anyone can effectively do to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. Of course we all agree how dreadful and dangerous this would be for the region and the world. But the reality is that governments will probably have to get used to Iran with a nuclear weapon.
Afterall, it all looks a bit hypocritical when we lecture other countires in patronising tones telling them they cannot have something which we already have. Indeed Israel has nuclear weapons - something most news organisations rarely feel bold enough to talk about - and they have concealed their regime in secret. So, from an Iranian point of view, if it's good enough for Israel, then why not Iran too?
It also looks a bit rich, from an Iranian perspective, for a country like America, where the right to bare arms is practically enshrined in the constitution and whose military merrily imposes itself on people in other countries, to be telling other people around the world that they don't need arms and shouldn't have them.
So why might Iran want a nuclear weapon?
Well, for a start, most of its neighbours (many of them unstable and unpredictable) have nuclear weapons. Iran was a country with a serious and mighty empire. Today it is surrounded by dangerous countries and powers. American troops are entrenched in countries on either side. It is only natural for te Iranian rulers to feel insecure. They regard America as a threat. Until these security concerns are meaningfully addressed or settled the tension remains.

To the uninitiated outside observer - and there are many - the neat and simple solution to stop Iran going nuclear is to let Israel start bombing. It sounds seductive doesn't? A few precision air strikes. No need to invade. I bet the Israeli prime minister is already rubbing his hands with glee. I bet ordinary people living in Iran's cities (who we hear very little of) are not rubbing their hands with glee. Especially bearing in mind Israel's recent track record in Gaza.
I can guarantee you the one thing likely to make Ahmadinejad and his nasty regime stronger is if it comes under attack, especially by Israel, and the bombs start to fall. That neaderthal, one-dimensional approach - even just the warm suggestion of it occurring - plays straight into his hands.
Worse than that will be an escalation across the Middle East and elsewhere. Sooner or later, we will have to eal with the reality, unpleasant and undesirable as it might be, of Iran being a nuclear power. Would anyone seriously argue that Iran is anywhere like as unstable as next door Pakistan, which has had nuclear weapons for years?

And so a vicious cycle is likely to continue. The government represses the people and the world feels better about isolating the government but it isolates the people as well. It is unfortuante that so many people in important positions only see countries through their governments rather than the people inside them.

Instead of bombing bridges why don't our leaders try building some instead?

Libya

2009-09-03T18:29:00.008+01:00

"Were the drugs good for you?"
"Yes, like its just the two of us together holding hands in the mountains."
"Thats an impressive block of lego on your chest Colonel."
"Thanks, I bought it with your oil money!"

"Shall we dance and make merry?"

"Yes. Lets!"

Was a deal done between Britain and Libya? Of course it was! Obviously nothing formal was written down on paper. It will never be officially confirmed or admitted to - there's more chance of Colonel Gadaffi appearing on the Just For Men adverts.

But it was so tranparently obvious from the moment I heard about Baron Mandelson peeling his reptilian frame off his Corfu sunbed to have dinner (was guacamole served, you wonder?) with Colonel Gadaffi's son.
What other conclusion could you possibly draw? The agonising drip of details has titillated the news-dry media for weeks, but the essential realpolitik of a tradeoff has been blindingly obvious from the start. Money talks, especially in the current economic climate. Its just that no one in officaldom could ever admit it.
The showy pomposity of the Scottish justice minister like an actor on his first night revelling in the novelty of the drama and attention, was absurd to the point of hilarity. His metaphorical waving of the Scottish flag of 'compassionate values' was laughably over holy and delusionary. The SNP were just being used and when you hear Alex Salmond comparing the release of a terrorist to that of Nelson Mandela you know its time to reach for the smelling salts.
Gordon Brown is quite possibly the only man on earth who can manage to make Tony Blair sound like the really 'pretty straight kinda guy' he so obviously wasn't before he ran off into the lucrative arms of JP Morgan for £2 million. Brown just runs away from things which are awkward, he squirms and wriggles. Politically, he is living proof that all bullies happen to be cowards themselves.

Who knows, maybe Colonel Gadaffi, a man protected by a team of all female bodyguards, could teach Crash Gordon a thing or two about trusting women in positions of real power. Maybe Hazel Blears and her bleating sisters would like to do a work exchange.
Now we know what great pals they are, perhaps Gordon Brown could take a prolonged vacation in Gadaffi's desert tent. Who knows, he might even be able to take his tie off and dress down. It might help to keep him cool if Gadaffi feels the need to let off some unpleasant wind, as he once famously and noisily did in the middle of a TV interview. There seems to be quite a lot of unpleasant wind around at the moment.

Afghanistan: Why?

2009-09-03T17:44:00.013+01:00

Drip, drip, drip. Another news headline snippet. Another soldier killed to tally on to the grim statistics of an unwanted, unwinnable and faraway war in a country very few people have any knowledge of and even fewer understand intimately.
The politicians shower us with self-preserving 'we will still prevail' bluster and bombast, talking up the 'positives', smearing critics as unpatriotic and assuring us the war will be won. And you find yourself thinking, what on earth do these silver tongued, smooth talking men in suits actually know about the realities of life inside Afghanistan?
History? What does that matter, they seem to be saying, as they seek to righteously justify imposing our ways of life on people in another country, often by dropping bombs on them. Gordon Brown trots out his draw droppingly (no pun needed, just watch him) perfunctory and synthetic platitudes expressing regret and sorrow with every dead body that comes back.

But can he answer the question: would he himself go out there to sacrifice his life if he had to? Would he send any of his family? Don't put a Scottish six pound note on it!
And why exactly are we fighting in Afghanistan? What for? What is the concrete aim? And why are we trying to do it on the cheap? Is it to do no more than serve alliances of convenience?
Are we really fighting to prop up Hamid Karzai? Hardly a beacon of outstandingly open, accountable, representative and uncorrupt government is he? He barely leaves his own fortified palace and relies on murky deals with warlords to keep him where he is. Corruption is rife. His brother is a major player in the opium trafficking trade. The boast of democracy is a hollow one when it comes with stuffed ballot boxes, bribes and voter intimidation.
Are we really fighting to 'keep our streets safe', as the well-used, cliched and deeply misleading slogan keeps being patronisingly trotted out by government lackeys? I hardly think so. Last time I looked, I don't think the Taliban were about to invade the country any time soon. The threat they pose to our way of life is virtually zero, only slightly more marginal than that posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (still looking for those are we, George in your Hummer with your sniffer dog Tony along for the ride?)
Are we fighting to impose a way of life on another country? Are we that arrogant and superior that we think everyone else should live we do? Sure the Taliban are nasty to women, but then so are lots of other countries, including our own country if you listen to a Harriet Harman lecture, sorry interview.

Do we now have the right to go around the world starting wars in any country where we think people are treated badly? Maybe some (deluded and egotistical) people in power would like to do that from their Whitehall armchairs, but any sensible sane-minded person knows it can't be done. The right decisions can only be made by listening to people.

So there we are, marooned in an inhospitable desert, foreign intruders and invaders expending blood and money just to advance a few more miles of land. Neither fully committed nor fully realistic, it is the worst of all worlds.
Of course the soldiers are brave and professional. It is the politicians who are the problem. It is not unreasonable to suggest that every defence secretary from Geoff Hoon onwards has been nothing short of casually callous and calculatingly disgraceful. Thats John Reid, Des Kelly, John Hutton and now finally...Give Bob-a-Job Ainsworth. There's so many duplicitous non-entities I lose count.
And this roll-in, roll-out turnover is rather revealing for the regard in which this critical position is held. Like so much of New Labour, the grand overeaching ambition and the elaborate shell of rhetoric is there, but inside the shell is just a big hollow echo of hot fetid air.
Perhaps if we were a bit smarter in understanding who the enemy really are in Afghanistan, what fuels, motivates and sustains them, then maybe things would be a little better. Afterall, who would ever go into a battle or a war without properly understanding the enemy? Well OK, quite a lot of people, particularly those with surnames Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Surely it would be one of the very first things you'd seek to do, undertand something about the country before you plunge in all guns blazing and preaching morality. Then again, the arrogance and hubris of political egos should never be understimated. The adrenaline of power has inflated them to make them more fireproof than most of the British military vehicles. Being devious and evasive is how you survive in top level politics.
Perhaps if the politicians were capable of displaying more humility, sincerity and honesty, things might be slightly easier to take. But then, of course, they are politicians, meddling Labour ones, obsessed to the point of paranoia about manipulating the headlines and neglective to the point of calculating ruthlessness about people dying for a transparently unnecessary and pointless cause.

Don't expect any sorry's or mea culplas anytime soon. But do expect more pointless deaths and life-ruining injuries for nother reason other than the career preservation of politicians. Good people dying for rotten people's mistakes, its all too sadly familiar isn't it?

And I wonder what the odds are on Lord Mandelson ending up on the payroll of one of the big oil companies this time next year when he becomes unemployed.

Another Iranian Revolution?

2009-06-17T18:54:00.033+01:00

Is the turbulent wheel of history revolving once more inside Iran? Maybe, just maybe. Are the people slicing through the heavy shackles and shaking off the leaden weights of oppression? Perhaps. Like two huge heavyweight boxers preparing to unleash into each other, both sides show little sign of backing down or being intimidated.

Iran is a country where you need to read between the lines. As we know it's not the voting, it's the counting, or rather the lack of it. There is no harm, in looking at something you are not altogether familiar with in a different way. We have always seen Iran through a narrow, faraway and blinkered perspective of inflated menace and exaggerated threat. As ever, truth and perception can be as distant as fact and fiction. And never more so than in a country like Iran.
Iran might have plenty to hide, (like its election votes for a start) but it also has plenty to reveal. Iran revealed itself to me in many surprising and extraordinary ways. Maybe not all of this remarkable country was revealed to me, but it yielded more than I could have hoped for.

Iran is a complex country and it is very easily misunderstood. It is often reported in very one-dminesional, cliched terms. It is brimming with passion, grace and pride. What we do know is that something momentous has occurred in an important country in a vital part of the world.
I remember a wonderful saying someone told me. Before the revolution, they said, we used to drink in public and pray in private. After the revolution we must pray in public but we have to drink in private. As current events evolve I imagine the need to both drink and pray might come in useful.
I've seen my fair share of nasty authoritarian regimes around the world and witnessed the intimate consequences of their excesses. I know people who have been coldly crushed, imprisoned, beaten, silenced for doing little more than daring, yes daring, to speak out openly and freely. Nothing more. The harder a regime tries to crack down, the more afraid it is of being exposed and weakened and sometimes the clumsier it becomes. It will do everything it can to avoid losing credibility, authority and what it believes to be its own legitimacy.
What we need to bare in mind is the obsessive, almost paranoid, desire for self-preservation embedded into authoriatarian regimes which keeps the moats which circle around their gilded towers of illegitimacy wide and deep. Will they back down or crack down? And if they crack down, at what cost both to their own authority and the people of Iran?
The rich irony of these elections is that it is not the Supreme Leader himself who has had any courage to submit himself to a popular ballot of his own people. Rather like Gordon Brown, perhaps he find himself above and beyond the need to determine if his own people actually want to give him popular legitimacy.

Intolerant, oppressive regimes don't much care if a few people dislike or even hate them. They dont much care if a few, or even a lot of, foreign governments don't like them either. Actually that helps to strengthen them in a funny kind of way, bolstering their perceptions of legitimacy.
And yet what is it that eventually or suddenly forces them to yield or adapt? Sometimes, because they are so out of touch with the people they suppress, these regimes badly miscalculate and they can be prone to panic. The awkward truth, which we should have learnt from past mistakes, is that there are limits to what can be achieved from the outside. However tempting the urge to intervene from the outside, we need to tread cautiously for fear of provoking the opposite of what our good intentions might desire.
Freedom is a powerful word. It is one my favourite words, along with openness, transparency and accountability. It is the single biggest weapon people have when they want to make their voices heard. Iran's young people are wired into the world of aspirational modernity, which as we know, celebrates consumption, individuality, self-expression and assertive identity.

Technology will change the world for the better because there is surely an ultimate limit to how much an authoritarian regime can comprehensively seal up every last ounce of inconvenient dissent or undesirable information. Control cannot always and forever be imposed on peoples lives from the centre when the tentacles of peoples lives stretch further and wriggle deeper away from that centre in the form of internet access and mobile phones. This is the direction that China will ultimately be travelling in, in spite of what many people might now think to the contrary.
The most effective things our governments can do is to encourage greater openness without playing into the hands of the hardlines with the polarising language of threats and force. They must not shut countries off or shut them down becasue by doing so, they shut down the voices of the ordinary people. And it is these people who are nearly always punished by ineffective and imperfect sanctions which can be easily sidestepped and avoided by those in the elite of the regime, like the generals in charge of Burma. In Iran the doctrines of sacrficie and martyrdom still permeate deeply through the identity of those in control. Don't give them an excuse to justify using violence.

Yet, with stylish ambiguity, Iran lives in two worlds, public and private. Two very different faces. It can be so civilised and so volotile. On the outside, people change from individuals to behaving as representatives of themselves. The emphasis is on the behaving. Behind the black exterior though, is a world of colour and embracing vivacity. It is a world that you do not see from the outside. You will only see it from the inside if you go there to taste it, breathe it, smell it, digest it. It leaves you wanting more.

Many Iranians are thoughtful, educated and perceptive people. They are so far from being the hate-filled one dimensional fanatics many of them are tacitly perceived to be from far away. Hostage taking had been part of my trip through Iran, but it was the type of hostage taking that doesn‘t make news headlines, invitations into people’s houses for food and conversation. Now these same wonderfully natured people might find life becoming very difficult.
The most desirable way forward, I believe, would be an Iranian evolution, which outsiders can assist, not by threatening or meddling, but by opening the country up. This, more than anything, would expose the dinosaurs in the elite of the ruling regime for what they are: extreme, unpopular,unrepresentative. And it would also expose the Iranian people for what they are: hospitable, civilised, generous. Shut the country off, keep threatening it and it might harden Iranians, making them more nationalistic.

Iran is a complex, multi-faceted country, of which an outsider can easily get the wrong impression and misread it. It is land of contrasts and contradictions. A place where curiosity can lead to suspicion and suspicion leads to kindness and generosity. Iran is just not what youthink it is, nothing is ever quite what is seems, a country of elusive shadows where so much operates in private.

Change in Iran might well have some very positive ripple effects from Afghanistan to Lebanon and Palestine. But we have to wait and see how things unfold. We don't have to meddle or lecture from the outside. To stand back is not easy. It requires smartness and intelligent calculation.
So, we don't know what it is yet, but Iran's people might just be on the cusp of something. The people of Iran have started something, but who will finish it and how? But as you follow on from faraway, spare a silent thought for the bravery and sacrifice of those who dare not to be intimidated, who dare to attempt to change their country.

Trouble on the Chinese Border

2009-03-15T19:15:00.005Z

This is the story of how I came to be arrested after riding all the way to the Chinese border.
From past experience, having a gun pointed at you does wonders for your powers of concentration. It wasn’t a situation I was keen to replicate as I heard the word ‘police’ uttered.
‘Please don’t take me to the police!’ I pleaded, but my protestations were fruitless.
‘We need to take you to the police [or the Special Government Office as it was officially and ominously named]. Otherwise we get into trouble.’
It was immensely deflating and then very unnerving not knowing what would happen to me next. What happened was that I got arrested.
I had wanted to see how just how far I could go. Plenty of people had told me it wasn’t possible. This was after all a country where original intentions or ambitions were seldom realised. But I wanted to find out for myself where the road would take me. So I set off for the Chinese border.
After two hours of brisk riding I arrived in the town of Lashio, which is about as far as any foreigner in Myanmar is allowed to go. The road beyond Lashio, which makes it all the way to the Chinese border at the town of Mu Se, is deemed dangerous. As I left Lashio behind me, the road didn’t feel at all dangerous. It felt exhilaratingly scenic. I cannot say for sure at what point I decided to embrace the flow of the ride without being certain of precisely where or how far it would take me, but that’s what I did. And how beautiful it felt. A sparkling afternoon sun danced off lush green rice fields. Glimpses of serene and vivid beauty were all around me. How free I felt. How alive. Like a number of other things I’ve done in life, before I’d come to properly cross-examine myself, ‘should I really be doing this?’, it was too late. For better or worse I was being reeled into another unstoppable adventure of my own making.
Perhaps I should have picked up on it earlier than I did - I was concentrating hard on maximising my speed, pushing myself to my riding limit without crashing to reach somewhere I could stay before it got dark - but the road was crawling with men in uniforms, men with guns. And barely any of them looked twice at me, which was a little odd. Perhaps it was becasue I had my helmet deliberately pulled down and my sunglasses on. So I just kept on going, overtaking everything I could from lumbering trucks and slow motorbikes to plodding water buffaloes and trotting horses and carts.
Nearly every settlement of note I rode through seemed to have not just one police station but two or three. But the road was good and I felt no inclination to stop.
‘Mu Se?’ I kept asking people for directions. I’d try to speak a few words of Burmese to them before reminding myself that, being from different tribes with their own languages, they probably spoke as little of it as I did.
‘Yes. Mu Se.’ one boy I stopped to ask answered very affirmatively. So affirmatively that I found him clambering onto the back of my motorbike for a lift. I thought I’d asked him for directions. He thought I stopped to pick him up. So, with an extra unintended passenger slotted on to the back of, I had little choice but to ride on. Eventually, because of the extra weight, he was slowing my progress too much so I took him as far as I could and dropped him off in a village. He thanked me, pointed airily into the distance and uttered, ‘Mu Se. Yes.’
I thought it would maybe take two or three hours of riding. It took five hours and I was riding in the dark for two hours. I had sailed through a whole succession of police checkpoints without being stopped. In fact, on a couple of them I had accidentally entered the wrong toll lane, but the soldiers just waved me back around and flagged me through. Perhaps because I had a helmet and sunglasses on I didn’t seem to raise any great suspicions. It got cold over the mountain plateaux when the sun went down. With turning back all the way to Lashio not a feasible option, I was overtaking everything I could in my quest to reach the comparative civilisation of Mu Se.
The only vehicles to overtake me were a succession of heavily loaded motorbikes, which I later learnt were probably loaded with opium to be smuggled on into China. To cut a very long story short, I found myself entering Mu Se well after dark as the cool and winding mountain road finally yielded to built up civilisation. I felt an enormous sense of relief, but didn’t quite know what to expect next. The great irony of Mu Se was that, unlike all the major cities in the rest of the country, it had 24 hour electricity, clean pavements and well stocked stores. It was virtually Chinese.
Sometimes obtaining directions or getting anyone to understand was like one man performance art. With some local assistance I went into a number of hotels. All refused to take my money and let me stay because I was a foreigner and that was trouble for them. That’s when I ended up being taken to the Special Government Office. I coldly contemplated what might happen next. I had landed myself in something serious.
The keys of my motorbike were confiscated, my passport was surrendered and I was led away into a fairly ordinary looking building behind high gates.
‘Take off your shoes!’ a large fat man barked at me. He looked like someone who was used to barking at people. In fact his enormous girth and longyi skirt knotted around his fat belly like a tight bath towel made him resemble a sumo wrestler with clothes on. I didn’t dare even think of arguing with him. I felt like the naughty little schoolboy who’d just got caught and was being made to wait outside the headmaster’s office for his detention arrangements.
Yet as time dragged on and no one seemed to explain to me what was happening, I began to feel uncomfortable, frustrated and helpless. So I decided to be proactive.
‘I am tired, cold and hungry.’ I pleaded politely. ‘Where can I sleep tonight?’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll take care of that.’ he replied as he chewed relentlessly on his red betel paste. ‘You are illegal here. It is a big problem. You are the first person ever to do this and you should not be here. We need to make investigations and send report to the senior people.’
I protested again, seeking an answer as to what was going to happen to me. But the reply was always the same putdown: ‘Please sit down!’ said in such an affirming insistent tone that it was more a demand than a request.
Stupidly, I resisted the urge to sit down - ‘I’ve just spent seven hours sat on a motorbike. I’m quite happy standing up thank you very much!’ I replied, straining to keep a veneer of polite composure.
To which the response was an even firmer, ‘Please!’ It was the Burmese way of saying, ‘Please stop being awkward and do be quiet!’. Of course it was. While, ‘would you some more tea?’ usually meant ‘Let’s change the subject please!’
Questions were asked, too many questions. Forms were filled out. Time crawled. There was never anything less than a perfunctory lack of briskness. I went form being a little scared to annoyed to the exhaustion of blanking out.
‘Where did you get your bike from? What is his name?’
‘I cannot remember. I don’t know.’ I lied deliberately to protect the identity of the nice man who’d lent me a motorbike. I didn’t want him to get into any trouble.
Finally, late in the evening I was asked to go outside where a waiting vehicle and a couple of uniformed escorts would drive me somewhere. A nasty taste in my mouth took hold and I was sure I was heading for some sort of incarceration. My mind was weary but I tried to make a mental note of the streets and landmarks we were passing through. I feared the worst.
But the vehicle didn’t detour down any dark alleys or out-of-town secluded. It pulled up outside a hotel draped in glaring, gaudy riotous Chinese style neon. I looked around and a surreal air of familiarity washed over me. It was all casino lights, kitsch hotels and fancy jewellery stores within touching distance. [See my previous entry from last year for my experiences on the other side of the border in China]
‘Is this Las Vegas.’ I joked to the young officer next to me. ‘Shall we go play the casinos?’
By some twisted fate I was right on the Chinese-Myanmar border. It was the same identical gateway I had stood on the other side of some months earlier when I had been travelling around China. The peculiarly reassuring confirmation of knowing my bearings was confirmed by the intimate sight of green-uniformed Chinese soldiers strutting up and down a stone‘s throw away. Right there and then the familiarity of China seemed almost friendly and enticing like it had never remotely done before.
I was shepherded into a very Chinese looking hotel. Room rates were negotiated and lengthy instructions issued to the reception staff. This was where I was to spend the night under house arrest and, considering all other options, it was a very favourable outcome.
Compared to most of the guest houses I had stayed in - deliberately trying to avoid the expensive government run establishments so beloved by package tourists and morally bankrupt businessmen - this was very upmarket bordering on luxurious.
Room service was an unexpected novel luxury. In fact the room service options were so intimate and immediate they made me uneasy. I got no less than four phone calls from reception enquiring if everything was ok and if there was anything I might need. They were keeping an eye on me.
As was the man at the end of my corridor who was pretending to be some sort of janitor. After craning my neck into his office I noticed it was full of television screens. It reminded me of the time I was assigned a room in a state-run hotel - Iran I think it was - which actually had a microphone protruding from the end of the desk. I tapped onto the microphone and was rather startled to find a voice responding back to me. So I actually took the opportunity to order some room service and made a note to not say anything politically sensitive.
On going down to dinner I was greeted by a handful of over-eager staff keen to accompany my every move. Nothing was too much trouble for them. The vast restaurant was near deserted apart from a cotiderie of Chinese businessmen. After eating I asked if I could take a walk to see the town. This sent them into a mild panic. At first they tried to put me off the idea telling me the town was very dangerous at night, but I persisted, more to see just what I could get away with than anything else.
Eventually they uneasily relented. Two of them rushed to put coats on and chased after me as I set off out the door, not daring to let me out of their sight. When it transpired that I was not going to get very far at all without being watched I had to give in and decided to return to my room and go to bed. Beyond a retinue of inebriated Chinese businessmen the hotel was eerily empty and the words of the man at reception echoed in my head: 'We always know how to cater for special guests.'

6 a.m. I was woken by loud music. It was the Chinese anthem being blasted out from a few tens of metres away across the border. As I drew back my curtains I could see a large neon sign which blazed ‘CHINA DUTY FREE!’

From the hotel reception I was escorted to the police office across the road. It was a cramped slightly chaotic interior. The atmosphere was surprisingly relaxed almost casual. One of the officers seemed to spend the entire morning working hard casually playing golf on the computer. I watched on as a couple of others dealt with the passing border arrivals, mainly Chinese doing business or tour groups in transience.
Another man counted out a large pile of dollars.
‘Very rich man!’ I joked, looking up the appropriate words in my Burmese dictionary to pass the time. ‘He can now leave for China and buy a big house. Maybe we can go halves, split the money and I can go with him!’
Fortunately, the policemen laughed. After all they were just human beings like me, I figured.
So I went further and, as it helped to make time go quicker, I started to make jokes about the fat policeman and how miserable he always seemed to be - while he was out the room of course. I told them his sarong must be a tent and they laughed. It seemed I had struck a chord.
‘Nobody does this before. You are the first person to do this. The senior people in the capital, some of the generals, they are not happy. They want to know how this happened because you should not be here.’
‘Who do you make the report to?’ I asked out of curiosity and the desire to engage them. ‘Than Shwe?’ I joked, referring to the Burmese president. ‘No.’ the officer replied matter-of-factly. ‘It is to some generals below him in Naypyidaw.’
‘Would they like to speak to me themselves?’ I was half-joking.
‘Perhaps, yes this is possible.’ he replied, again matter-of-factly. ‘They need to know why you are here because you should not be here. It is illegal.’
I need to know why I’m here, I silently and ruefully lamented.
The most heart-stopping moment of my detention came when I heard very loud police sirens. I looked out the window and saw a convoy of military tanks with soldiers and guns protruding from the front of them. Lights flashed and guns were pouting in all directions. They began to slow down and everyone got up. My pulse pounded. Then they carried on through and I learnt that it was a very important general who was on his way somewhere or other and thankfully nothing to do with me at all.
People came and went, most of them in uniform and none of them appearing to do anything of purpose. Perhaps they had just come to gawp at me.
I was surrounded by dusty files. Plenty of stapling and tipexing seemed to be taking place. I managed to read the title on one of the documents which read rather ominously ‘Shining Path’. There were torn calendars and faded provincial maps.
I could only amuse myself for so long by making jokes. The rest of the time I was extremely restless. I wanted to know what was going to happen to me. What did these people want to do with me exactly? I got the sense that they didn’t know. As I waited to learn my fate they were certainly waiting for orders from higher up.
One of the officers offered me an entire packet of cigarettes. I’ve never properly smoked in my life but I thought I might as well have one as it was one of those peculiarly apt moments. More phone calls were made.
I strained my eyes to read the upside wording on the report form. It was in Burmese apart from my name which someone had corrupted in to Mr. John Alistair. Underneath in bold letters it read, ‘ILLEGAL’.
With weary reluctance I stared again at the iron bars across the window hole.
‘So I am prisoner?’ I asked, looking up the Burmese word for prisoner.
‘No not prisoner.’ came the reply.
‘But if I’m not a prisoner, then why can’t I leave.’
‘You cannot leave.’
Actually I learnt from one of the friendlier officers that they were actually more suspicious of me because they thought I could speak Burmese, which I really couldn’t.
I looked down at the floor and discreetly rummaged through a pile of discarded newspapers. One of them had an English Language Tips section which offered suitably colloquial English phrases. ‘It’s not your day!’ one of them read. No it certainly wasn’t feeling like it.

To cut a long story short, they eventually let me go. I was instructed to report to a number of police check points on the long ride back to Lashio. More paperwork and questions followed at each stop. I was anxious to ride back as quickly as I could, but the procedures were so laboriously slow. I was assigned motorbike escorts to ‘protect’ and ensure I didn’t ‘get lost’ on the way (code for wandering off into areas they didn’t want me to go and see) ‘When can I leave. I’m ready to go. Can I go now?’ I kept asking.
‘Not authorised. Need permission.’
One policeman took me behind a curtain in his office and demanded a large bribe. In a country where the police were only paid relatively poorly, collecting such fees was an important and accepted source of extra income.
‘How much money do you have?’ he asked.
I flatly refused to give him anything.
‘Look I have nothing.’
I emptied my pockets. He didn’t know where I’d hidden my money. I walked outside and started to attract film star like attention. Eventually they gave me permission to continue to the next checkpoint.
One of my motorbike escorts couldn’t keep up with me. But as he had my passport I kept having to wait for him. When I was passed on at the final police checkpoint just outside Lashio they had obviously learned their lesson and assigned me no less than two officers on motorbikes. They were certainly more clued up probably having been forewarned of my track record. One of them even paid to fill up my bike with gas for me. I managed to persuade them to let me have my passport back.
It was like a game of cat and mouse trying to get away from them. I’d put the keys into my bike ignition and turn the engine on as if to prepare to leave and he’d reach over, fish them out and temporarily confiscate them. When I’d got them back again I’d manage to start the engine. Then he’d come and stand directly in front of my bike to politely but firmly give me the message that we could only leave when he said so.
Eventually, I got the go-ahead to set off. Fearing that the two of them would be breathing down my neck, I rode quite cautiously for the first ten minutes or so. But then - as it was near pitch black dark on the road - an opportunity afforded itself to overtake a truck. I accelerated off, backed myself, pinned my ears back and never looked back. I rode as hard as I could for the best part of two and half hours all the way back to Hsipaw. I was cold, tired and hungry, which made me ride harder.
It was very dangerous riding at night because my front headlight was fairly weak and there was a regular array of potential obstacles: unseen potholes, clouds of dust, stray animals and dark shapes of people, roadworks, sudden twists in the contours of the road, wrong turnings, thundering trucks, motorbikes appearing out of nowhere with glaring headlights, my own tiredness.
I was wearing down my wrists from accelerating and braking. My knees were aching from being jammed into the same position. Various insects collided into my face every now and again. The blackest of skies were spilling over with the glisten of bright stars. It was just me, my faithful bike and the noise of my engine. It was as surreal as it was strangely magical.
It was with great relief that I arrived safely at the familiar rickety bridge which crossed the river back into the town of Hsipaw. There is nothing like the relief of arriving somewhere you know well and recognise, especially well after dark. I took my motorbike back to its owner ensuring the police wouldn’t come on to him. Then I went to eat in Mr. Food’s restaurant. Actually ‘restaurant’ is far too strong a word. Nonetheless, I was content to return to my guest house.
Sometime around 10:30 p.m. the manager informed me he’d had a phone call from the head of police.
‘He would like to see you?’ he told me.
‘Really? Why?’ I asked. ‘Its quite late now. Do I really need to see him now?’ I feared the worst again.
‘Yes’ he replied. ‘I think it would be a good idea for you to see him now. He wants to apologise to you for the police disturbing you.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘He wants to apologise to you.’
So off we went on his motorbike to the police headquarters on the outskirts of town near the old royal palace. Inside I was greeted by a small welcoming committee of casually dressed policemen. Handshakes were undertaken. It was all very cordial and civilised. Tea was wheeled out. Chairs were shuffled. I began to feel like I was some sort of important guest rather than someone they wanted to detain.
And in the chief’s office I came across my two ‘bodyguard’ riders. They had only just arrived back. It was a good hour and a half after I had returned and they looked very weary and rather cold but served up warm smiles to me. We all sat down together and I listened as the man form the guest house translated for me.
‘He says to tell you that you are not a prisoner any more. He wants only to look after you and make sure you travel safely. He says he has to make a big report into this and many investigations because this never happens before. It is the duty of the Myanmar government to investigate this.’
Until then I had no idea of the magnitude of what I’d started just be riding my motorbike into places I shouldn’t have gone to.
The police chief and I sat smiling and nodding appreciatively at each other as the man from my guest house translated our words. He did indeed want apologise to me. He told me I was very welcome as a guest in his town and in the country. The next time I came back I was always welcome at the police station (I didn’t quite know if that was a good thing or not!). He wanted me to have a safe journey to Mandalay.
Looking him square in the eye, I thanked him for his hospitality and told him with great sincerity how wonderful his country was and how friendly the people were. When he mentioned about the generals needing to know about me, I offered to go to the capital to have a friendly meeting with them. He didn’t rebuff this and for a moment I envisaged a scenario where I might actually get to go the country’s closed off capital, Naypyidaw. How many countries in the world do you know of where foreigners are not allowed to travel to the capital? Only in Myanmar.
How I would have loved to have gone to have an audience with the generals. I even dared to suggest to the police chief that it would be a positive thing if the country opened up more and the system was less complicated. It would make life easier for him and for people like me, I diplomatically pointed out.
‘We are healthy and well with our complicated system, thank you very much.’ he replied.
‘Really?’ I thought to myself.
Eventually the ‘meeting’ was concluded with more warm handshakes and smiles.
‘So Mr. John, it was a pleasure talking with you. We have never spoken with an international traveller like you before. It was a pleasure for us. We are sorry again for disturbing you I this way. We want you to have good experiences in our country as our guest.’
‘Thank you again for your hospitality.’ I replied. ‘I would also like to thank you and your colleagues for some different and unusual experiences.’
More nods and smiles. I couldn’t resist the urge to make one more joke.
‘So tomorrow I go by motorbike, yes? I can drive?!’
The man from the guest house filled me in some more after we’d departed.
‘They say about you it is like you are flying on your motorbike to get here. You ride very fast. They call you the flying Englishman! I think they are sweating a lot because of pressure from high up. It looks very bad for them. Big problem for them especially as you are British. Anyone who is American or British, they are very afraid. Especially writers and journalists. You’re not a writer or journalist are you?’
‘No, of course not!’ I laughed.
‘Tomorrow, as a symbol of their welcome to you, they would like to offer you a car and driver to take you to Mandalay. You will not need to pay for this, it is free. You can leave any time you want. The car and driver will pick you up.’
‘Do I have a choice?’ I asked him.
‘It is better for you I think to accept.’ he replied in a very diplomatic way. I had little option but to accept.
The next morning at my designated time a car pulled up outside my guest house. My bags were carried for me and I was on the road back to Mandalay. They’d finally cottoned on to me and I was assigned four officers to accompany me this time. We passed a massive army base where 30,000 soldiers were based. Outside the entrance a giant sign proclaimed: ‘DO NOT DESTROY UNITY OF THE NATION’
Lunch was even bought for me. I practised a little Burmese with the officers and asked them questions. I learnt that there too many types of police in Myanmar to keep count of - city police, immigration police, special police, tourist security police (where were they?), intelligence police, military police, crime police and paperwork police.
The only catch was that in Mandalay, instead of being taken to my hotel, I was deposited at the main police station. My heart began to sink again. More form filling, mounds of pointless dusty paperwork, questions and confusion. I caught sight of an off duty casually dressed soldier wearing a dated top which was ironically emblazoned with ‘US ARMY’.
It was a hot afternoon and my fuse was short. I was fed up of spending so much time in the company of uniformed officials, however polite or obliging they were. Sometimes I felt like there couldn’t be anyone in these offices who didn’t seem to know or recognise me. I just wanted to be free to do my own thing again.
‘Please sit down sir. Please. Would you like a drink?’
‘I would like to be free to go to my hotel.’
‘Where are you going to tomorrow?’ he asked me.
‘I don’t know. Why do you need to know? Why are you keeping me here?’
I could tell I was beginning to irritate them slightly with too many awkward questions. He reverted to the old refrain of pretending not to understand my English before letting out an exasperated, ‘Please!’
‘It is security. Where are you travelling to next?’ the officer in charge enquired a little more assertively.
‘I don’t know. I’ll decide later when I’m free to go to my hotel. You said to me I am not a prisoner, but you won’t allow me to leave.’
‘But we would like to know. It is important.’
I kept trying to evade his question but he was persistent so I told him I planned to go to Bhamo in the north.
‘No Sir, it is not possible for you to go there.’
‘How about Myitchina?’ That was also in the north.
‘No Sir, this area is dangerous for you. If you want to go to Yangon [the capital] we can arrange for you to fly tomorrow. We will pay for your ticket.’
I was half-tempted. But it was a very polite but blatant attempt at deportation and I had no intention of leaving the country just yet.
‘But I don’t want to go to Yangon.’
I started listing various places where I would and wouldn’t be allowed be to go. In the end I had to settle for taking a boat trip to Bagan.
‘I don’t really want to go to Bagan.’ I protested mildly
‘You will go to Bagan.’ he announced with a flourish, as if satisfied that it would comply with his procedures. ‘It is very nice there and popular with tourists.’
Most tourists who come to Myanmar regard Bagan as unmissable. I had no great desire to go there - the remoter places in the north were far more appealing - but I was made to buy a boat ticket to go to Bagan. And with that I was almost back to being just another tourist again - quite possibly the only tourist in Bagan who hadn’t particularly wanted or intended to be there.
In the end I had sign my name to letter which made me promise to comply with the rules of the government of Myanmar and basically not make any more trouble. I had once done a similar thing in the Egyptian Sahara. Right to the end they kept getting my name wrong by misreading my passport and calling Mr. John. I was more than content to let them do that.
When you first arrive in Mandalay you could be forgiven for thinking, ‘Is that it?’ All that greets you is dust and beeping bikes. It is irredeemably scruffy and a good place to leave. I was glad to catch that boat to Bagan.
On the boat to Bagan - it was a leisurely journey and the relaxed air of being on holiday was rather unfamiliar to me - a middle-aged American lady saw me writing and asked me what I did. ‘You’re not a journalist are you?’ she joked.
‘No, of course not.’ I laughed it off and changed the subject.
‘I’ve taken so many great photos.’ she enthused. ‘Isn’t this country incredible?’
‘It certainly is.’ I smiled.

As an interesting aside, a few days later while reading up on the history of the country I came across some rather eye-opening information. To me, police checks aside, the road to the Chinese border had seemed very safe. Yet, in spite of my pleasantly benign passing impressions, the people who inhabited the areas of jungle close to where the road went through, were potentially more dangerous than I might have taken for granted. Known as the Wa people, apparently years ago they had a well deserved reputation for head-hunting (not of the business recruitment kind) with a particular penchant for collecting exotic foreign looking heads and placing them on large sticks on the main roads to ward off spirits.
So perhaps all the police were right in telling me this was a very dangerous area and giving me escorts. It made me think of the words of Rudyard Kipling about treating the twin imposters of triumph and disaster both the same:
‘If you can keep your head while all those around you are losing theirs…’

This is just one story from my time in Myanmar. In due course I shall write up a book about my time in the country and upload the photos on my website.

The Moustache Brothers

2009-02-11T16:19:00.005Z

These are The Moustache Brothers. Where they live, to makes jokes about the government really is no laughing matter. They'll put you in jail. Comedy is deadly serious. So what is the best response? To keep making fun of them course and laugh loudly in their faces. That takes an enormous amount of courage.

The Moustache Brothers are officially banned by the Myanmar authorities from performing but they continue to perform in their own living room and, as they proudly admit, they are always under surveillance from the 'KGB'.

tbc

Have a brief look at them here...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJkDr9NXpSg

Mr. Bald & Mr. Funny

2009-02-11T16:18:00.003Z

'You are Mr. Bald and I am Mr. Funny!'
Every time he said these words, it sent him into hysterical laughter. I was sat behind him on his motorbike as we roared around town looking for the fighting goats balls.

Golden Rock Rollercoaster

2009-01-29T15:23:00.001Z

'Am I allowed to go?'
Its usually the first question you ask here.
'Yes, yes.'
'Yes?'
'No foreigner, no problem!' came the confusing reply.
'So I can go?'
'Ok, no.'
'Is that yes or no?'
'Yes or no.'
'Yes'
'OK'
In describing rough bus journeys in various parts of the world I might have used the term 'rollercoaster' once or twice. But today's experience truly was the closest approximation yet - a real life rollercoaster only without the strapping or safety rules. So let me share with you what it was like to ride a real life rollercoaster on the way to Kyiktiyo, the Golden Rock.

I arrived just in time. The young man was beckoning the final passengers on board and I found myself in the back seat corner where it was more comfortable to stand on the back decking rather than sit.
The bus was essentially a crudely modified cattle truck - seven rows of six bodies all condensed into narrow wooden slats. The hard stell of the back cage like decking had so many protruding edges of niggly bolts it felt like someone had designed the thing to exterminate every ounce of comfort potential.
The ticket boy leapt up beside me and two latecomers were fervently ushered on as well to join the merry throng.
One man squeezed up tightly behind me. After a while I could feel something big and bulging jutting out of his midriff or his crotch area. Only after a good look down did I realise it was the huge knot of his longyi (sarong) that happened to be vigorously rubbing against me.
Being the tourist I am, I was attempting to take photos when a severely crunching section of road saw my own crotch area collide with unavoidable forecfulness into oneo the proitruding metal sections on the cage. Ouch! As I grimmaced, the ticket boy took little time in enthusiastically enquiring after my health before thoughtfully sharing what had happened with the remaining entirety of the truck who collectively craned their necks around to stare and laugh while I was on the verge of tears.
Regaining my lost composure, I told myself to concentrate harder with my hand holds as they really were the difference between me staying onboard the vehicle and ending up in a messy splatter on the dusty road.
The driver was nothing less than an impatient lunatic whoi insisted on lauching the truck over humps, flinging it around tight bends and accelerating over narrow cranking bridges like they were take off runways.
From the back of the vehicle the suspension was gloriously redundant. In my radjusted position (there were many)or rather body contortion I now found myself slumped over the back row with my arm around an old lady. She turned to give me a toothless red gummed grin. My thigh was rubbing against a pink-robed nun. Neither seemed affected in the slightest by drama of the ride.
The nuns had clothed over their shaved heads to fend off the fierce afternoon sun while the old lady took up puffing what looked like a fat cigar but was actually a mild cheroot.

On we hurtled, steaming through hilly jungle, the road never less than torturously twisting. The succession of endlessly bumpy humps strangely reminded me of something I had not done for a very long time: skiing down a mogul field.
And there all of a sudden ahaead of me as I squinted ahead and fought off the intrusion of dust and the mini streams of sweat was the high glinting flicker of gold - the very reason I had chosen to come here, the Golden Rock itself. It was still very far away and necessitated a strenuously steep climb by foot, but it was just about worth it.
You cannot complain or moan, I kept trying to tell myself. You wanted to seek out adventure and now you've well and truly found some.

The return journey was even more full on mainly becasue it was near total darkness by the time we left. I was instructed quite assertively by one man to sit myself down on the back bench. But I simply could not insert the width of my thighs into the meagre space afforded. So I stood and half-crouched like a man on the verge of sitting down on the otilet. Bats swooped in the warm night air. Another old lady was puffing on her cheroot. Every now and then as we roared through it, out of the jungle darkness swung an overhanging vine which thrashed its way backwards with some venom towards the back of the truck. I usually managed to catch the last whack square on my uncovered head. Again this - the sounds of my pain infliction and repeated attempted aversions - seemed to provoke mirth and merriment all round. I looked up at the sky, it seemed so inviting, and I saw the plough. And however much my hands were being worn down from the tight grip pf clinging on, however tired my legs were from being battered, however much my back was aching, for a brief moment I perversely decided there was nowhere else I would rather be. I felt alive.

Here was a country, where amidst all the dire warnings and misinformation, you might well find a quiet slice of travellers' paradise.
In fact I have so many experiences to write about that I simply do not have the time or internet access to do them justice.

This is Burma

2009-01-28T14:11:00.003Z

"This is Burma," Rudyard Kipling once wrote. "It is quite unlike any land you know about."

Well we're not supposed to call it Burma these days - nearly everyone I speak to calls it Myanmar - but his words still ring true. Here indeed is a country very different from any other I have travelled through and that is quite a few.

My flight from Bangkok was delayed. Through a dense early morning mist the mysterious shape of the country finally began to reveal itself. I could pick out the pin gold flashes of religious stupas. There was the very real sense of entering an unknown country. It was exciting and enthralling, the pleasurable tinge of being on the cusp of having new things revealed to me. Here was a country that we really know so little about from the inside.

Yangon used to be called Rangoon under the British. In some ways, architectuarlly at least, its like they never really left. Here is a city which has been fermented by years of neglect and troical rains, still glued to its past. The lifestyles of many of its people are still....

see the photos here:
http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/myanmar/

Should I go?

2009-01-28T13:34:00.003Z

In case you didnt already know I am now inside Burma. Some people may disagree with me being here (I wonder how many times or how well travelled many might be) but let me address why I believe it is the right thing to come to a country that very few people know much about. For what its worth I met a man who has been visiting this country on and off for nine years. Not once in all that time did any person in the country tell him he shouldn't have come.
Tony Blair - amongst other so-called esteemed (but not informed obviously) experts - called for people to boycott this country. Please remind me how many times he actually visited here. Are we all supposed to unquestioningly defer to such people and lose all ability to think and act independently for ourselves?
Travel - and I write here with a strong weight of conviction - is an incredibly powerful force for good not least in raising awareness, deepening understanding and broadening knowledge and insight. Tourism, if conducted with a sufficiently open well informed mind, independent thought, sensitivity and discretionary purse can do a great deal to open up a country. In particular it affords some people in that country the opportunity to open up their lives to the outside world.
To some people I am effectively contributing to the human rights abuses of the Burmese government. Of course a small amount of money is likely to unavoidably end up in their pockets. But I am extremely discreet and careful where I choose to spend my dollars. I always try to travel as locals do. I eat where they eat. And I talk to people, lots of people. I listen respectfully to what they tell me. I am offering an income to them and an opportunity to opine which they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
How exactly can people ever be free when we keep them isolated? You tell me inwhich other ways are we going to so fully and comprehensively inform ourselves about a country whose regime thrives on being 'isolated'. This country is anything but isolated to those who matter and the sooner we stop pretending that sanctions - over 20 years worth - are working the better. Lives depend on it. They depend on us being well-informed, realistic and genuinely open-minded. The sanctions have been in place for two decades and they patently have not worked.
Under which of the following circumstances do you think a government is more likely to repress its people?
a) with no allowed in to see anything.
or b) with international visitors like me walking around asking awkward questions, probing for answers, taking photos, recording mnemories and conversations, interacting with local people...?
Ultimately, is it not better to be as well informed as possible or to remain in the dark?
How exactly am I legitimising a nasty government when I intend to do no more than share with you what I see, hear and what people I meet tell me?

If poeple want to feel ethically better about themselves for choosing to boycott and to help salve a conscious, thats up to them. But do you know what most boycotts and sanctions do? They make the poor poorer while the rich powerful elite drive fancier cars and live in more luxurious houses.
Who really pays the price of isolation? Who really has to make the big life-changing sacrifices of having sanctions imposed against them. You've guessed it, the people at the bottom. Who really gets punished?
SO why push a country, any country backwards. The only things we end up sanctioning - if we take a long hard cold look at the effectiveness - are the regime's own propaganda when we should be doing all we can to help demolish it. It is just like Iran.
Why not make the country a proper part of the world? Why not just flood it with travellers, trade, but also with information, ideas, technology, journalists, observers and opportunities?
boycotts can never be perfect or consistent anyway. WHose going to tell the French and the Germans that they have no morals for going on package tours? They'll just laugh at you dismissively.
By the same perverse logic are all smokers responsible for the deaths and exploiutation of children in developing countries by big tobacco companies because they purchase cigarettes? Are all American taxpayers responsible for the deaths of innocent civilians in Iraq becasue they happen to pay taxes to the American government?
And it matters very little what we ethically chose to do anyway because of one word: China. China controls much of the economy here already. It quietly got on with asserting itself and because we all stayed away we are near blind to it.
Tourism is anyway a drop in the economic ocean to this government compared to the revenues it generates from selling gas, teak and soon oil to thel ikes of not just China, but also Singapore and Japan.
Through apathy, misguided and ill-informed ideology and complacency we have left an entire people in near muted silence.
We should be encouraging as many people as possible to go and see and listen for themselves.
Its like a man said to me the other day...
"We are alive and I can feed my family because of tourists. Why is my country so neglected and forgotten? Please ask more people to come and speak to us."
"Go and see for yourself. Listen for yourself. Then you can decide. What will you know, or anyone know if you never come and never speak to us and us to you?"

Border skirmishes

2009-01-23T05:07:00.003Z

At the Cambodian border post I saw perhaps the funniest thing I had seen in the entire country. It was a hot, sweaty, dusty early afternoon. A slightly rotund policeman was patrolling the entrance channels.
Then out of the dusty nothingness came a galloping herd skinny white cows who were clearly intent on charging or rather sneaking past him and entering into Thailand. For a moment he appeared like the slenderest of rugby fullbacks overwhelmed by the prospect of an entire pack of huge beefy forwards hurtling towards him. And he began to panic.
Like a slumbering matador he stirred into belated action to wave them away. But the cows were having none of it. Only with the overdue assistance of a couple of chuckling colleagues did they manage to cows leaving Cambodia.
In all the frenzy of the excitement - a large crowd of border waitees were watching on riveted by the spectacle -one of the cows started to get promiscuously frisky. Maybe thats what the excitement of a border crossing does to you. It started to climb up onto another cow and proceeded to vigorously hump her from behind. This impromtu display of amorous affection threw all the other cows into disorientated confusion once more and they turned to have another crack at breaking past the wearied customs officals. The fat customs man had his walkie talkie out but that wasnt much use confronted by a herd of frisky cows.
Eventually another officer showed real intent and took off his designer shades and started to shout something in Cambodia which must have translated as something along the lines of the Dad's Army phrase: "Don't Panic! Don't Panic!"
Only the interception of a vehicle coming form the opposite direction was enough to finally deter the cows altogether. The humping became more subdued and off they skipped and frisked back into to dreary dust of the town they had just tried to escape.
I had no such luck, stuck for another two hot sweaty hours at the border before I bordered a sauna like bus (official temperature recorded at 38 degrees Celsius inside!).
But the cows simply trotted around the roundabout and, being the dumb creatures they are, came back again for another try. However, the customs men were fully prepared this time. The walkie talkies had been put away and they were now armed with brooms. Such is the circus of border crossings sometimes.

I now find myself residing at The White House....thats the White House in downtown Yangon, a city which crumbles with British colonial architectural legacies.

Phnom Penh

2009-01-20T12:35:00.009Z

Cambodia bills itself as the Kingdom of Wonder. It seems a very appropriate word in all its meanings. Cambodia makes you wonder in every sense of the word. From killing fields to Kingdoms of the Gods. From sleek Lexus tanks to wooden carts crammed with large coconuts. From swanky shopping boutiques to stinking sewars. The ugly and the beautiful fused awkwardly together rubbing along side by side. This is Cambodia. It truly is the kingdom of wonder and it is compelling viewing.

It is a relatively small country but with a big heart. The average wage for a hard day's work is probably much less than you would pay for a pint of beer. The rich do very well and the poor, well they just survive. From the sparkling to the seedy, the sleek to the sickening here is a city that bubbles with surprises.
It was around 6:30pm. The waiter had just plonked down my second cold beer onto my streetside table. I had immersed myself in a newspaper. As I glanced casually upwards amidst the lights and flashes or the motorbikes, cars and tuk-tuks I noticed a very large dark shape which caused me to do a double take and reassess the effect and strength of the beer I was consuming. There was a giant elephant nonchalantly plodding along right in front of my nose. Only in Phnom Penh, you might say. Here is a city where so much collides together in one place.

But the thing that I liked about Phnom Penh was that you could really see so much in such a short time. There was plenty to wonder at. It only required a weaving motorbike ride from one part of the city to another. A sleek black luxury car beside the grubby cripple desperately crawling through the dust and dirt of the streets pawing at passers by. Another cripple wriggles along like a severed worm. The city feels like a labyrinthe with multiple entrances and you can never enter all of them simultaneously.
Phnom Penh pulsates with same relentless flow and drive of the Mekong River. It wearies you and it beguiles you. The orange flashes of monks. A limbless beggar hobbles to your feet. Children playing merrily. Bright vivid bouginvillea flowers and gleaming gold palaces. The high rise skyscrapers and the the flimsy rotting wooden shacks. There was always something to make you raise an eyebrow in passin or cast a second glance. The city owned a defiant vibrancy and from the seat of a motorbike you really felt like part of its momentum.
I glanced across at the motorbike next to me. The man had a wide basket strapped to the back. Looking more closely at the basket's contents becasue they apperaed to be moving I confirmed that there were several large piglets snuggled together inside. On another motorbike I ocunted six human bodies squeezed together. Another maniac motorbike driver charging up the street on the wrong side. I watched someone get half run over.
The people without homes could be seen eating off the streets with the scavenging dogs. They washed their children outside while the women huddled into a corner of shade to cook or just sit. Children fending for scraps just across the road from the golden royal palace.

Another morning stroll, another bombardment of enthralling images. The World Toilet Association (no I didnt know there was such a thing but there is and it is based in South korea for some reason)were financing the construction of some proper public toilets. There looked a long way to go. A discarded pair of 'Dior' heels lie abandoned in the sandy dust. A man borrows a stool over a motorbike to help himself over a barrier which had been implemented to stop motorbikes clogging up the pavements.

And the hasslers can wear you down.
A news report in the Phnom Penh post caught my eye recently concerning the cold weather:
"The temperature hovered between 13 and 16 degrees Celsius and even dropped to a frosty 8 to 11 degrees during the night. This is the coldest year ever.
"People are wearing sweaters, gloves, hats and socks both during the day and even in the night to keep them warm. The Red Cross has had to supply sweaters to some parts..."
And I remember cycling in roughly similar temperatures in the far north of Scotland in the middle of July and the locals told me what a warm summer it was. Everything is relative, I suppose.
At the time of writing they were planning to launch a stock exhange here in Cambodia's capital. I wonder what Pol Pot and his brothers would have made of that.

I will write more on Cambodia when I can, but soon I shall be entering another mysterious country, Burma.

Killing Fields of Cambodia

2009-01-10T08:50:00.011Z

Choeung Ek. The name probably, almost certainly, means nothing to you. Add on 'Genocide Centre' or 'Killing Fields' and a bell of faint familiarity might begin to ring. This was once a wretched country where the hunger to kill was unprecedented. Untangling the tapesty of tragedy in this country takes some doing.
http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/cambodia/cambodia_khmer_rouge_victims/
Pol Pot and his band of murderous Khmer Rouge accomplices only lasted less than four years but, in the name of the world's most illiterate and brutal revolutions of recent times, they managed to wipe out nearly one in five of Cambodia's population. They came to power in 1975, partly as a result of spillover from the Vietnam war rivalries and secretive American bombing of rural areas, before they were overthrown by Vietnamese backed forces in 1979. In that time around 1.7 million people lost their lives - thats little short of the entire population of a large city - and the country was near reversed back in history to the Stone Age. An entire nation was kidnapped and then besieged form within.
A large blinding white and innocuous tower stands in a field some 16 km outside the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. Inside the tower are several layers of shelving. There is nothing remarkable about it at all. Until you notice that each shelf has been crammed with human skulls, sometimes piled on top of each other, several thousand of them.

As someone who once fractured my skull once, I even started to find it mildly interesting as I never realised there were three main types of trauma to the skull which ended life - blunt force trauma, sharp force trauma and gun shot wounds. Sadly, it was mostly the former two which were more common.
'Chopping or Hacking wound crossing the left lamdoid suture (left side of the back of the head'
'Multiple blunt impact sites with a complex system of skull fractures' And so on...
'Quiet please!' the signs read, but no one needs to be told. A warm wind rustled briskly through the trees, its caressing gentility utterly belying the chilling gruesomeness of what used to take place here.
The Killing Fields of Cambodia are exactly that - just ordinary looking fields where extra-ordinary levels of systematic killing took place.
Look at the skulls more closely and you can see the cracks where they were shattered. Hundreds of them. Every day. Death on the cheap, death on the crude and inhumanly nasty.
I've seen my fair share of the grim and misereable and depressing around the world, particualrly in parts of Africa and Afghanistan (www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/through_afghanistan/) And perhaps I became hardened to a few things. But here, digesting and visualising the very visible effects of organised mass murder, it was impossible not to be numbed, to find your breathing a little rougher and a bad taste envelops your mouth. Extremely sobering. And then you tihnk, 'How?' and 'Why?'
But really thses are simple questions that cannot be meaningfully answered. What I do know is that whenever I hear words like the following I shall be better able to put them into the context of their true perspective:
Devastating. Nightmare. Terror. Horror. Hell. Bloody. Cruel. Wicked. Beaten etc.
I've taken myself to peer into some very bleak cruelty in some other places - I had the same sensation in Auschwitz (www.alitravelstheworld.com/poland/), an Iranian war cemetry in Esfahan (www.alitravelstheworld.com/iran/iran_iraq_war/) Robben Island in South Africa and even when I marched through Bogota around this time last year (www.alitravelstheworld.com/colombia/colombia_against_terrorism/). And also when I was inside the Palestinian West Bank (www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/opening_up_the_middle_east/15_behind_the_wall_inside_palestine as a woman showed me a photo of her martyred nephew - especially poignant in light of recent Middle East events (see below). Can you for a moment imagine the intensity of hatred or anger you would feel to those who destroyed your home of killed someone in your family?
Everywhere you go, I believe you can never stop trying to learn and understand how and why things occurred to know why they happened. Becasue if we cannot learn from the past and know about it fully, then of course we are condemned to see things repeated. (see below)
Cambodian people may have managed to dig up thousands of bodies but you sense that their grisly past will be remain buried within them for a long time to come. And many people are still to dig up clear reasons for why it all happened, almost as if some of the fear is still instilled in them.
Tuol Sleng was a simple concrete school. It still looks like one when you arrive. The leaves of the palm trees tickle themselves around an open courtyard in the sunny wind. From the outside, it is almost pleasant. And then you remember why it is not.
Here under the Khmer Rouge, what were once school classrooms were converted into prison and torture cells. The floors remain tiled and the French style wooden shutters lend a misleading moderation of aesthetic kindness. Then you remember that out of 20,000 - twenty thousand - people who came here, only SEVEN survived with their lives intact.
The cream coloured walls are pockmarked with bullet holes, stains and grafiti. The prison cells were crudely erected with bricks an concrete, all crooked and uneven to divide up the large rooms. They simply couldnt build enough of the prison cells at one point.
Under Pol Pot, people who lived in towns and cities were considered inferior. Families were separarted in the name of collectivisation ideology. Children were forced to work or recruited as soldiers, which reminded me of what is happening now in Zimbabwe (see below), but thats another blog as there are plenty more similarities).
Money was near abolished (clever move that one) and everything was geared to producing spectacular (and tragically unobtainable) amounts of rice in the countryside - the peasants' revolution which nearly finished off all the peasants. Everything was a waste of time unless it was used to produce more rice.
Ultimately, and unsurprisingly, not enough rice was produced to fee everyone - plenty was exported and used to feed the army though. Suspicion and fear pervaded everywhere (again like Zimbabwe). ANyone who happened to be well-educated was out to death. Anyone who wore glasses couldnt risk doing so. People pretended to be illiterate to fit in with the 'brothers' and speaking a foreign language could also cost you your life as Pol Pot sealed off Cambodia to the world.
Rather like China's misguided ideology under Mao, there was a real disdain for education and intellectuals. People were considered enemies for having the wrong background. How ironic it was that Pol Pot (real name Saloth Sar - a man who never worked a rice field in his life and who was a teacher) and his cowardly coterie all hailed from the elite themselves educated men who thought they knew best. When in fact what they executed was, apart form the Taleban in Afghanistan, probably the world's most illiterate revolution or recent decades.
People were simply clubbed to death and shoved into large burial pits

After a while you wonder quite how much information you can absorb. Of course the human stories and factual information are totally compelling. But what impacts more forcefully are the human faces of the men, women and children. Their mug shots stare straight at you. Hundreds and thousands of eyes hinting at a multitude of gruesome stories. The eyes of men tortured to the very edge of imminent death and the eyes of men knowing their fate with a strange sense of almost exhilerated contentment in them that the agony of the punishments will soon be relived by the certainty of death.
The weary and exhasuted eyes, the defiant eyes, the shocked eyes, the disbelieving eyes. All of them, eyes of condemned men, women and children.

Some thirty years on, there is still no real formal justice procedure. Perversely, the men who did the butchering seemingly earned the right to live in freedom for decades without taking full responsibilities for what they did. Another huge failure of the international community (see below) was to allow the Khmer Rouge to retain the United Nations seat until 1991 - which meant that the murderers were representing their victims for well over a decade. Only at the UN could such a thing be possible.
As a statement in Tuol Sleng reads,
'The bones cannot find peace until the truth they hold inside them has been revealed.'

Israel and Gaza

2009-01-10T08:22:00.004Z

And so with a weary familiarity, the world sighs as the Middle East combusts into flames of self-destruction and suffering once more.
Lets try to search for some answers. The Israeli leaders are being nakedly opportunistic. They have an election to fight next month and they have taken calculating advantage of both the distraction of the festive season in the west and the impotence of an outgoing American president in his final weeks in office. They are posturing with lives of innocent people.
But then when it came to the Middle East, of course, George Bush has always been the president who did nothing when he really needed to, and always did too much when he didn't need to act. You sense he probably still doesnt really know where the Gaza strip is, let alone have the slightest inclination what day to day life has been like there for Palestinians both before and after Israeli cranked up the aggressive exploitation.
You wonder what George Bush will (or can) do exactly when he retires. He could go and work for the Israeli government as their puppet spokesman. Oh hang on, that's already Tony Blair's job isn't it?
So what does Tony Blair do exactly, you might wonder. He is officially the ambassador of the so-called quartet of the EU, America, the UN and Russia. Shouldnt he be really earning his shekkels at this critical time? But no he seems content to sit on his hands in his palatial Jerusalem residence (when he is actually there at least and not spending his seven figure salary from JP Morgan for advising on banking - again didnt seem to earn his money there either did he really?). And George Bush sits with his feet on the desk in the White House. Both of them very clearly taking sides. Both of them having no conscience whatsoever about fiddling while the lives of innocent people burn.
I find it unfathomable why so many people keep blindingly swallowing the justifiactions of the Israeli government for doing what it is doing. Their slick media spokesmen protest that by smashing a city, and shattering the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people, they are 'just defending the Israeli people'. Really? By their logic, one injured Israeli is equivalent to a hundred dead Palestinians. How and why exactly is that the case? What has taken place is wholely preventable. Bombing an entire people just to stop a few rocket attacks is not only disgustingly disproportionate. It is also highly ineffective and very counter-productive.
Israel is now effectively creating a whole new generation of suicide bombers and rocket launchers, perhaps even more hard-line and militant than before, and for decades to come, sadly, that is how it will be. Bombing wedding parties, schools and clinics, even by accident, is extremely dumb, very wrong and doesnt work.
Keeping the media away is also a very calculating tactic. It is censorship becasue the Israeli government are afraid of the ugly truths that might be revealed and they dont want to be made accountable for murdering scores of innocent people. The lame excuse that anyone innocent who is perceived as an enemy is a lame and morally weak justification. Perhaps a political leader of any calibre (is there one of stature in office anywhere now in the world?) might have the political courage to say this.
The policy of military war-making for Israel has not exactly been successful i nrecent times, has it? If it was then they wouldnt need to keep doing. So maybe they should think harder and more thoroughly about the causes of their unsatisfactory security. The solutions to this part of the world have to be political and economic. After my travels through the region, this was very much the conclusion I found myself reaffirming.
http://www.blogger.com/www.alitravelstheworld.com/books/opening_up_the_middle_east/
Ultimately, Israel will need to talk to people, understand their concerns and deal with them and compromise. And the world needs to stop viewing the Middle EAst in such patronising and simplistic terms. It is a labyrinthe with many entrances. But as long as Israel maintains the Palestianian people under an oppressive economic siege (to say nothing of the military siege funded and equipped by America remember) then its security will always be undermined.
I happen to know some good and likeable Israeli people, but there are too many Israeli's who are one-eyed and badly informed about parts of their world which are afterall right on their own doorstep and they can never travel too. A proper sense of proprortional perspective might be more useful, especially for a people for whom the destructive consequences of war should in no way require any reminders. Smashing up innocent peoples lives and shattering their homes wont work 'Never again'. We keep hearing those words when it comes to war. Think Rwanda, Sudan, Iraq even. But the words seem empty, meaningless and easily forgotten. Is there not a better alternative? Dont bank on the world's lame politicians to come up with one anytime soon.

Laos, the sleepy country wakes up

2009-01-10T08:20:00.001Z

Laos is the sleepy country and it is waking up. It is the country that feels like it has been left on standby mode, a little slow to rouse itself.
Laos is the country that you may unashamedly never have heard of. Some might place it somewhere in Africa. But it is a country we might be hearing a lot more about.

more to follow....

Chinese Markets

2008-12-04T13:53:00.005Z

Spitting

2008-11-25T10:29:00.004Z

Disgusting I know, but it has to be brought up. Bad pun intended. The Chinese like to spit. And its hard not to let it affect you.

After the best part of a couple of months amongst them (most of the time fairly intimately), maybe its the sterile air or contagious force of habit, but part of you thinks if you can't beat them, join them. In fact, whuy not go one better and really show them how to spit properly because, especially for people who do so much of it, the peculiar thing is that the Chinese are not actually very good at spitting.
They are world class throat hoickers. Of that there is no doubt. But the actual spitting part is usually a complete anti-climax. Perhaps it is the crowds or the likely proximity of so many other Chinese people, but something seems to hold them back at the critical moment of expulsion. Still it never fails to make me glance around nervously and check that my legs dont have a new coating.

Road to Burma

2008-11-23T13:40:00.012Z

They call it the Bamboo Curtain. It is China's secretive border with Burma. There is no reason to go there at all, nothing much to see. So I did a strange thing. I decided to go totally out of my way to take a look. Just for the thrill of the ride somewhere totally different. It didnt disappoint. For a couple of days I wandered around, not another Westerner or even Chinese tourist in sight. No one really spoke any English. It was just me and my phrase book, trying to fathom what I was doing in such a place.
In what felt like no time at all the bus engines had been switched off and there was the silence of an unexpected blurry-eyed arrival in a town I could not remember the name of. Sometimes when you travel you do not need to see a particular sight or undertake a designated experience. Just getting an open-eyed feel for somewhere which looks intrguing on a map is enough. Ruili, right in the far south western corner of China was such a place.
Like so many other places in China, it totally confounded my expectations. The scenery was stunning: an area known as the sea of heat for all its thermal energy and some twenty volcanoes, it is also very earthquake prone. My second bus deviated away from the main highway - I thought this was to avoid paying the toll, as had happened previously (see below) but no, this was indeed the rough dirt track to the Burma border. It was a road for motorbikes, jungle-clad with overlapping ferns, brilliant for hiding things or bandits poerhaps, unsuited to buses and it reminded me of the beginings of the Lost City in Colombia.
(www.alitravelstheworld.com/colombia)
This road, the Burma road was, I could see, still being built by hand, brick by laboriously chiselled brick. Teams of labourers toiled in the warm sun. Tea plantations began to emerge and then the mighty girth of the Mekong river and a precarious wobbly planked bridge. Banana plants and sugar cane-filled fields. Then, always a surprise around the next bend, flat plains.

There was that lazy hum and distant drone of the Asian Sub-continent, the sleep-inducing haze and mind-draining heat. Water buffaloes and cycle rickshaws. The people, I noticed, now had darker features and were more ragged looking, and less purposeful in their demeanour. I oculd easily have changed countries. I could easily have been in Burma.

And then some Chinese soldiers stopped the bus stopped the bus and asked me questions. Was I American, one of them asked, as he thumbed through my passport. Absolutely not, I replied, takign the risk of humouring him. It seemed to work. He and his colleague looked long and hard at my bag and gave me the benefit of the doubt, waving me on my way. But to where?
What a strange place Ruili was. Again there was the strong sense that I had left China altogether. I almost had. I was totally on my own in an unfamiliar town and it was strangely stimulating. Everyone I passed in the street looked at me hard. I attracted plenty of attention everywhere. No one seemed to speak my language. The men wore sarongs, like loose skirts which they had a habit of crudely 'readjusting' from time to time.
I found a hotel. it was rather surreal, vast and empty looking. The reception lady sent me to what felt like the furthest away possible room, at the end of the corridor where there were protruding cameras, which I cheerily waved into on my way past each time. It felt like I was their only guest. 'Classic Jazz Tastes Style!' boasted the hotel pamphlet. My room looked pretty ordinary and shabby to me. They even had a comb and shower cap in the bathroom (really useful to a bald man!). And the TV didnt work. And i thought back to the bus station which had clocks on the wall showing the times in 'Greenwich, Peking and Rangoon.' And I began to wonder if perhaps this city was not dissimilar to Rangoon, something I might well be able to find out within a couple of months time.

to be continued.....

First impressions are not always the most favourable. Shops didnt seem to sell anything I needed or wanted - an ice cream or a cold beer perhaps. Instead they offered expensive jewellry, designer sunglasses, washing machines, beds and even an entire row of stores selling blankets. Christ, it was well over thirty degrees, there was no danger of catching a chill at night here!

I walked into a supermarket to muffled titters and giggles. No less than ten uniformed girls greeted me at the entrance and then one of them escorted me around the shop. It was like having my very own personal shopper. Outside another large electronics store, the shop assistants were skipping, sop few customers were there.
Someone offered me teak, jade and some opium (a big problem, but thats another story) and at the border, did I require the services of a ladyboy? I'd heard stories that hairdressing shops were not indeed what they seemed and were fronts for brothels. Luckily as someone who isnt big on hairdressing expenditure, that wasnt a problem.
In fact whole swathes of the town felt like it was just one big front for various illicit endeavours.

The Brurmese people, at first glance to me, reminded me of Indians or Pakistanis and they spoke like them too. I came across a couple of boys who were very inquisitive in English. I thought they spoke it better than actually did and only realised when they kept repeating everything I said!

The markets, like plenty of markets in China were not for the faint of smell of the weak of stomach. Dogs in cages, cats on leads, blood fur and feathers all amalgamated together on the floor. I was sure there was a decent chance I'd pick up bird flu. A mentally ill man, ragged and destitute in a way that you would never come close to see in my own country or indeed continent, was craling his way laboriously across the dirty floor. Where he was going, or indeed where he had come from, no one seemed to know, or to care. It seemed that some people were actually living or sleeping in this market in hunched gloomy squats with washing hung outside. What a place to live. What an existence.
One strange thing about Ruili - there were many strange things - was that the town just seemed to come to a abrupt halt at the end of the main road (some eight lanes wide). High rise buildings, then jsut dirt and mud, nothing but the rubble of countryside again.
One thing that struck me as I picked my way through the mayhem - it was strangely compelling - was how busy or pre-occupied most people were. Children being schooled, a mother arranging her daughter's hair, a man texting on his mobile phone (every has one) families scoffing noodles, making tea, counting money, a woman methodically putting on her make-up.

Then it struck me. I'd come all the way from the sprawl of Beijing right to far fringes of the Burma border to encounter what I expected China to be - the lonesome anonymity of the strange alien outsider, the awkward and rude hotel service (another story) and the weirdness.

Having taken myself to some of its remoter fringes, I am tempted to conclude that maybe, just maybe, China as the monlithic homogenous entity we hear so much about, is not quite what we've told it is or what we think it is. Yet in this far flung corner of a vast country people seemed to posess something very un-Chinese - that rare commodity called time. And it occurred to me that people werent spitting in the street. I had barely noticed.

Chinese Lessons

2008-11-19T09:43:00.005Z

Maybe its just me, but I seem to have a way of getting into trouble with attempting to speak the language. Never mind my Spanish in Central America (read my experiences and mistakes here: www.lulu.com/alistaircaldicott), theres always a new misunderstanding around the corner - Ill try to backdate a few here when I have time and internet speed / availability.
Earlier today, in a jokey sort of way, I called someone comrade. And then I discovered that the word comrade in Chinese (tongzhi) also now means a slang word for someone who is gay. Quite ironic really, since the literal translation (I belatedly realised) means those of the same mindset. SO there you go - perhaps that just about sums Chinese communism up - going from comrades to gays in less that a generation!
Some time ago I showed someone the word for sore throat in the back of my phrasebook. It was in very small print. I was wondering why he was looking at me in a funny way. Then I scrutinised the word and noticed that immediate above it, where I had underlined was the term for sore thrush.
Also the word for current affairs in Chinese is Shishi - said almost literally as Shhhhh! Appropriate perhaps, you might think.
And as today happens to be World Toilet Day (you think Im joking) - in the same restaurant I made my language faux pas I managed to photo their toilet sign, which didnt pull any punches:
TOILET: NO POO, PEE ONLY! THANK YOU.

I am now heading west right to the border with Burma -a very long way from Beijing. In fact I shall be closer to Delhi than either Beijing or Shanghai.

On the Edge

2008-11-18T14:55:00.005Z

Perhaps my favourite Chinese sign yet:
BEWARE THE FIERY SAFETY!
And underneath: TAKE CARE THE ANXIOUS AND TORTUOUS PATH!
Rather appropriate in some respects.

WIthout realising, I had stumbled into the middle of a sizeable and chattering party of Chinese tourists (very easily done) but it was nothing like as bad as I might have feared. In fact I really came to enjoy their company and started to to work some of my Mandarin.
More and more I am coming to the conclusion that China is so far removed from our casually and lazily accepted norms. Obviously plenty of people will remain quite sceptical but my advice is to do what I usually do: come and see it for yourself and make your own mind up. It truly is an absorbing country with plenty of magic to be sprinkled on you...if you go delving into the right areas and delve hard enough.
As roads go, the road up to Lugu Lake on the border of northern Yunnan and Sichaun proivinces is a rattling, rough and rugged rollercoaster. It snakes and slithers its way around the precariously sloping orangey-brown mountains of Yunnan. It feel like hundreds, maybe thousands of men, are constantly rebuilding the road. And for a good reason: heavy landlsides. The road was closed for this reason just a few days before I ventured up and it was easy to see why. This was an area where landslides were of severe and epic proportions.
This is a road which is never short of drama: rubble and wreckage, overturned trucks, dusty swerves or the steering wheel from a driver who uses one hand for his mobile phone and the other for his cigarette. Panicky honks of the horn do little to reassure passengers - I found myself in the front seat which was both the very best and the very worst place to experience everything the road had to offer.
When you descend it - and it is no more than a rutted track of stones - it is the sort of descent for which you need to hold on to something fairly firmly. I was airborne from my seat several times and banged various parts of my body on hard edges of the bus interior. I always bang my head hard on anything, its like a curse of baldness. But in a strangely compelling way, the ride was worth every yuan. As the late afternooon sun ravished and dazzled the broadening river valley and banana trees emerged to signify a milder climate again, I was reminded of my crazy journey down the world most dangerous road in Bolivia (www.alitravelstheworld.com/bolivia)
And all sorts of every animal scattered and casually rambled across the road - piglets, herds of cows, sage old beared wild goats, horses, stray dogs. Every now and again I caught glimpses of brillinaltly flurescent women from the minority Mosuo people. More and more in CHina, you start to realise that so much its territory is actually rather un-Chinese at all. So many different kinds of diverse people co-exist within its borders. This is a country of Lost Horizons

Tiger Leaping Gorge

2008-11-12T08:50:00.010Z

Last night, in my efforts to immerse myself, I summoned up the courage to eat snails for dinner washed down with local red wine, which was unsurprisingly the much more palatable of the two. I have met all sorts of people in the last week or so here in Yunnan province - having had beers and discussion with the Chief Justice of the Marshall Islands to having dinner with a German man in charge of a large automotive company opening its third factory in Shanghai to a an ex Wall Street banker.There was something utterly compelling about witnessing first hand the powered, frenzied, concentrated fury of the Yangzi river. The late afternoon sun glinted and streaked with marvellous dazzle down the river's path.
In terms of challenging walks that I have undertaken, the Tiger Leaping Gorge walk was fairly moderate and undemanding. In terms or spectacular views and scenery, it was dramatic. I nearly got bumped off the path and down into the lower reaches of the valley at one point by a pair of frisky horses, but managed to manoevre my body away form theirs just in time.

At the end of my charge down into the canyon, I found myself being asked to have dinner with a German man and his wife. His wife spoke excellent English but barely uttered a word and did little more than nod politely as her husband told me all about the Chinese work ethic and the economic prospects for the automotive industry.

'We always have to tell the CHinese workers so many times. It is not like in Germany. We cannot embarass or humiliate them. This is very bad. It is like killing them. The CHinese are very different to you and me.'

'Indeed they are.' I replied.

'They think, eat and act differently. Try eating the frog.' he insisted. 'It really is very tasty. And the goose feet too. This is recommended.'

Then suddenly, out of the blue, came a fierce cry. ' Fuwujian!!'

He was callign the waitress over.

'Oh so you know her name?' I innocently suggested.

'No. Dis is the word for waitress. If you shout it loud enough they always come over.'

Sure enough a girl sheepishly approached our table.

'Our food is not hot.' He insisted. 'Please take it back and make it hot.'

As she did so, she stared at him. I also stared at him. He had blood streaming out of his nose. It was altitude sickness. And it began to attract attention.

more soon....when China sorts its internet out! Believe me their is so much more to tell, but I'm short on time and internet speed. Tomorrow I am heading up to a place described as the 'Kingdom of Women'...

Chinese Signs

2008-11-06T13:29:00.007Z

There are many dangers and perils to the traveller in China, some of them less obvious than others...

I shall add new signs when I can - there really are too many to upload...but enough of my scribbling!

Where were these signs when I needed them on my train journey! (see below)

Chinese Karaoke

2008-11-06T11:38:00.006Z

If seeing is believing in China, then hearing is disbelieving when it comes to karaoke.
As someone with the singing voice of an undomesticated mammal which should never be inflicted on anyone apart from myself, far be it for me to caste judgements on the quality of others attempting to expel tuneful or melodic noises from the deepere recesses of their larynxes.
Nonetheless, it must be unequivocally stated that the vast majority of karaoke singers here are hideously and excruciatingly stressful to any normal and properly functioning human ear.
Perhaps I should have been alerted, or even troubled, by the hurried and exaggerated enthusiasm with which I was ushered up the stairs of a dimly lit bar I had just ambled into. But I was shunted straight into the uncomfortably intimate vicinity of a small raised stage. Luckily, after ordering a beer, and accompanied by my two English friends Abby and Jasmine, we managed to edge ourselves into a more discreet position out of the vocal firing line.
White smoke began to diffuse suggestively across the stage as an announcer over-enthusiastically belowed out something or other. A dog, which resembled a much hairier nad stockier Lassie, waggled and weaved in front of the stage in anticipation of what was to come.
Then out of the mist, in a very 'Stars In Their Eyes' kind of way, the shape of a body emerged. As the figure of a young man all in white became more clearly defined, I felt like he was on the verge oif announcing,
'Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be the Chinese Will Young!', before dissappearing back into the smoke. But he didn't. Instead he started to sing.
Only several lines into the song could I properly idnetify the song as an Eric Clapton one. But, instead of tears, the title had changed to 'Cheers in Heaven!'
And the man was boldly undeterred by the underwhelming apathy of the audience, which consisted mostly of a sprinkling of CHinese businessmen, a couple of whom were ploddingly absorbed by their mobile phone prodding. Meanwhile another group were masochistically indulging in dice rolling drinking games, feverishly and gleefully plunging themselves into raucous oblivion.
Clink, CLink. CLink. They raised their glasses and embarked on another downward slide into messy drunkeness. Then,m before I could uncringe my face from the final dying, screeched choruses of 'Cheers in heaven!', two of these men had plonked themselves down next to me.
The greetings were all forceful backslaps, exagerated head nods and endless handshakes, which I almost began to make a silent sweepstake on estimating the time my hand might be released from his grip.
All of us were near muted by the deafening volume of them usic. So the 'conversation' rarely progressed beyond monosyllabic shouts of enthusiasm or polite agreement.
'We make buildings. Our business.' one of them told me.
'Tomorrow Kunming we. Tomorrow you come Kunming!'
'Sure.'
In the end I hated the idea of stone-cold killing their enthusiasm. So with the conversation rather dry and them usic having shifted to a totally different and more vigorous dance beat, the three of us sat dancing with our hands.
The CHinese businessmen, when they weren't crash-clinking our glasses, seemed in awe of copying what we were doing with our dance movements. So, after a few moments of intensive synchronisation, there we all were under the instigation of Jasmine and myself, motioning the hand signals to cleaning the windows, climbing a ladder, feeding a horse and changing a light bulb. Their enthusiasm knew no bounds, as did my disbelief.
Then, before us, out iof the smokey mist another Stars in Their Eyes contender emerged - a tall man with a really long black mane of hair and sporting an intriguing red and white outfit. The dog didnt seem to approve and started barking. It looked like he had a very thick woolen jumper around his waist, or was it a actually a small blanket? Either way, he belted out some CHinesem usic with unswerving conviction.
Having exhausted the window cleaning and ladder lcimbing dance routines, all of us found ourselves merrily waving our hands swayingly in the air in the manner of a rock concert crowd. To some mild astonishment the singer started to respond and do the same arm movements while he was singing. When he had finished he took an exaggerated bow and vanished back into the smoke. My two Chinese friends had near exhausted themselves and felt obliged to issue goodbyes before beginning to stagger out.
'Tomorrow Kunming you.' he repeated.
'Yes tomorrow Kunming you' I replied.
And they were gone as swiftly as they'd arrived. A Spice Girls -ish solo tribute act was next up on the stage, but I'd had my fill.

Bureaucracy

2008-11-06T11:23:00.003Z

China is an absurdly bureaucratic place in some respects. Some hotels in certain restricted areas require all sorts of information, but plenty of it borders on the ridiculous and is just paperwork for the sake of it. So sometimes I take a little silent pleasure in making answers up.
At the bottom of the form is a 'Remarks' section into which I have inserted comments like
'I'm very tired of filling out poinless forms.'
or, 'It's quite cold here and the hotel staff and not terribly responsive or efficient.'
Under 'Occupation', you could write anything from 'Egyptian goat herder' to 'Olympic athlete'. I once put down Gordon Brown as my employer. Maybe some pen pusher might pull me up for this when I eventually leave the country, we'll see.

Naked bodies

2008-11-04T13:13:00.005Z

Have you ever witnessed naked human bodies being enthusiastically devoured by packs of vultures? Thats what I spent a morning doing the other day. it is a Tibetan Buddhist sky burial and it is peculiarly compelling. It is how plenty of Tibetan people choose to dispose of their dead and you might say it is the most ecologically friendly funeral practice on earth. And the backdrop, at nearly 4,000 metres high, with dazzling snow coated summits and a misleadingly silent and serene air, is equally compelling.

Seeing the heads of the vultures soaked with the red of human blood was slightly disturbing. They tended to gather in feverish packs awaiting the final slicing and chopping of the naked human flesh while a Buddhist monk issues the last rites.
The Chinese outlawed the Tibetan sky burials a couple of decades ago, but it really is very difficult to prevent a group of people just taking a body to a cold hillside, cutting it open and preventing the vultures from tearing it to bits and feasting. A free-for-all ensued, the vultures chasing and tearing at chunks of flesh right until there was nothing left. Then the bones are smashed and ground down into a paste so that also can be consumed.

Gruesome, macabre...you might chose to use these words, but it was fascinating, and also a reminder of just how different some people are to us.

On a separate note I have my suspicions that I am being watched and even followed, but more of that another time.

Shangri La

2008-11-04T13:07:00.008Z

So I have reached Shangri La. And it is about as far removed from what I thought it might be. But then so have so many other places and indeed pre-conceptions about China. The road to it is as tortuous as it is dramatic. Every now and again the road is on the verge of falling away altogether a few hundred metres down into a breath-inducing canyon. But the arrival never quite justice to the journey.

For a seasoned traveller, or even a curious tourist, there is very little here to stimulate or nourish. But for an intrigued observer of where China is really going as a country, away from the turbo-charged, explosive growth of its mega-cities and their sleey, super-imposed modernity, it is rather fascinating and very revealing.

Here is place, so far far removed from Beijing and it is perhaps more syptomatic of the new China than anywhere else I've been. Perhaps this is what the Chinese government one day will turn Tibet into - some sort of gentrified, dumbed-down tourist theme park.

Shangri La is misleadingly billed as some sort of authentically Tibetan thriving city. It is anything but.The sun illuminates and warms parts of the city in the daytime, but by night, the temperature really plunges and chills everything and everyone.

The olds town brims with internet cafes (never mind that the computers dont always works properly!), tacky souvenir shops, boutique jewellry

Embryonic consumerism is taking hold, but in a rather staid, saniised and controlled way. Thai massage places for tourists (largely Chinese), Western food offerings.

It is also like they built all the shops and office blocks, the plush hotels, the statues and artificial lakes, and are still waiting for the people to come

There is an ordered calmness and a pleasantness which somehow feels uneasy and unatural. Something doesnt quite feel right. It is perhaps a slice of China's vision of its own utpian future and you wonder if this is what communism eventually turns into - sterile, controlled, uniform capitalism in all but the official name. For me, anywhere with an excess of contrived fakeness has the air of somewhere where you can easily be controlled or watched.

For a tourist wanting to renew a visa (me) it is breathtakingly easy and even efficient. I found myself laughing and joking with a Chinese policewoman about my lack of hair. Sometimes it pays to smooth the process along. My photo was very different to my shaven head. I looked like a monk, she said in her softly spoken voice. It is ironic becasue the Tibetan monks almost look out of place now here.

To the outside world China's voice is softly spoken (in a way that Russia's is not for example) and no one knows for sure what the future will be, but inside scrutiny and questioning on our part will be no bad thing. So the next time you see, hear or read a news report from the part of the world let me know.

President Obama

2008-11-04T13:00:00.003Z

At the risk of prematurely predicting the result ) I once wrote a dissertation on the 1992 British election!), today could be a momentous day.
Yet we need to be very careful in getting too carried away by the implications of America's new president. We should be realistic and patient in expecting the changes that are needed. But nonetheless, it is a hugely significant momeent, not just for America but more importantly for the world. This change has the power to change lives for the better right from Palestine to Pakistan. So lets cast aside any cynicism or negativity and get behind the new president. He has the ability and judgement to do the right and necessary things. But patience is required for real change.

Tibetan flavours

2008-10-30T11:53:00.009Z

How could somewhere so big, so empty and so open be so efficiently closed off, I asked myself. I was becoming breathless from the altitude (current town Litang, over 4,000m high) and the stunning scenery. The magnificent big blue skies, the sweeping vastness, the sense of the mountain summits grazing the heavens.

If China had a Wild West, then this would definitely be it.
Officially I am not in Tibet. Unofficially, and to all intents and purposes, I am already in Tibet. The soaring snowcapped mountains, the big empty terrain, the clourful prayer flags flapping in the icy winds, the stirring sense of gigantic wonder, the exotic weather-beaten faces of the people. Technically a part of China, but a very different world.

The terrain looks rather roughed up, in spite of a bright strong sun, which yields little kindness, only harsh brightness. The driver turned up the volume of his music. It was what I might describe at Tibetan techno, thumping beats and Spanish lyrics for one song: 'Vamos a la playa!' (Lets go to the beach!) The beach had never felt further away.

The morning frost was hard and the scenery promised to be breathtaking. Enromous valleys, icey rivers and mountains coated in gleaming snow. I was already out of breath with the high altitudes, but something else contributed too.

On my bus the driver had offered me cigarettes. I needn't have bothered smoking any becasue all the other passengers on Chinese buses do your smoking for you. And when they're not smoking, they're spitting.

At one small town stop I wondered around a market and watched men chopping and sawing off yaks' heads before they were casually wheeled off on a trollyey. Crude outdoor butchering and running blood. As they did so, cigarettes never left their mouths, of course. Pigs snaffled around the fringes of toilets. A pair of stray dogs (there are nearly everywhere in these parts) mated with uneasy brutality in the distance.
Of course it is always useful to remember just how much history China has been through (near on 46 centuries of it no less). So in some ways this is a country which is always writing, or even rewriting, its own enormous history.

Mountaineering for Buses

2008-10-30T11:47:00.009Z

I promise you, one day I shall write a book entitled the world's worst bus journeys. A recent contender was my journey in Sichuan province (south west China) from the town of Kangding to Tagong. At times I thought I was back in Afghanistan doing a never-to-be-repeated journey - www.alitravelstheworld.com/afghanistan
The start of the journey was not promising. We reached a police road block. Then engine chuntered out and the driver went to speak to the soldiers. I guessed that they were not letting us through because we were foreigners. Never forget that China is a country of rules, of control, or order and of face. Rules must be adhered to.
On a previous bus journey people refused to sell me tickets because I was a foreigner. Foeigners are not allowed to buy tickets for buses here. 'Why?' I asked, without answers. I waved my money around but the woman behind the counter didnt want to know. She didnt even give one of the famously awkwardly tightly clenched polite Chinese smiles.

The bus company even made announcements in English and the entire list of the Customer Satisfaction Requirements (their words, not mine) were printed out on a notice board

It was only becasue of the attentions attracted that a lady came over and took myself and two other English girls in a taxi to the outskirts of town, Here we waited uneasily, wondering what on earth we were doing, Then the same bus we had previously been refused permission to travel on pulled over and we got onboard. Rules can be bent in China, sometimes very effectively.
Anyway to reach Tagong there was only one road and we were obviously not going to be allowed to travel on it. So the driver came back, slammed his battered Hiace into a frenzied reverse and off we headed down a side road. We came to a village checkpoint. Money was handed over to some local women and we took a very severe turn up a steep rocky farm track. It was an excellent place to be robbed and left for good.
We careered around a brick wall, near shaving it. However, there were some other passengers in the vehicle, Tibetan men, and they urged us all to get out. The driver told us to find some large rocks to palce behind the wheels to prevent it rolling back down the hill. Then he required us to push the vehicle up the farm hill. What on earth was going on, I silently wondered, as I packed my body down alongside twoTibetan men in a an exhausting attempt to generate some momentum. Becasue we were at altitude (over 3,000m) the effort was near shattering. Somehow the driver gave it all he had and we made it to the top of the hill. We came out on a main raod, indeed the correct road. A few shouts of delight and the turnign on of some loud Tibetan techno music indicated that we had successfully, if exhaustively, circumnavigated the Chinese military road block.
The Sichuan-Tibetan Highway is the main road all the way from South West China up to Lhasa, Tibet's controversial capital. To call it a highway is a gross exaggeration. It is a tortorously twisting narrow mountain road, deeply unsuited to the volumes of heavy truck traffic which batters it every day.

more coming soon ( Chinese internet connections and electricity permitting!)...

Monkeys in the mist

2008-10-30T11:30:00.008Z

The Chinese have a saying that where one monkey stands in the way, ten thousand men shall not pass. And when you are confronted by clusters of these monkeys half way up stepp mountain trail, it is easy to understand why. From far away they look cute and playful. Up close however, they are considerably more menacing and threatening. They seem to believe they have a right to help themselves to anything edible you might have on you, whether you like it or not.
I spent a couple of days trekking up Emei Shan, one of China's holiest mountains. Misty monasteries and mischievious monkeys were the main highlights.

I was crossing a rope bridge and all of a sudden a small group of monkeys appeared around me from different angles. I had a stick with me, but it seemed to make little difference. One of them took a leap and swiped for my back. Fortunately I swerved oput the way just in time and he missed me. That was fine, but the more intimidating moment came furthher up the mountain where a young Chinese couple were waiting nervously.
It soon bcame apparent why. One very large monkey was sat on a post. When he saw me he growled. Up close some of the monkeys were the size of large dogs or even small black bears. As he growled me he yawned his mouth open and bared his fangs. We had to be very patient and wait for him to be distracted befopre continuing through.
I spent the night in a monastery. With creeping woooden floorboards, dark crevices and mysterious bodies lurking in the mist, it did a very good impersonation of a haunted house.

A few notes on further Chinese food experiences:
It really is incredibly hit and miss. Ordering is often a complete gamble, especially if you are feeling in the slightest bit adventurous. Entire dishes have been left untouched. Perhaps the most disgusting thing so far for me has been bamboo shoots. Harmless enough you might think, I certainly did, but utterly repulsive. And the fact that they happened to be shaped rather like a certain part of a man's anatomy also considerably diminished the appeal.
I found myself eating yogurt with chopsticks (?!) and the most bizarre yet....a fruit salad smothered with, wait for it, tomato ketchup...mmm....it almost makes those severed yaks heads and chicken feet seem vaguely palatable. In order to wash it down I had to order a bottle of 'Local Bear'
The Chinese dont really eat their food, they scoff and shovel it. There is something compelling unsophisticated and crude in witnessing the cramming into the mouth with the efficiency of cattle converging around a feeding station. And the mess they leave afterwards is truly incredible. The scavengers come, then devour, then they clear off again.

photos coming soon hopefully...

Xi'an

2008-10-22T15:51:00.007+01:00

Not for one moment did I imagine I would find myself in the city where the great origins of China's early empire took root, gawping at skyscrapers and cranes. But this is twenty-first century Xi'an. For a moment I thought I must have taken the train to Shanghai by mistake. Its cenntre is one big endless glitzy shopping centre.

it was a bit like when I arrived in the city of Manaus, an isolated city in the middle of the Brazilian rainforest after four days of boat travel. It was all a bit underwhelming. I was expecting something more. All I got was busy blandness. The klet down of the first impressions after arrival somehow devalued the efforts of the journey.

The big thick walls of this ancient city (a more modern city centre you might be hard pressed to find), even they could not protect it from rampant consumerism and big name brand shopping. Its a little like a woman who puts on too much make-up again and again. The outside facades are clean and pleasant but you begin to wonder what is really underneath, what is being concealed or glossed over. When something is too gleaming and glitzy, trying too hard almost, you begin to ask yourself why.

Sure the site of the terracotta warriors is indeed very impressive. Although you cannot get all that close to them, you can have a solid appreciation of how one emperor set about constructing an army of 6,000 uniquely stylised clay statues under the ground. A policeman sat on his perch above some red carpeted stairs. The red carpet stairs were closed off to the public.

From Xi'an I continued on to Chengdu, home to the giant pandas. And I allowed myself the luxury of travelling hard sleeper rather than hard seat. Comfort, space and peace like I had never known on a train in China.

Just outside Chengdi is a giant panda reserve. Seeing these wonderful creatures close up is a very worthwhile experience:

One of my main aims has been to find a way into an area of China which (to thwart the censors!) begins with T and ends in T. It has lots of monastaries and mountains. But my chances of finding a way in are not looking great, so I'll see where I end up.

Hua Shan mountain

2008-10-22T15:39:00.005+01:00

These are my photos from a couple of days spent trekking up Hua Shan mountain, an extremely holy place to many Chiense people. You would have thought that in such a remote, beautiful and cold place you would finally be able to escape the masses of Chinese people. You would be wrong. They built a cable car and off they pour in their thousands. Fortunately, for those who opt to do things the hard way (me!) the steep climbs were rewarded by some stunning views and an unforgettable sunset, largely free of Chinese tourists.

Some of my favourite signs up the mountain included:
NO STRIDING, NO TOSSING, NO WATCHING AND WALKING, and most importantly of all, NO JUMPING!

Padlocks and red ribbons engraved with symbolic words

Chinese Trains...

2008-10-20T07:12:00.014+01:00

How bad can it really be, I asked myself. Travelling hard seat on an overnight train journey. So bad I found myself doing it twice. Maybe i could or should have done it a different way. But then travel as something smooth and uneventfully glamorous rarely does justice to the purpose of a meaningful journey.

Afterall, when you've travelled on buses on Africa as the locals have done - http://www.alitravelstheworld.com/zimbabwe - its all relative.

On the first train I was squeezed into a tight, smokey carriage - cattle class - and plonked in the middle of a Chinese family. The man sat opposite me (ie knee to knee) might well have been the Chinese harry Potter lookalike champion. He wanted to ask me anything and everything.

China may be strange, different, and often weird. But that does not mean plenty of its people are unhelpful or unfriendly. Far from it. I have spoken to all sort of people about China, and where it is going, and the general consensus from those who have spent long periods of time here (which naturally lends a certain amount of credibility) is that no one really knows with any certainty what will happen next. Anyone who tells you they do is lying or deluded.

But whatever happens, we are tied in with China. There is very little we can do to alter its course. Perhaps, not for the first time, a few tricks were missed during the Olympics, but we are where we are.

On my second train I was escorted away by a uniformed soldier. I didnt know where I was going. It was the black of night, just me and him marchign along a deserted platform. 'Go! Go!' he kept barking. Then as the train emerged out of the mist he shuffled his shoes to an erect attention and stamped his feet. I felt compelled to take my hands out of my pockets and tuck my shirt in. He was merely escorting me to the right carriage. 'Go!' he implored again, pointing at the door. So I did.

Around 4:30am a baby across the isle shrieked violently into action, roaring for some attention. Then I watched with sleepy horror as his mother swung him around with sudden swiftness to dangle him into the aisle and point him at the floor. His pants were down and he projected out a small jet of urine. It was heading towards my vicinity and she looked like an old lady merrily watering her English garden. The watery trickling sound woke me up fully. Never wear flip flops or shorts on a CHinese train, i silently reminded myself.

I looked up with disbelief and the woman in the next compartment was contentedly engaged in sewing a tapestry pattern. Then I cast a weary glance out the windomw and noticed lots of rushing water, which the train was crossing over. There was running water everywhere, little ironic perhaps for such a supposedly arid country. I delved into my map to see what this huge stretch of great water might be called and when I found out I afforded myself a quiet and suppressed chuckle. It was the Yellow River.

The shear volume of torsos in Chinese train stations on arrival and departure can instil claustrophobia. Early on a cold morning in Xi'an train station a cold slit of light at the long end of a mass of crowded humanity illuminated the exit. I felt like I was coming up out of a coal mine at dawn.

Then I watched as a fight broke out. A large fat man was thrashing out at two policemen in a way which suggested he was someoine important and had been pulled up for something petty. He cokmpletely lost his temper and was lunging for the throat of one of the policemen before he was pulled away. They were reluctant, even afraid perhaps, to pursue him. I put my head down and heading as quickly as the crowded humnanity would allow me to for the exit.

Bodies continue to converge on you from all angles. How on earth did so many people travel on so few trains, you wonder. Where are they all going and what are they all doing. The story of China's momentum belongs to them. They carry it with them every day and night.

more to follow.....

Postcard from Beijing

2008-10-12T09:19:00.012+01:00

The immensity of China is daunting. It is also exciting. Its size makes it feel like it something much bigger than just one country. One of the world's oldest countries is transforming into one of its newest...almost overnight. This country is so many different things to so many different people. A threat to some, an opportunity to others. China is more, much more than we think it is.
China is much talked about, but that doesnt necessarily mean we are genuinely well informed about it.
There's a lot going on in China these days. You might have heard about it. But seeing is believing. ONly after you have found yourself in the middle of an Olympian sized traffic jam with what feels like half of Beijing's 16 million people, do you even begin to get a sense of the scale of China and its thrusting, attention grabbing emergence onto the world stage.
Despite its size - it takes a huge amount of time just to make your way from one part of the city to another - Beijing is a rather pleasant place. People are generally friendly and very helpful. Many want to practise their English. The subway system puts the London tube to shame: modern, clean, efficient, reliable. And largely chav-free.
The Chinese are seemingly invading their own country. Small armies of tour groups in red and yellow caps all over beijing. The people are armed with cameras and there's little respite from them. Young people are bright, clever, quick and eager to learn in ways that I rarely encounter in my own country. It is a sobering thought.
Confucius once said that, 'Is it not a joy to welcome friends from afar?' - and this also seems to apply to the hasslers to. But I can take them in my stride. After some 5,000 years of continuous history they're still on the go, relentless and restless. There's no time for sitting down here. I did what I always do, just walk and talk.

Everywhere you walk, there are faces, hundreds of faces. From a meditating old man to a chicly dressed yung girl. So many faces, so much action, so little outside comprehension. It is all but impossible to take photos without including other Chinese people taking photos of other Chinese people. SO many of them either look really young or really old. Never go the wrong way down an underpass though. You just get swallowed up into a chattering chasm of excitable camera-wielding humanity.

I walked around Tianamen Square - if you never knew of its history you would take it as a pleasant place, if slightly sparsely Soviet in style. From the ancient ruins or the sprawling Forbidden City to the gleaming (and now largely disused and empty) modernity of the Olympics complex, China seems to encompass so much.
I walked for several hours along the Great Wall -this coiled serpent unleashing itself, it is so much more close up. You can appreciate it from a different dimension. Even there in the remoter stretches of this amazing structure, people try to sell you thins:
'I am a farmer?' one man waving some postcards at me for the fifteenth time told me.
'What do you farm? Tourists?'
'Yes'
'Its a good time to harvest now?'
'Yes. Special price for you my friend.'
And then there's the food - again encompassing the delicious appetising (mouth-watering roast duck) to the less appetising: Sheeps Penis, Roast Eel, Fried Scorpions, Sea Snake, Stir fried pig liver, fried pig's kidneys....anything whet your appetite there?!

There are the old winding alleys of the Hutong, rather touristy now but retaining a sense of timelessness. And then there are the glitzy shopping malls, brimming with bright neon and overspilling with giant adverts. I was told I was not allowed to call it capitalism (a dirty word here) but you can decide for yourself. Egalitarian communism at its redistributionalist best. They are nothing but efficient though, you have to say that. What takes us six years to build, they probably knock up in six months. Thats good and bad.
The world's (arguably) oldest civilisation has transformed itself many times before. We forget or overlook this. And it will do so again.

The impression is that grand old Chairman Mao, still revered and respected, has turned into a sort of deified Diana for China in its new century. The soldiers here are fairly relaxed.
People asked me about England and told me what they knew...James Blunt, The Spice girls, Harry Potter and Prince Andrew. All the good things about my own country then...hmmm.
One man I met mentioned the Olympics. He asked about the London 2012 display with the red bus. 'It was very...erm...different and ....fashionable!' Embarassing would have my adjective, I told him.
So now I'm on my way inland. Where it might lead I dont quite know, but if the censors are kind, I'll try to write again when I can. Until then....

Ali in China

2008-10-05T12:25:00.003+01:00

From early October, I shall be travelling through China. Follow my progress and impressions of the country here...

Vote Conservative!

2008-10-05T11:58:00.006+01:00

Everyone likes to moan about politcians, but not many people have the resolve to do much about it or translate it into something positive.
For the first time in my life I went to a political conference. Almost everyone I met and everything I heard confirmed to me one thing - this country cannot have a change of government soon enough. David Cameron gave a very thoughtful, considered speech - listen to it for yourself in its entirety (with an open mind if need be) and it makes an enormous amount of good sense.
As anyone and everyone on the left seems obsessed by, yes indeed he did go to Eton. But frankly, so what? Apart from a few bitter, immature, outdated politics-of-envy class warriors, who honestly cares? How long will it take before these people get over their complex about the hard reality of some people having more money than others. Labour is afterall the party which has embraced obscenely wealthy people like no other and prostituted our honours system to them.
And if all these people think that Britain today is such a divided and unequal country, where only rich and privileged people can progress and prosper, well, if so, isnt that a pretty damning inditement of three Labour governments? They have nothing positive whatsoever to say about anything Labour has done, so they resort to cheap, nasty smears.
Just because I am in favour of a Conservative government does not necessarily mean I wholeheartedly agree with or embrace all of what they say or do. Some of the remnants on the fringes cling to some strangely outdated opinions. Yet, by and large, the people in the key positions of power are becoming better informed and smarter about the wider world.
With my particular emphasis on foreign affairs and international development, I was pleasantly encouraged by the sensible and well-thought out policies being developed. William Hague in particular will make an excellent foreign secretary. What a pity we will have to wait another two years.
What impressed me most, amongst everyone I spoke to, was the willingness to listen and be open-minded about parts of the world that no one truly or comprehensively understands.
If you care about Britain having an effective, well informed and sensible foreign policy, then you have to vote Conservative. The Conservatives may not have a flawless track record, but by and large they are the natural party of international affairs.
Britains interest's, and the world's interests, are best served with them in power.

Peter Mandelson

2008-10-05T11:55:00.003+01:00

In America their solution to ease the Credit Crunch is a $700bn bailout bill. Gordon Brown's solution? He brings back Peter Mandelson! A little desperate, dont you think? Then again Gordon is sorely in need of some slicker news management with a more ruthless, sinister and calculating edge and as we well know, Peter is 'not a quitter'. Why not bring back Alastair Campbell as well, as Minster For Truth perhaps. Or resurrect Neil Kinnock's verbose and long-winded charms to batter people into opinionated submission with.
No one spin. the end of spin, Gordon cried forlornly. Some people believed him. Yet the spin has never really gone away. It's just that he wasn't very good at it, so now he's dragged someone back who used to be good at it.
It is bound to end in tears and quite a few people might appreciate the sublime irony of one of New Labour's most sinister architects being present at both the birth and the final death of his own project. A perverse symbol perhaps of New Labour lavish indulgence of super wealth, and being out of touch with ordinary people, that it regards the return of one of its most over-rated and underachieving ministers as some sort of redeeming saviour. Desperate.

David Milliband

2008-09-27T10:04:00.002+01:00

Who is he, this David Minibland? Tony Blair's researcher, the grinning school swot who still looks and sounds like he's still doing his A-levels. The boy who has never had a proper job - ok he once worked in a think-tank. I cannot believe he is ten years older than me - he looks ten years younger!
And he, and a few other chums of his, seem to think that he is the man to save the country. Except he wont quite have the nerve to come out and say so directly. He is supposed to be foreign secretary, but its not often you hear him say anything of note or meaningful interest about anything to do with the world abroad - and its not like everything in the likes of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia etc at the moment is going swimmingly is it?!
In some ways, David Millibore seems to epitomise the new breed of politican - Ed Balls, Millibore mark 2, I cannot name any more because jsut the sound of their chirpy voices will make feel ill - unable to spout anything other than dreary, cliched media-speak, always on message, clattering home the message about how wonderful the last 11 years have been and how atrocious and appalling the country was in 1997.
I think we should send him on a posting abroad for long period of time, Afghanistan say, so he get on with learning about the real world, which is after all what his job entails.

Credit crunch UK

2008-09-27T10:02:00.001+01:00

Gordon Brown has a mighty nerve to lecture about responsibility and prudence - this from the man who has wrecklessly indebted our country with tax, spend and waste. The man who told us it was the aim of boom and bust. The man who preened himself basking in the warm credit of the economic boom, now hides away as an economic chill sets in. Nothing to do with him of ocurse, it all global (keep repeating that word until people believe it) and international factors, you see.
Of course the men (and it is nearly all men) who've gambled these banks into the dust should rightly be condemned, but more importantly held to account for what they did and why they did. We need to know how and why it happened.
Perhaps the msot critical thing of all is to ensure that no one, absolutely no one, get rewarded for failures on this scale. I am all in favour of people taking risks and being rewarded for success, but being baled out for failing sets a horrible precedent. With rewards must come responsibility and accountability.
Why, for example, is the former head of Northern Rock, able to enjoy a nice affluent retirement? Could it possibly have anything to do with Labour wanting to look after its loyal voters (the only ones left?) in the North East? Ditto saving all the jobs in Edinburgh with Bank of Scotland - and you wonder why Gordon Brown is still so disliked in Scotland.
Greed - the culture of spend, spend, spend and pay later...or get someone else to pay later - be it governments or as consumers, this has been the accepted norm. People choosing to buy things they would not normally be able to afford, by stacking them onto their credit cards.
The culture of obsessing about property (witness the proliferation of programmes on TV and screaming newspaper headlines) and the marvel of never-ending house prices (not so marvellous now) have played a major part in all of this.
Young people were told they must own a house even before they'd properly started a life. It doesnt work that way in most other countries.

The entire culture of 'must-have' items of status, which extends to houses, cars, clothes, plastic surgery - has been fundamental to our new religion....shopping.
Dont worry about paying for that 'must-have' item, just slap it on your credit card, its almsot like money you dont have. It sounds good that doesnt it, being able to buy things you want (and never really needed, but thats not the point is it?) without really having to pay for them. Well thats what is happening now. Collectively, we are all (as taxpayers) going have to pay the price and with eye-wateringly high interest to boot.

The Credit Crunch

2008-09-26T21:56:00.003+01:00

So we're all doomed. Its the end of the world....well it might just be the end of the world as we've come to know it. And that might not be such a bad thing.

Fear and greed - these are the twin fundamental drivers which have taken us to where we are now.
Everyone likes to blame the big banks and rightly so. But lets look a little more closely at the role of governments.
Personally, I have little time for listening to what politicians say because it matters much more what they actually do.
If George Bush wasnt such a figure of ridicule, perhaps people would be able to better scrutinise why he has been so disastrous. He is an irrelevance, a man who just shrugs his shoulders and can do nothing. He does not seem to understand the principle of managing a budget, which is unsurprising for someone who was a trust-fund spoilt rich boy, who woukld never have had the experience of managing his own money, only spending it.
Which is what he has done with the money of the American people...on an unprecedented scale. Spend spend spend. Borrow, borrow borrow. For what? For a couple of horrendously expensive and poisonously damaging wars in faraway countries which he does not understand.
And now, he plans to spend another $700bn to prop up some rotten banks. How exactly do they value all these toxic debts at $700bn? And how do we know there wont need to be even more governemnt bailouts down the line? Is this really well spent money? Every last dollar of it? No I dont think so either.

Russia

2008-08-24T19:18:00.005+01:00

No one quite knows what to do with Russia. Different countries seem content to have differnet ways of dealing with this enigmatic country. Through complacent and short-sighted energy policies we have become increasingly dependent on Russia to supply us with energy. Its a nice thought isnt it, that every time a British family pays off their (ever increasing) gas bill, most of that money goes straight into the hands of a militaristic minded dictator who is keen to spend it on more tanks, weapons and military potency.
Some people (the Germans and Italians for example) have taken the view that Vladimir Putin is a decent, fair-minded reasonable man, someone we can do lots of business with. And do lots of business with him, they have done. Gerhard Schroder in particular did some very lucrative personal business the moment he left the German presidential office.
Yet understanding Putin is like understanding the new Russia. The two are virtually as one. Putin was a KGB man for several years which tells you all you need to know about his way of doing things. Truth-seeking journalists get murdered, opposition activists get poisoned and people do what they are told. Force, bullying and intimidation are effective methods for imposing control.
But beyond Russia's borders Putin is stirring up something much more dangerous. For South Ossetia today, read Ukraine's Crimea tomorrow and the Baltic states the day after that. All of them fragile democraices with significant Russian speaking minorities. All he needs to do is give them Russian passports, cook up an allegation of needing to protect them and then its a free hand to send the tanks in.
And what will the west do? Going by the feeble dithering over Georgia, probably very little. A little mild condemnation perhaps or some hollow threats to impose a mild diplomatic sanction or two. But absolutely nothing of real substance whatsoever that will deter Vladimir Putin from thinking he and Russia can do what it likes.
Putin has very effectively created a wedge between Europe and America. George Bush is as impotent as Condeleeza Rice is woefully ineffective. Gordon Brown shrinks into the shade of another awkward foreign policy dilemma while David Milibland is too preoccupied by a whiff of prime-ministerial power for himself to be getting on with his very serious and urgent international responsibilities.
But think of the international precedent that the feeble dithering has set. What if Russia becomes emboldened and starts to offer arms to countries like Syria and Iran? Closer links with China, or say Venezuela. What exactly is the West's strategy, if there is one? It is about time one or two leaders stood up and clarified it.

The Olympics

2008-08-16T18:30:00.004+01:00

Why I love the Olympics
Sometimes in sport, as in life, less is more. Something that only comes around once every four years retains is rarity value. Footballers might score goals every week, twice a week even and get paid more in that time than the average Olympian might hope to take home in a year. How easily and cheaply we lavish them with terms like 'hero' and 'star' for the little they do. They don’t sacrifice years of their life to stake everything they have on one moment, one performance.
It is the human stories of the Olympics that are the most compelling. You can see the elation and the agony on the athletes’ faces. The drive and the suffering of those who might have overcome nasty injury or horrendous bad luck. It really is near impossible to meaningfully digest the lengths they go to in solitary and single-minded pursuit of the ultimate goal. And when or if they achieve it, conquering the ultimate summit, their expressions and words betray that their lives will never ever be quite the same again.

The devotion, the hard toil, the precision of well-honed skill, the unwavering self-belief. The epic nature of the competition. The power, the subtlety and the unexpected drama. The painfully fine line between success and failure. The gracious winners and the losers who take defeat manfully on the chin without swearing or harassing the officials. The modesty, humility and wonderful sense of perspective.

The shock, the astonishment and the excruciating twists of excitement. The watery eyes and the swelling chests as they stand proudly on the medal podium while the national anthem pounds away. Sometimes the real tears of relief and joy.

I love the way that the spotlight of attention falls on sports like cycling and rowing, which most people would not normally bother to watch or get excited about. Sportsmen and women motivated by so much more than money, driven on by the glory of achievement. Of course there are the controversies and the cheats, but overall the Olympics have a satisfying sense of sporting purity and open inclusiveness.

Yet perhaps the best thing about the Olympics is that these people are genuine, down-to-earth heroes. Relatively ordinary people who are relatively unknown and under-appreciated trying their absolute best. When interviewed they nearly all speak with refreshing openness and engaging honesty.

So lets pay tribute to those who put in so much hard work and sacrifice to represent their country and make us feel proud and uplifted.
Forget Big Brother show offs, drug-taking minor celebrities or Bentley-driving, under-achieving footballers. These Olympians are the real role models young people can look up to. They are people worth celebrating.

John Prescott's bulimia

2008-05-02T19:15:00.002+01:00

It nearly made me want to throw up when I first read about John Prescott having an eating disorder. There certainly had to be something very disordered about his eating, but an interesting time for this shy and sensitive man to 'bravely' admit his 'disease' while simultaneously trying to promote his book, which presumable he hoped to make as much money from as he possibly could so he could spend it on, well you know what.
Four thousand pounds a year is a lot of money. In some parts of our planet it would feed entire villages for years and avert small famines. But in Prescott Towers, it was barely enough to whet his glutonous appetite. Taxpayers money too being spent solely on ensuring our deputy PM didnt starve or waste away. Imagine all the hours you work to pay the taxman, then imagine all that money disappearing down John Prescott's throat. Still at least it would come back up again, perhaps in keeping with the Labour way of taking from us and then, some time later, eventually giving back in a very messy way.
You wonder what really made him want to vomit. Maybe it was all the excesses and indulgences of life in power which he so zealously consumed. Maybe it was Tracey's shepherds pie. Or maybe it was just one chipolata too many. He'll probably want to punch me if he reads this but I'll just make sure I have an old can of condensed milk handy for when he comes at me.

Bye bye Brown

2008-05-02T19:00:00.005+01:00

It must now be the beginning of the end. Gordon Brown will cling on of course for as long as he can, but it is surely only a matter or when rather than if he gets the boot following Labour's worst election drubbing in four decades.
He might well trot out cliches about listening and leading (or was it leaving?), but few people now take him seriously. He has been exposed for what he really is...not up to it. And we have to sit through the cringe-inducing fake sincerity sessions about 'Just getting on with the job' (not for much longer he wont be) and how 'tough times call for tough leadership' (notable by its absence in the last 12 months).
It always amuses me whenever you hear politicians - say Hazel 'everything is wonderful' Blairs or the disturbingly over-eager and salivating Ed Balls trotting out their speeches about how well they've done, attempting to convince people that black is white. But in this case, defeat and rejection were so overwhelmingly rejectionist that it wouldnt even be worth trying to mount a defence. This was personal for Gordon Clown and it certainly wont be fixed by just flashing fake smiles and his newly whitened teeth onto our tv screens, machine gunning the same old lines at us.

Mr. Bean & Stalin's Britain

2008-04-19T10:14:00.002+01:00

There are so many things wrong with Britain today, it is difficult to know where to start. But lets start at the top shall we.
Gordon Brown has become the worst nightmare of both the country and for his own party. It seems he has now sunk to John Major-type levels of ridicule.
There are so many deficiencies for me to mention. His dithering ineptitude. His addiction to being disingenuous and misleading. His reliance on spin doctors and PR people. His dour blandness, only surpassed for dullness by Alistair Darling, a man for whom the most startlingly remarkable and distinguishable thing of note about is his peculiarly bold eyebrows.
Gordon Brown, prudent? Hmmm. Thats not what the figures tell us is it? A man who went on a record spending binge with everyone else's money and now has very little to show for it except his own irresponsible incompetence for ever again being trusted to run anything.
Gordon Brown, competent? Come again?
The man has never even been properly elected and it doesnt seem to bother him. Who exactly is he representing? Where precisely does his mandate come from? Is it Tony Blair's?

Zimbabwe 2008

2008-04-19T09:55:00.004+01:00

The news from Zimbabwe is as depressing is as it is predictable. Mugabe finds a way to fix the election, beat up anyone who doesnt like him and the world does nothing. A clear majority of his own people don't want him to lead, but as always, he does whatever is best for him not matter the cost. Quite simply, Mugabe is terrified of being justifiably indicted for all the nasty tihngs he has done and ending up where he belongs, in a prison cell. In fact all the better if someone had jsut put a bullet through his head several years ago.
Take George Bush for example. Supposedly he doesnt like dictadors. He's all in favour of democracies and people having free elections, right? So why the silence on Zimbabwe?
But the South African leadership manages to do worse than nothing. President Mbeki is complicit in Mugabe continuing to inflict his misery and brute force on Zimbabwe's people. To Thabo Mbeki there is 'no crisis'. Not for the first time (think AIDS sufferers) Mbeki clearly has a moral crisis of his own if he can just casually shrug off Zimbabwe's misery. He has the blood of Zimbabwe's beaten and oppressed on his own hands for his shamelful and quite deliberate inaction and tacit support for what might now be described as the world's nastiest regime. Maybe Mbeki should so and spend a day inside Zimbabwe with people who have resorting to beggin or prostitution just to feed their families. If Mr Mbeki had an iota of honour or courage or sense, he could have squeezed Mr Mugabe out of power several years ago.
And what about the deafening silences from all the other African leaders who like to utter glib mantras about how Africa can now sort out its own problems? Timid. How can we hope to take them seriously?
The sad truth is that many of Africa's problems derive form bad corrupt government. Why should Western citizens feel obliged to send more money to an continent whose leaders refuse to do anytihng to remove a man who has ruined and pillaged his own country and his own people?

Take China. What do they do? How are they helping Zimbabwe's people? By senbding a super-tanker full of weapons and ammunitions for Mugabe to continue, or even intensify, his torture. Never mind the fact that a country that is starving probably should not be spending what diminishing resources it still has on something so wasteful and unnecessarily destructive.
SO much for all those who like to talk up the UN and its mythical ability to resolve international conflicts. They jsut incvite Zimbabwe to chair on their cosy Human Rights Council. You honestly could not make it up could you?
And Europe and the EU. They dont see anything wrong or immoral (we're talking about career politicians here) in invting Mugabe to Europe. Maybe, like Mbeki, they don't think there is a 'crisis' in Zimbabwe.
SO what is likely to happen next? On the outside, not a lot, certainly not a crisis worthy of anyone with any international power getting off their backsides to do anything about. But on the inside in Zimbabwe the depression and misery dont look like ending any time soon. In fact, things might well get worse because all those who dared to express their dislike of Mugabe by voting against him. They will be the ones who are silently punished.

Questions for Labour

2007-10-16T11:31:00.001+01:00

How about some straight answers to some simple questions. Don't bet on it!

What exactly does your party stand for now?
Why is it acceptable to promise holding a referendum on a new EU Treaty, then break that promise?
Why is it acceptable for a government to be elected on the promise of its leader that he will serve a full third term, then break that promise.
Why do we treat our prisoners better than our soldiers?
What happened to John Prescott's 10 year Transport Plan?
Where are the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
Why does the government waste so much money?
Why has the tax credits system been so inefficient and expensive to administer?
Why does it necessarily make something better just because you spend more money on it? Does it not matter how and where excatly that money is spent?
Why are so many of our hospitals ridden with fatal diseases after the the record amounts of money lavished on the health service?
Why has NHS dentistry effectively been privatised?
Why can Scottish MP's vote on laws which affect only English people but the reverse isn't true?
Why do voters in Scotland receive over £1,000 more per head than those in England?
Why are voters in the north of England effectively heavily subsidised by the rest of the country. Is it a conincidence that all these areas are Labour strongholds?
Why is the average size of a Labour MP's constituency significantly smaller than those for other MP's? Is that fair?
Why, in spite of record amounts spent on education, are so many young people unable to read, write or add up properly?
Why have an additional one and a half million people people started receiving incpacity benefit over the last ten years? Is it a conincidence that this makes the official unemployment figures look better?
Why has the civil service been politicised?
Why are the levels of violent crime on the city's streets so high? Why has it become tacitly acceptable for young people to walk around carrying knives and guns?
Why has the police force become so ineffective, putting their own bureaucratic policies and procedures before protecting the public?
Why are we fighting a war in Afghanistan? What precisely are we trying to achieve?
Why is it acceptable for soldiers to lose their lives becasue they do not have the right equipment?
Why does Gordon Brown say there will be no more spinning before trying to lamely pretend that him calling off an election had nothing to do with opinion polls?
Why does Gordon Brown think he has a mandate to rule the country without anyone actually electing him?
Why should the public believe anything you say because your words and promises are cheap and empty?
Why should people take you seriously when collectively you have been serially misleading and dishonest?

Strikes

2007-10-09T22:46:00.000+01:00

There's a postal strike on at the moment. It is affecting lots of people, costing them lots of money. But it wont cost those dinosaurs who enforced the strike anything. Well it should do. Sure they might have some grievances and a right to protest, or even withdraw their (admittedly rather reduced anyway) labour. But why should it have to affect the rest of us? Why should we have to pay a penalty for something they've chosen to do?
Its the same on the tube in London. Anyone who 'works' for London underground probably has one of the cushiest jobs going - lots of holiday, not too many hours for a handsome wage, big fat pension, early retirement etc. They only need someone to not clean their lockers properly or shut down a vending machine and they selfishly decide to cripple London's transport network. For what purpose exactly?
Perhaps the next time the likes of Bob Crow need to travel somewhere in a hurry (say on a flight out the country for one of hus luxury holidays) maybe the public of London should take it upon themselves to detain him indefinitely. Then he can see precisely and intimately the very consequences of his irresponsible, childish, outdated and selfish politics.

Tax and Spend

2007-10-09T21:40:00.000+01:00

Spend Spend Spend. It is the mantra that few politicians dare to deviate from, the solution to everything. its funny how you never hear Tax Tax Tax, or Waste Waste Waste instead.
What is it with politicians making promises and pledges about how much money (not actually their money) on various things. There's something very old fashioned about the sort of ocmpetitive boasting: 'We're going to spend X Billion more than you are'. It all gets dutifully reported by the media.
But all too rarely do we stop to ask the question: Just becasue you spend more money on something, even a lot more, does that automatically make it better? Does it not matter how wisely that money is spent rather than the impressive sounding amount of it. Afterall, the same principle can be applied to anytime we spend money on anything.
Just because you pay a small fortune for an expensive meal say doesn't necessarily make it good value for money. The same applies to buying a car, some new clothes or a house. Those who spend large sums of money can be incredibly wasteful as well as frugal. But the more money spent, the higher potential for vast waste and mis-management. Look at the NHS.
Look at the complexity and inefficiency of our tax system. Great for accountants, bureaucrats and lawyers, but not for ordinary taxpayers. Look at the system for tax credits, Gordon Brown's pet policy - the government takes huge amounts of money off people then hands it back to them, obviously at great expense and unnecessary complex adminstration. Why not just let people keep more of their own money in the first place and decide for themselves what they would like to spend it on? Ah but that would be dangerous because it remove control from the centre. A command and control economy, that is Gordon Brown's creation, where people cannot make their own decisions.
And council tax, why is it so high? What value for money do we get for it. Many people cannot even rely on their rubbish being collected regualrly or the road to be proeprly maintained. But there's lots of fancy new warning signs and rising salaries for anyone who work on the council. Funny that.
Alistair Darling is Gordon Brown's malleable lackey, the most charismatic things about him being his jet black eyebrows. Everything else about him and his political style is deadpan grey. It is designed to send us to sleep, so we stop noticing the economic holes the government has got into and the woefully poor value for money achieved during the last 10 years. You find me someone who doesn't think this country is extortionately over-priced and I'll promise to splurge billions on him or her.

The Conservatives

2007-09-26T21:19:00.001+01:00

Here are the things the Conservative Party needs to do if it really wants to get back into power:

Be less like Tony Blair and his style of politics as possible. That is mainly what has worked so well initially for Gordon Brown. Accept that a lot of people got really fed up by Blair and a touchy feely immitation, however well-intentioned, just wont be popular. Serious conviction and substance will be.
Meaningfully connect with ordinary people, that is people beyond London's well-off metropolitan elites, people in the North of England and the Midlands who once voted for them but now perceive them as being out of touch and without concern for their everyday basic aspirations and concerns
Differentiate themselves from Labour with strong clarity an a simple message. Call it clear blue water or whatver you like, but strongly emphasise the real differences. If voters have a choice between two parties with very similar manifestoes, they are likely to stick with the one they know, rather than an untested imitation.

Attack Gordon Brown more and expose him for all the things he's done that he doesnt want to talk about or be questioned on. Like his backing for the Iraq war; like his sneeky tax rises in his budgets; like his refusal to hold a referendum on the EU treaty even though there was a promise to do so; etc. Ignore what he says and judge him by what he has actually done. Demolish the received and misguided wisdom that he represents regime change and hammer home the message that he is nothing more than continuation of the same old failing regime.

Constantly remind people how long the same government has been in power - sometimes they forget or overlook it - and how little it has achieved. Remind people of John Prescott, Peter Mandelson, Tessa Jowell etc. and the shameless hypocrisy and dishonesty at the heart of the governments.

Talk about the environment and global poverty, but don't lecture about them in a way that might come across as patronising to many voters on lower incomes. And don't over-prioritise them at the expense of issues which are much more fundamentally integral to most voter's everyday concerns - like rising crime, failing schools, an overly bureaucratic health service, stolen pensions, a shambolic transport system and the consequences of uncontrolled mass immigration.

Scotland. The unfairness of so many Scottish MPs (Gordon Brown included) being able to vote on laws which affect people in England but do not affect the people in Scotland who elect them. Scottish people can make laws for Scottish people so what is wrong with English laws for English people? The system is fundamentally unfair and every English MP should not be afraid to very vocally and repeatedly say so.

Get stuck into the Lib Dems and expose them for what they really are - a party that likes to be all things to all people whose only serious objective is to reach a power sharing agreement with a Labour government short of an overall majority. Gordon Brown and Menzies Campbell are pretending not to be friends, but they will be coalition partners.

Taxation. Even if future tax and spending commitments cannot be nailed down on detail, don't be afraid to very clearly be in favour of the principle of lower taxation and explain clearly why - because people will get to keep more of their own money. Taxing, spending and failing is not good enough.

Question the tired old dogmatic mantras about high government spending on all sorts of things. Just because billions of voters' money has been spent (or 'invested' as the government misleadingly terms it) doesnt mean all of it automatically goes to exclusively to good causes. Plenty of money gets wasted or mis-spent. Just because you spend more money on anything does not automatically make it better. Value for money and efficiency should be the priorities

Re-engage the hundreds of thousands of apathetic voters (many over 65) completely turned off by a political elite that has all started to sound the same. Grasp a distinct message and repeat it often with conviction to be taken seriously.

Make a priority of re-establishing trust in politics and don't be shy in reminding people why it collapsed so spectacularly. This means all politicians being unafraid to give straight answers to straight questions and making themselves properly accountable for the decisions they make.
Get the media on side and seek to set the agenda and dominate headlines as much as possible, whatver it takes, morning, noon and night. Voters need to hear a clear, distinct message as often as possible from high profile politicians speaking with conviction. Labour spin and headline chasing gimmicks must be aggressively combatted and exposed wherever possible.
Boris Johnson. Don't be afraid to use him. He reaches people that no other politicians can. Why do you think Labour is so aggressive in attacking him? It is because they genuinely fear him as a formidable opponent to be taken seriously.

Burma

2007-09-26T19:28:00.000+01:00

And so the world wakes up to Burma, for a week or so at least. Last week it was Zimbabwe. This week it is Burma.
When you see pictures of brave protestors defying armed soldiers and tanks, it is extremely stirring. In a small way I can relate to that because I was on the streets of Budapest last year when popular mass demonstrations turned to rioting with battalions of armed, faceless police unashamedly meting out punishment to anyone in their way. It is deeply unpleasant to have tear gas penetrating your eyes and throat.
If only we could bottle that spirit and determination that these proud people have and instill even just a little of it into the backbones of our own leaders so they can follow through their well-meaning and opportunist (why did anyone not utter a word before?) words with actions. Like making it very clear to the Communist waxworks in China that sustaining a nasty military regime is unacceptable. The only thing China is interested in is the maintenaince of stability.
Then there's the French, as ever with ulterior motives and contradictory interests. The giant French energy firm Total has major interests in Burma and has effectively been helping to sustain the military regime to tune of millions of dollars. So the next time you hear the French government lecture anybody about human rights bear that in mind - money used to repress the Burmese people has come indirectly from the pockets of French citizens.
Whatever you think of George Bush (and its probably quite strong either way) he was spot on with his philosophy for freedom and democracy. Every single person alive on earth should have the right to live freely under a government elected fairly by the people of their own country. Finding the means to implement such a noble sentiment - by forced impostion or organic growth - is of course the magic question. Because there are so many countries with nasty regimes who are quietly content to treat their people disgracefully. Many of them happen to be our allies. Many others barely merit news coverage. For example, how often do you hear about the human rights abuses in Egypt or Saudi Arabia?
What can we expect from the UN on Burma and Zimbabwe? Virtually nothing, of course. They might utter a few mild and meaningless words, or even issue a declaration. Maybe they'll send an envoy for a nice cup of tea with the generals. Maybe they'll agree to have some more meetings about meetings. And isnt it odd how all those who can get so angry about an 'illegal and illegitimate' war have been noticeably less vocal about nasty regimes like Burma and Zimbabwe for whom the words 'illegal and illegitimate' could not be more painfully accurate?

Ayatollah Gordon Brown

2007-09-26T19:08:00.000+01:00

Gordon Brown has become our Supreme Leader, the strong, wise, serious, great and strong (did I say 'strong' enough times?) Ayatollah who decrees how we must lead our lives, whom we must faithfully look up to and obey. Dissent will not be tolerated.
As with Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran before overthrowing the encumbent he bided his time in exile waiting for his moment to seize power from a lavish and extravagant preceding regime where the previous occupants (Shah Tony and Madame Cherie) unashamedly tried to plunder the country for all it was worth and enrich themselves before going into pampered exile.

Just like Ayatollah Khomeini, Ayatollah Gordon has taken his hostages - all those in awe of how wonderful he is - and stresses his own religious piety and commands slavish obedience from a pliant, subservient media as he centralises the lives of his subjects. Ayatollah Gordon is unashamedly patriotic at every turn, always keen for the masses to be reminded how 'British' he really is Whatever you do don't call him 'Scottish' - that would see a fatwa imposed on you by Ed Balls.

How long before every building in the land must display a stiff, framed pose of Ayatollah Gordon (fully suited of course), so we can all exclaim the utopian wonderfulness his latest pledges, promises and decrees? How long before prayers on our knees are necessary every morning for us to proclaim how grateful we truly are for his never ending interference in every aspect of our lives?

Zimbabwe 2

2007-09-24T19:11:00.000+01:00

Is the world finally waking up to the sickening calamity of Zimbabwe? Perhaps, but don't hold your breath. Strong words and fine intentions are laudable, worthy and sound good. How about actions though? They are a little tougher.
I always find it peculiar that all those hunderds of thosuands who were so vociferous in (rightly) denouncing the 'illegal' (an oft used term for it) invasion of Iraq seem so mute on the misery in Zimbabwe, almost as if its not really worth taking to the streets for, as if there's no real moral equivalence.
Every time the ruinous and murderous consequences of Mugabe's destruction of his own country is brought to our attention we tut-tut in low tones and mutter that 'something must be done. But what and how?
Well, for a start how about Gordon Brown et al putting some meaningful pressure on Mbeki in South Africa instead of meekly appeasing his continual and tacit endorsement of everything Mugabe does? Why not put pressure on China as well to unequivocally stop sustaining his nasty regime through business and arms deals?
How about the UN standing up and, at the very least issuing some strongly worded collective condemnation? Don't bet on it though. Its funny isnt it, all those who want us to live in this utopian, idealist paradise where everything can be solved by the UN are slow to shine light on its pathetic shortcomings on a significant issue like Zimbabwe.
How about the US - so keen on foreign invasions and interventions, when it suits them of course - standing up to be at the very least a bit more vocal?
How about the European Union - so introverted and largely obsessed by its own workings - taking a clear, collective lead in refusing to do any business whatsoever with Mugabe or any of those who have aggrandised themselves on his coat-tails. Again dont bet on it.
How about other African leaders doing the same and refusing to have dealing with Mugabe? Again, don't put your money on it.
And how about a sober recognition of what is actually happening inside Zimbabwe? The fact that one man things its ok to starve his people (yes, starve) to keep himself in power. Morally, how is any of what he is doing much worse than the likes of Pol Pot, Stalin etc.?
I can tell you now, hard as it is to believe, that the situation can get a lot worse to the point where Zimbabwe plummets to the basement depths of some of Africa's most war-ravaged, crippled, lawless states. That will happen and the really sad thing is that those with the power to prevent this seem content to sit on their hands and look the other way. That is to their eternal shame and we should not forget that. Doing what is expedient is nowhere near the same as doing what is right.

War on Terror

2007-09-23T19:24:00.000+01:00

Its not an expression you often hear these days is it? There's a good reason for that. The War on Terror is not something that can ever be definitively won. Who exactly is at war? And who exactly are 'we' (?) fighting this 'war' against? How can victory be measured or defined? It cannot really. can it?
What can be measured is how we change the way we live. The freedoms we relinquish, our liberties, the ways of life that are made more demanding in the name of the 'war on terror'. Things like extra long queues at airports, entire city centres closed down for hours at a time whenever a funny shaped bag is left lying around. They inform us that the alert levels have been raised they tell people to be 'vigilant' (what exactly does that mean?!). Our authorities don't want to take any chances now. They have seen the consequences of 9/11 and, although no one will publicly admit it, they are covering their backs in case something really bad does happen so they don't get sued. Everything has to be carried out in the name of 'sec-ur-ity'.
By the way do you remember the 'Dead or Alive!' ultimatum George Bush handed out to Osama Bin Laden? Well, where is he now? Why is still making videos? Is that 'mission accomplished'?
Defeating terrorists cannot be achieved through aircraft bombing and indiscriminate shooting. Quite the opposite. It relies on clever, reliable, up-to-date intelligence and understanding.
But most of all, it relies on something very simple - us, continuing to get on with our lives in the same way we always have done, not allowing our way to be dictated to by a few murderous nutters. Our countries and histories are much bigger than that so why do we give them the satisfaction of changing the way we live? I say dont give any terrorists the satisfaction or mass hysteria publicity by building them up into a level of exaggerated threat beyond what they are really capable of. Just deal with them as cold-blooded mass-murderers, plain and simple.

Rugby

2007-09-02T11:28:00.000+01:00

Maybe, like me, you're a big rugby fan. Maybe you've always though rugby was a bit of a strange game...lots of complex rules and all those large grown men pushing their bodies together with lots of aggression and shouting.
Rugby has shaped my own life in so many ways so I have an incredible amount of affection for what it can do. Many of the best days (and worst days) of my life have been rugby related, both playing and watching.
In essence, rugby is the ultimate team game. In few, if any other sports, are you so dependent on those that are on your side. Any rugby team is only as good as its weakest link - the team spirit can engender immense camaradie which extends far beyond the pitch and off it afterwards. There is a special purity to it.
I have played many sports and tried my hand at several endurance activities. Few of them come close to the sensation of exhaustion with two minutes to go at the end of a tough rugby game. And few of them engender the satisfaction of achieving a tough, narrow win alongside those who have put their bodies on the line to achieve it.
Rugby shapes character because you cannot hide away from confrontations. If someone runs straight at you, you have to tackle them - the fear of scorn from your team-mates if you don't helps. Of course it hurts - I once had my head sliced open with a boot and had to have 12 stitches down the middle of - but you pick yourself up and prepare to do the same again, a good lesson for life really.
Sure, rugby has an unfortunate (and mostly dated) reputation for grown men trying to fight each other. But the best aspect of rugby is that the players have total respect for the referee. They don't swear at him or unleash angry shouts in his face when they disagree with a decision. They just accept his authority and carry on with the game.
Few sensations are more exhilerating than scoring a try in rugby. Few moments give you greater pleasure than when you are sitting around the changing room after a victory, possibly enjoying the refreshment of a cold beer, and you can see your mates have been through what you have been through. Perhaps the worst sensation is being a substitute or being injured - you're intimately close to everything going on but not really a proper part of it all. Watching can be tremedous fun, especially for big games, but it is never the same as playing.

Amy Winehouse

2007-09-02T11:09:00.000+01:00

Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Lindsay Lohan...they're all the same really aren't they after a while. The same stories. We entertain ourselves on how low they can sink, another puncture in the inflated bubble of glamourous, but cheap, celebrity. Build 'em up, knock 'em down, and so on it goes until a new 'star' arrives.
My problem is not with these overblown and over-hyped semi-talented celebrities. If they want to allow their lives to spiral away into drug-fuelled destruction, thats very much up to them and there's very little anyone else can actually do about it. If they want to squander their wealth and fame in such a narrow, self-centred manner, thats fine. We should just leave them to get on with it.
Although maybe once in a while they'd like to be reminded of the millions of poor children and young people in lesser developed parts of the planet who would give anything to have one hundreth of what they probably squander in drugs in one night to feed their families for a week or to give themselves a proper education. Or the thousands of disabled people in this country for whom every hour of the day is a battle just to accomplish basic things. There are many more, much worse off people (through no fault of their own whatsever) who we never hear about and who are far more deserving of public sympathy and empathy. Everyone should slap themselves around the face with a true sense of perspective.
My problem is with those in the media who deliberately chose to exploit their predicaments for their own selfish ends because it feeds the hunger for cheap, un-newsworthy journalism. How many of the journalists who are so quick to moralise are complete hypocites, I wonder.
My problem is also with the moral devoid vultures around these people who supply them with their drugs - surely in such high profile cases, the police must have a good idea who is at the source, but then intelligent, pro-active policing is another story - and profit from them.
Its the same with anyone who is happy and conscious free to use hard drugs. Of course they are illegal, but that should not really be the main point. The main point is that using hard drugs has some very nasty consequences - not for the users, thats up to them - but for the lives of those caught up in the revolting worlds of the smuggling and dealing, the children in poor faraway countries who are exploited, the women who are raped and used as drug mules, the innocent victims who get shot dead on our streets in turf wars between gangs. Maybe the next time anyone thinks taking hard drugs is glamorous or trendy, they should stop to think about where they have come from and the blood shed along the way.
So a message to the tabloids should be - leave this people alone and let them fall back into obscurity. If you want to expose and shame the people around them exploiting them, thats fine. But then again, who is it that buys all those tabloids and lick their lips each time a new piece of celebrity gossip emerges on their front pages. It is us, the public, of course isnt it?

Wake up to Gordon Brown!

2007-09-02T10:29:00.000+01:00

I sometimes wonder how so many journalists and people can have such short memories. Gordon Brown gets crowned as this wonderfully new modernising prime minister, when in actual fact he's nothing of the sort. He is the same old Gordon Brown, who was masterful at hiding away when the flak was flying. Lets looks at his track record properly.
Gordon Brown has played the dominant role in the Brown-Blair government of the last 10 years in terms of domestic policy. We have plenty of things not to thank him for...

The Iraq war - he voted for it, remember, fully supported it, was just as responsible as anyone else for sending our troops there and keeping them there. And in spite of some clever spin, he shows no real sign of changing policy. He's actively in favour of sending our soldiers to war, but has tried to do so on the cheap without equipping them properly. Its exactly the same with Afghanistan. Either you are in and you do the job properly or you are out.
Its the end of Spin, or so he would like you to believe. What nonsense. That is actually a form of clever spin itself. Remember, Gordon Brown is a man for whom you must always keep a keen eye on the detail, the small print. If he announces something, like his 'tax-cutting' budget, the chances are that it will actually be something very different a few days later. Don't judge him by what he says, more by what he actually does.
Schools - billions of extra pounds poured in and, behind the misleading guise of ever predictable rising exam results, still more and more young people can't read, write or add up properly
Hospitals - again, billions of your tax money thrown at the NHS, not much of it making any difference, most of it just disappearing into the black holes of armies of managers and target monitoring. Since when did having more people to fill out forms and monitor and evaluate targets save people's lives or stop them being sick?
Crime - another sorry mess. Gordon Brown refused to release the money to build more prisons, which he knew would be required thanks to all the extra 'tough' legislation his government implemented. Why are the police so hamstrung by having to meet targets and do paperwork which keeps them off the streets where they can do more protect the public and prevent crimes? Fundamentally, because of Gordon Brown's top down obsession with centralised control and micro-management.
Next time you're stuck in a motorway traffic jam or frustrated by your train being late again, did you ever stop to wonder why? I always think of John Prescott and his 10 year transport plan at such moments. But then I think of the mess of the London Underground, which was fundamentally caused by Brown's unnecessary meddling and Soviet style interference.
Britishness. Something Gordon Brown likes to bang on about a lot. In fact, he probably wishes he could now become an Englishman because he hates to be tagged as being Scottish. How is it fair that Gordon Brown can implement laws which will effect schools, hospitals and much more in England, but won't effect any of those living in his own Scottish constituency? His Scottish contituency, where they make their own laws (free university tuition fees, free care for the elderly etc), which are all paid for by English money.
Europe - at the last general election the Labour party got elected on a promise to hold a referendum on the new EU Constitution. What happens? We have the new EU Constitution but Gordon Brown is too scared to have a vote on it, which his party promised in 2005. All the other leaders in Europe happily admit that we do have a new EU Constitution, so why can't a election promise be kept?
Gordon Brown has become leader of our country without facing a single competitive election. Where exactly does his mandate to govern and represent the British people come from? Tony Blair promised to serve a full five year term and thats what people elected Labour on the basis of in 2005.

If Gordon Brown wants to be a proper representative prime minister with a fair mandate to govern the country, why doesn't he ask the people first if they actually want him. He won't of course, because he is a fundamentally risk-averse and cautious politician, but it would be refreshing if more people asked him about this more often and more persistently.

Every pledge, promise or vow Gordon Brown utters, he does so for a reason - his own preservation of power. The clarity can usually be found in the small print buried at the bottom or the bad news sneaked out at an opportune time. Don't be taken in by his promises - judge him by what he has actually done rather than what he says.

Multi-culturalism

2007-09-01T22:03:00.000+01:00

Multi-culturalism must surely have been one of the most damaging dogmas to have been inflicted on us by the established political class this century. It was totally misguided, naive and patronising for those blessed with power to have invested so much capital in such a damaging concept.
If you went to live in another country, you'd probably expect to learn that country's language and adopt some of its customs and values, wouldn't you? Not in England, where you're encouraged to remain segregated, where you don't need to learn the language that everyone else speaks, where you can burn the flag and jump up and down proclaiming death as a good thing for that country's citizens...the country which you've chosen to accept the hospitality of, but you want to see destroyed. And you know you can get away with it because those imbued with power will just smile you in a kind, forgiving manner and expain away your death chanting as 'a matter of cultural difference which we should all try harder to understand'. Don't worry, the police won't arrest you (unless you've caused a minor traffic violation that is) and even if they do, they won't know who you are, especially if you've just been released from one of the prisons that the government was meant to get around to building.
Hopefully multi-culturalism will soon be defunct and superceded by integration. Because it is integration into an existing community which truly makes life better for everyone. And it leaves those who want to preach hate exactly where they should be (on both sides) - on the margins, rather than hiding from within the mainstream of an unintegrated community.

Immigration

2007-09-01T21:51:00.000+01:00

Why are we so afraid about discussing immigration properly, openly and sensibly? Why is it wrong to question (belatedly anyway) whether it is a good thing for our country to have opened up its doors to hundreds of thousands of people and discuss the consequences of that? Why is is 'racist' to not be in favour of mass immigration? Maybe it is because those who casually toss out the slur of racism do not actually want to debate or scrutinise the real issues and consequences of an open door immigration policy and the inevitable strain on resources brought about. That means more people to be looke after by hospitals, more children to be squeezed into alraedy overcrowded schools, more crimes to be dealt with by the police, more cars on the road, greater pressures on already finite supplies of housing etc.
Without doubt, the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats (same thing really!), don't want to have a debate about because the vast majority of these new arrivals are of course going to vote for them arent they?
Some things are facts: We are a small island with an increasingly overcrowded polulation concentrated in very heavily populated areas. Our transport infrastructure is lousy at best and strains under the impact of the numbers of people using it now. The same applies to the health service and education - there's only so many that schools and hospitals can deal with effectively, otherwise the quality of service begins to suffer - you might say it already has.
Has anyone stopped to ask the question, why do so many people from overseas want to come to our island, especially when there are many other countries to chose from? Its because we are all such wonderful, civilised and tolerant people of course, the politicians spout. Well no it isnt actually. It is mostly because our country has been a ridiculously soft touch and doesn't know who is coming or going. Everyone knows this, its no great mystery.
Australia, a far far bigger island, also in need of more people, has a managed policy of controlled immigration. They know who comes in and out, so why has it been so difficult for us to do the same? Call me a cynic, but do you not think it might have something to do with the fact that Labour is counting on all the new arrivals to boost their vote?

Europe

2007-09-01T21:43:00.000+01:00

Most of the other countries in the EU are perfectly content to openly admit that it is a political project, a way of centralising power and decision making. For decades a powerful elite has repeatedly concentrated more and more power in their own hands, remaining untroubled by any sort of democratic defecit.
I am totally in favour of Britain being very in Europe, but the emphasis should be strongly on economic issues before the political ones. Because is the establishment of a genuine single trading market, where all goods and services can be bought and sold freely across all countries that will make peoples' lives better, which is fundamentally what politics at any level should always be about. So it doenst seem a very clever or efficient idea to spend half of the EU budget on farmers who only employ less than five per cent of Europe's workers. Can you imagine the outcry if the British government did the same thing with its spending?
Why does the European parliament have to meet, at vast expense, in Strasbourg and Luxembourg? To keep the French happy of course. Because it is the French, much more than other other nation, who pull the levers in power in Europe.

Diana

2007-09-01T10:00:00.000+01:00

How many people are now quietly wearied by the endless speculation (much of it pointless and very un-newsworthy) about Princess Diana. Am I the only one who thinks Mohammed Al Fayed has been bribing Richard Desmond to keep alive his very personal and zealous crusade to challenge anything and anyone who accepts her death was purely accidental? The amount of news coverage she receives has been far, far out of of proportion to its actual importance. Are there not much more relevant issues and news stories for journalists and readers to be concerned with?
Looking back with hindsight as a new era of 24 hour rolling news unleashed itself on us, the deification of Diana's celebrity and the obsession by every aspect of her life from what she looked like to who she spent time with set a troubling precedent. Newspapers love to build newcomers up before they find something salacious to knock them down with.
Obsessing over un-newsworthy trivia about the lifestyles of celebrities has come to feed our hungry lust for gossip. We talk about people in magazines and newsapers as if we know them, when we barely know them at all. Of course, we know plenty about them, but then that is not quite the same thing, is it? And much of the media obsession with celebrity has its roots in the way Diana was treated. Do we get the media we deserve? Quite possibly yes.
If you were one of those people who saw Diana as a saint, prepare to be offended.
Supposedly, she modernised the monarchy and dragged it in to the new century. But have the core values of a our royals really shifted? Not that much really. The queen still embodies some of the true values that have made our country so special - namely stoicism, dignity and respect for others, which the majority of the population silently agrees with.
So Diana was the perfect emblem for Blair's Britain - shiny and pretty on the outside, always with an eye on manipulating a pose for a camera or fixing a headline, but deeply shallow and lacking substance underneath. This is not to say that Diana wasn't a very caring person and a wonderful mother. She was. But then so have been lots of other women that we never get to hear about. Mother Theresa died in the same week as Diana, but we hear nothing about her.
Sure Diana did many wonderful things and affected the lives of many in a very positive way. But lets have some proper and thoughtful perspective to her lasting impact.
There are too many people in this ocuntry who are incapable of thinking critically for themselves. The obsession with celebrity is a form of stimuli by proxy for them, really no better than out rubber necking at the misfortunes of others.

Crime

2007-08-19T15:02:00.000+01:00

In so many many ways the actions and attitutes of those who matter are so badly wrong when it ocmes to dealing with crime.
First of all the government, again staggeringly complacent and out of touch, cannot bring itself to admit the scale of the problem of rising violent crime. Government lackeys just shrug their shoulders when another young person is stabbed or shot on our streets. Thats just the way it is, they sniff in patronising tones, before launching into a meaningless and breathtakingly insulting tirade of statistics in a vain attempt to instill the belief that all this shooting, stabbing and anti-social behaviour is really just in our imagination. Well it isn't. Next time you go to the shops or use public transport, you'll see how far removed and totally detached from reality most of these politicians are in their ivory towers insulated from the more unpleasant aspects of real life.
On a personal level, many of the people in this country are now lacking in moral courage. Some are justifiably too frightened to intervene. Others are just plain cowardly. Our walk-on-by, look-away, look after ourselves first society doesnt help. All of us tolerate bad attitudes, rudeness and lack of respect for older people.
Parents of misbehaving youths are also deeply culpable becasue they have probably imbued their young tearaways with their own feral, feckless lifestyles. Society is structured in the wrong way because it encourages young unemployed single mothers to have children without consequences. Children who grow up without fathers are generally morel ikely to get into trouble, They dont know any limits but they certainly know their rights and the police are largely inept or powerless to enforce any authority. We indulge misbehaving young people too much, and all too willingly make excuses for bad behaviour which don't involve taking resonsibility for actions which inevitably have consequences. And the compensation culture is partly to blame.
The police have become next to useless. Surely their very first purpose in any civilsied society is to protect the public, something they often fail to do. With some wonderful exceptions, they (or rather their leaders) seem more concerned with protecting themselves before they protect the public! Sure they've got lots of paerwork to do, procedures to follow, health and safety regulations to comply with. But it is the hands-off laissez faire attitude to criminals which is most damaging.
Allocation of policing resources need to seriously and critically reviewed. I get the feeling there is too much emphasis on too much triviality - paperwork, procedures, regulations to be ocmplied with, training methods to be followed to the letter of the law rather than the spirit of it.
And one consequence of the police failing to properly enforce the law is that more and people will take it into their own hands to enforce it for themselves. And who can blame them? There's no point ringing the the police - I know from experience - they just give you a crime number and mutter platitudes that unless you have ready-made evidence of a suspect they won't do anything.
Schools have lost the abiltiy to instill discipline and respect largely because teachers live in fear of lawyers and aggressive parents, and also because head teachers cannot be trusted by central government to run their schools autonomously. And why is truancy so high also? A disruptive or expelled child usually knows its rights will prevail over that of the school to enforce the authority of teachers. This is very dangerous.
The courts. Why are courts so slow, wastefulyl expensive and inefficient at administering justice? I've never particualry understood either how so many lawyers can be so morally bankcrupt in defending people they know to be adanger to the public. More judges should be more in touch with the consequences of everyday crime on members of the public. And of course it owuld help enormously if the government could actually manage to properly lock up convicted criminal and build enough prison places, especially after it has spent year upon year announcing 'tough' new crackdown legislation which is tremndously effective at securing front page headlines in The Sun, but less effective in actually protecting the public.
We treat our criminals better than our soldiers and we should all be deeply ashamed about that. I know from a source who works inside prisons what soft, comfortable places they have become. Many potential criminals don't live in fear of going there or staying there. Prisons also fail miserably to rehabilitate (perhaps for the same reason). The government wanted to send more people to prison but it failed to build any more prison space, so prisons are now overcrowded and rife with drugs. Its is staggering incompetence.
When it comes the crime, the critical theme which should always be the first thought in everybody's mind is the protection of the public. So called infringements of criminals' human rights comes right at the bottom of the list. Essentially, we need to bring back the element of meaningful proportionate punishment and deterrent for committing crime so those who do still commit crime will be more aware that their actions will certianly have consequences.
Finally, the way that we all indulge or tolerate low level anti-social behaviour inevitably has in it the seeds that one day lead to more serious and more violent crimes.

Environmental Protestors

2007-08-19T11:38:00.000+01:00

A naive group of wet behind the ears adolescents are going to save the world by holding a few protests at Heathrow. When departing passengers take one look at them, they'll all change their minds about flying, just like the rest of us, because it will be the end of the world.
Ah well, it will give thousands of police a nice break from doing paperwork at their desks, catching speeding motorists, wrapping miles of police tape around lamp-posts of incidents areas and hunting terrorists. One can only hope that all the police have been thoroughly briefed on all the haleth and safety proceedures before proceeding. No policeman wants to be sued for daring to touch a screaming protestor in the wrong place, does he? And its not like there is any real need for more police on the safe, clean stabbing and gun free streets of London is there?
Wouldn't it really satisfying if some of these deformed freaks who take great pleasure in chaining themselves to fences or superglued to doors were just left chained to the fence for a few days. Maybe it would give them proper time to serious reflect on how misguided and stupid much of their views are. Maybe they could also reflect on how hypocritical so many of the seem to be, before they take their next flight out to daddy's holiday villa. Maybe they could do us all a favour and find a real cause to get angry about, Zimbabwe say or the French government for perpetuating poverty in Africa by stubbornly continuing to protect their farmers . Or maybe they should take their protest against global warming to an energy inefficient three-bedroomed semi-detached house without loft insulation - an appropriate place as any for their ill-thought out, hypocritical views to get the publicity they truly deserve.
Quite frankly, they should get over their middle class guilt complaexes, stop taking themselves too seriously by trying to imposing their own narrow agendas and 'do as we say not as we do' views on the rest of us and just generally grow up.

A Level Results

2007-08-19T11:12:00.000+01:00

Maybe at some point in the not too distant future we should just hand out A grades and passes to everyone before they even bother sitting any exams. It would save a lot of time and hassles, and no one would have to do any resits. In fact why not just let all students recycle the work of previous ones? Much less work for teachers marking and no need for exam boards...everyone gets to pass everything, any subject they like, and everything is wonderful.
Maybe you are detecting a whiff of cynicism in my suggestions. Maybe you are right, full marks to you. But the crux of it is this: The establishment of this country has become completely delusional about endlessly rising exam results because all those involved in the establishment have vested interests in not speaking out against it. It has been decided that half the population (a rather arbitrary target dont you think?) must be compelled to go to university. What exactly they will all do when they get there is another matter. Why is it such a wonderful thing that so many people must go to university?
Conincidentally, having so many young people incurring huge amounts of debt also keeps them off the government's unemployment figures before they get that lucrative job in a call centre that that second class degreee in media studies deserves. Or of course, they can always go and work for the government which does a wonderful job of consuming so much of the wealth that the rest of the population creates.
So if so many young people are achieving like never before, how is it that employers complain about more and more young people being able to read, write and add up properly?
The rigid way in which young people are schooled these days does lead many of them to have a genuinely questioning and critical mentality. No one disputes they haven't worked hard. Lots of people worked hard to obtain success, but since when did hard work alone entitle anyone to success?
The saddest aspect about all this is by marinating ourselves in this feel-good stew of not wanting to question or criticise rising pass rates, the people who are really being cheated are the young people themselves because they cannot know the true worth which their abilities and efforts should be yielding. It is endemically tied in with the culture of not allowing anyone to fail at anything, the same culture which frowns on competitive sports and taking risks. Everyone has to be told they are a success, no one must ever fail at anything. Well I tell you from experience, that failure is one most essential experiences to shaping solid character, far more than endless praise and successes can be. If young people are always repeatedly told what great successes they are, how will they cope when real failure comes along, as it surely will do at some point in real life?
The whole notion of so many people - from teachers to government ministers wanting to bask in the relected glow of rising standards - not being brave enough to question rising pass rates is mildly depressing and smacks of cosy complacency. What underpins so much of this issue is something so common to the Labour government of the last ten years - they have been a catalyst for the devaluation of standards. So when it comes to rising pass rates, maybe it's time for a few more people to go back and do some resits of their own blandly conformist views. The self-congratulatory complacency is as consistent as it is breathtaking. Maybe they should made to sit an A Level in Critical Thinking...no really such a thing actually exists!

English Middle Class

2007-05-19T11:11:00.000+01:00

Such an interesting and evolving group of people.
The English middle class have become angst-ridden with their affluence. Restless with insecurity, consumption is the most satisfying form of redemption. Consumption is all about points scoring. It is an obsession with status and one-gunmanship, in thrall to fads and crazes because the media tells us so. We mistakenly live our own lives through those of celebrities because we have manufactured false attachments to them.
More and more the English middle class put all different sorts of armour around themselves. The armour is made up from the lifestyle statements we attempt to make.
Houses have become isolated cocoons where we can segregate ourselves from people we don’t want to speak to, like our neighbours. More and more people feel the need to erect gates, high walls and fences to ‘protect’ themselves from possible intrusion or unwanted invasion of privacy.
On the inside, our houses are brimming with aspirational excesses. And outside the front doors, we are obsessed by ‘For Sale’ signs. Never ending house price rises make us feel better about ourselves when we know something we have bought has gone up in value by thousands of pounds. it’s the same ‘bargain’ mentality that we apply to when we shop.
And do the English middle class like to shop. From fancy, sterile shopping centres to Sunday car boot sales, we cannot get enough of shopping.
Our cars always have be the latest up to date model - the craze for 4x4’s demonstrates this. Cars have to be status symbols of who we are (or who we want people to think we are).
Unwittingly or not, our children are also part of the consumption treadmill and aspiration status obsession. How they are dressed, what toys or mobile phones they have etc…they are being groomed to become like their parents.
Our food has to be organically pure, fair trade or hand-reared by Prince Charles. Mistakenly, we somehow imagine that drinking bottled mineral water also makes a difference.
Holidays have to be taken in more exotic and far flung places. And if not far flung and exotic, then nearby, but somewhere obscure and overlooked or incorporating something physically demanding. We like to say we have done something, been somewhere, ticked it off.
Yet, at the same time, we also like to feel we have done ‘our bit’ to save the planet by staying at an eco-resort (conveniently ignoring the thousands of miles to fly there) or doing some charity work (which helps local people in a poor country, but also makes us feel better about ourselves)
Cosmetically, never before have so many people become so obsessed by their appearance. Never before have so many people wanted to have plastic surgery, slap on so much fake tan, go crazy for designer clothes and brands in their quest to ape celebrities, who they themselves have helped to erect like tall poppies on flimsy pedestals.
Take global warming and ‘going green’. We do a few virtuous actions to assuage our consciences and feel better about ourselves. Nothing typifies this better than David Cameron (the Great Green Hope) riding his bike to work with a chauffeur driven limo cruising behind him carrying his suit and shoes. But it is an empty piety.
The English middle class may be angst ridden with their affluence and weighed down by a perpetual sense of guilt. Underneath it all though, we don’t really want to give up our privileges, like cheap flights and convenient car journeys. For many of us though, almost all of our lifestyle statements, however aspirational or expensive, are little more than an indulgence in an expensive form of tokenism.
Fundamentally, there is a thread of hypocrisy running through the English middle class.
Less and less can people think independently for themselves. We build up all this armour around ourselves because of insecurity. But however much we do it, we never quite manage to feel fully ‘safe’ or contentedly ‘secure’ where it really matters…deep inside our stressed out minds.

Blogging is Rubbish

2007-05-19T10:13:00.000+01:00

Blogging is a load of rubbish. Not something you’d perhaps expect to read on someone’s blog. But, boy, with a few honourable exceptions, is there an awful lot of rubbish out there filling up blogs all over the world. People have decided to share their thoughts and opinions on all manner of inanely dull and trivial subjects. If you ever find me falling into the same trap - maybe you think I have done already! - do please let me know. Or maybe you have already come across the most useless and least life-enhancing blog out there. Maybe we could have a competition.
I suppose this is the inevitable consequences of freedom and choice - on balance extremely positive, life-altering benefits. But not without their downsides too. Its probably a bit like going into a vast supermarket to buy something like toothpaste and be totally overwhelmed by the hundreds of choices on offer. I suppose it raises the question is too much choice ever a negative thing?
We now live in a society where, like never before and because it has never been easier for them to do so, people feel the urge to share their inner most thoughts and opinions with complete strangers. it’s a bit like the Big Brother / Radio Phone-in self-indulgent effect - everyone has to have their say and inflict their views on others. Its part of the ‘ME-ME, I HAVE MY RIGHTS!’ culture.
Attributes like discretion, integrity, quiet decency, dignity and most importantly of all, common sense, have been made redundant. Bottom up value predominate in our modern day, trash-TV culture where everything has to be instant, immediate and dumbed down enough for our unquestioning minds to digest.

Beckham and Blair

2007-05-16T20:34:00.001+01:00

How apt that my country’s two most famous people from this decade should have near identical career paths. Think about the similarities.
Two fresh-faced, good looking men, high hopes, great expectation, obsession with images, lots of great talking about what would happen, brilliant branding and self-marketing.
But the actions never quite matched the talk or the promises. The substance to follow the promises and the hype was missing, be it meaningful political delivery or simply delivery of match winning corner or free-kick to lead England to World Cup success.
And now both these global celebrities coincidentally will find themselves taking the American mega bucks as they head into semi-retirement like two Disney make-believe characters that ordinary people stopped believing in a long time ago.

Iraq

2007-05-15T21:42:00.000+01:00

I put my hand up. Tacitly (probably like a silent majority of people) I thought it was no bad thing at the time to try and rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein. He was a nasty, murderous dictator and around the time it happened I was seeing intimately close up how a nasty, murderous dictator can destroy people’s lives and totally crush their hopes.
That was in Zimbabwe where some desperate locals pleaded with me for their country to be invaded and for their dictator to be overthrown. I had a lot of sympathy for their suggestions and told them if only they had some WMD’s or oil, it might just be possible.

Like most people at the time, I gave my government the benefit of the doubt when it made a case to go to war. Although there was definitely a certain amount of scepticism at the time about the detail of their reasons (WMD’s, 45 minutes etc.). Instead of inventing technicalities, fabricating reasons and imposing arbitrary deadlines, I thought, Why couldn’t they just come out and say, ‘We want to get rid of this nasty dictator because we don’t like him and wish we had finished him off back in 1991.’

The failure of George Bush Sr in 1991 to have to nerve to chase Saddam all the way back to Baghdad was to have unimaginably catastrophic consequences. His son had to finish the job for him…once he had come up with a barely plausible reason to do so: The War on Terror of course.
Sure, I realised people would die during the invasion, but I figured on balance it was necessary. All those people who were anti-war throughout do themselves and the Iraqi people a major disservice to portray the situation pre-2003 as rosy. Sure there was stability, but at a heavy and bloody price for those who had to live under Saddam’s repressive regime. It was stable in the same way as Mugabe’s Zimbabwe was stable…miserably and depressingly stable.

Critically, where I really began to take issue with the invasion of the Iraq was what happened afterwards. The insensitive occupation. The arrogant and casual nature of planning for reconstruction. The unnecessary abuses of power. The wicked failures to do anything basic to improve the day to day lives of ordinary Iraqis even by doing simple things like supplying reliable electricity and clean water. Never mind guaranteeing their security, building roads and other important mundane things.

Then there were the things the Americans didn’t do. Secure the country’s borders. Include or give opportunities and jobs to all the lower level army recruits and Ba’ath party members who have now become insurgents. And fundamentally, why did the Americans simply not understand and foresee any of the disasters that happened? Was it arrogance? Probably. But it was also a major lack of intelligence…in both senses of the word. Complacently relying on fancy technology, satellite imagery and the like can never be a substitute for human insight on the ground. Its not the invasion that mattered, it was the occupation.

But what of the future? What has happened in Iraq has had so many far reaching consequences, in terms of time and geography.

Who really won the Iraq war? Iran, of course, whose position in Iraq and the region as a whole has bee strengthened beyond belief. What a clever move that was by the Americans. They must be really pleased with that.
Hardly anyone in the Middle East will now believe anything that the US or the UK governments say. Their own people no longer trust or give the benefit of the doubt to the US and UK governments. What happens if a really, desperately serious situation arises when military intervention somewhere becomes essential? When they come to make the case for any actions anywhere, however valid, most people will just sceptically shrug their shoulders and refuse to give our politicians the benefit of the doubt.
All the sensible, moderate people across the Middle East - I’ve met plenty of them, people who instinctively trusted the West, they make up the overwhelming silent majority in countries like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt, exactly the sort of people we should be encouraging and giving prominence too - feel totally let down at best and repelled at worst by the mishandling of Iraq’s occupation. They now see American soldiers walking the streets like military robots
Extremists of all denominations must be rubbing their guns and bombs with glee for the void which opened up for them. It never took too long for Iraq to become a honey magnet for terrorists. And what did the occupiers do to deal with this? Nothing.
Because of Iraq’s lawlessness and the staggering lack of planning post-invasion the manner in which American (and British) soldiers conducted themselves was also affected. Scandals like Abu Ghraib jail torure and humiliation occurred because they were allowed to occur by the arrogant Rumsfeld and the misfiring Cheney
The Iraq war has been extremely expensive and very bad value for (US and UK)taxpayers money. Economically, the mess in Iraq also has major consequences. High oil prices. Thousands of talented, clever Iraqis - exactly the sort the country needs to build its future - are leaving the country.
Home-grown terrorism. Quite blatantly, every time there is television footage of more people losing their lives in Iraq, it hardens the resolve of home-grown extremists and has certainly increased the probability of these people causing death and destruction in our own cities.
Democracy - the much vaunted (and transparently patronising) substitute reason given for invading Iraq has now become more unlikely across the region. A successfully run and stable post-invasion Iraq could well have put pressure on some of the other repressive regimes in the region, like Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt. But now the dictators in those countries have been strengthened by the weakness in Iraq and the long suffering peoples of those countries are also paying the price of American failures.
We've managed to strengthen the influence of Russia and China in the region as well as Iran. And the world has had its eyes diverted from other, arguably equally catastrophic abuses in places like Zimbabwe and Sudan. How some of the millions suffering in some of those countries must rue the gaze of the world's media being transfixed elsewhere for the last few years.
Finally, the mess in Iraq has simply reinforced the way the British and Americans have always been viewed by history in the region; duplicitous, interfering for our own financial and strategic ends ahead of those of the local population. It could take a generation at least to melt away or dismantle the angry perceptions, if at all.

Just a grain of humility from Bush / Cheney/ Rumsfeld / Blair that they made mistakes which had disastrous consequences would be refreshing, but also about as realistically likely as any of them ever taking to the streets of Baghdad on foot.

Lib Dems and Politics

2007-05-14T21:27:00.000+01:00

The Lib Dems love to have it both ways. If you are anti or against something other, the chances are you’ll vote Lib Dem. They are a cosy home for protest voters. Anyone who is against the Tories or Labour (which lets face it is a lot of us) will be welcomed with open arms on the doorsteps of the Lib Dem front door. And when you’ve had your protest vote, be it on Iraq or some local issue, something green perhaps, you the voter can march straight out through the open back door of the Lib Dem house back onto the next street, feeling better about yourself.

They have an easy time of it because the media never quite takes them seriously enough to scrutinise what they say and do because they will never win an election outright. Instead they loftily position themselves like a prostitute on a street corner waiting for the first major party in the next hung parliament to go into coalition with them. Do not be in any doubt whatsoever that Menzies Campbell has his eye on being foreign secretary under the government of his long time friend Gordon Brown.
Principled? The Lib Dems? Hmmm. What about their environment spokesman Chris Huhne, who made such a big thing (and indeed his name) by lecturing us all about the environment? Well, it turns out he drives a gas-guzzling car all over the place (on taxpayers expense of course) and hardly bothers to use public transport. Another example of why the public deserves to be cynical of politicians.
Because they are never going to lead a government, the Lib Dems can righteously claim to be ‘different’ from the main two parties. They like to tell you they are ‘principled’ and ‘ethical‘ even, but remember they are all professional politicians. They vote themselves 30% pay increases that you or I never could do - basic salary £60,000 and average expenses £130,000. And of course, don’t forget the gold-plated pensions while they lecture the rest of us about restraint and being responsible with our money. Wouldn’t it be better if they were more responsible with our money?
They run up unimaginably high expenses doing their jobs and happily vote to take more taxpayers money to promote themselves. And they then have the temerity to cover it all up and hide where our money goes by voting themselves exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. Then they wonder why ordinary people think they MP’s have become out of touch. Do you think it is wise for the tax you pay to subsidise the likes of John Prescott? No, me neither
And is astonishing, but not altogether surprising, that because the main political parties have come come close to bankcrupting themselves (whose fault is that?), they expect the taxpayer to bail them out. Well, why should we fund compacent, out of touch politicians who don't want to be accountable with our money? If they want to be properly funded, maybe they should come up with policies that are genuinely representative or what people want rather than just guzzling up state handouts so they can impose on us what they think we want. It is the wrong way round.

Gordon Brown

2007-05-13T12:17:00.000+01:00

He couldn’t really have scripted it any better or worse could he? On the first day when we are told he will finally come out from the murky shadows in a spirit of openness and reveal himself, there he is hiding behind a misplaced white autocue! A premonition of what is to come perhaps?

And we are told he will be dispensing with spin. What tosh. To tell people you are now anti-spin is of course a form of spin in itself. Like much of what Gordon Brown does, it is trying to be too clever by half. You only have to go back to the mirage of his last budget to see the real ‘substance’ (a term he likes to use himself) of how he really operates.
At least Tony Blair was good at spin and could pull it off. Although Blair feeling the need to remind us again one last time that he really was a ‘pretty straight kinda guy’ who always did ‘what he thought was right’, probably was a little too excessive and nauseating even by his schmaltzy thespian standards.
Somehow you fear that Brown, with his adhesive smile and stiff social awkwardness, just won’t quite manage to be so convincing, or as convincing as he needs to be.

Again and again we are told what a formidable intellect Gordon Brown has. Since when did being a ‘formidable intellect’ give anyone a god-given right to tell everyone else how to run things? Then again, he has spent most of the last ten years attempting to tell people how to run things down to the last details of his command and control, stiflingly interventionist economic policy.
Gordon Brown tells us he will ‘listen and learn’. Well those aren’t exactly things he has done much of so far. Its probably like Brian Clough once said: If we have a disagreement, we sit down, have a discussion about it, then we agree that I was right. Except with Brown, you somehow suspect the ‘discussion’ bit can be made redundant.
He is a control freak politician with a very damagin legacy; all the targets and bureaucracy that stifles much of the public sector - in schools, hospitals, the police etc. - has derived from his personal obsession with wanting to control as many things as possible. He's never worked in business so he doesn't properly grasp that individuals are perfectly capable of making their own sound decisions. Instead, he has sought to impose his decisions directly onto how they impact the jobs of nurses, policemen and teachers. Thats why they find it so hard to get on with doing their jobs effectively - because he cannot stop himself and his army of lapdogs over-interfering in ordinary people's jobs and lives.

When he steamrollers out reams of statistics on how much money has been spent, it is all rather reminiscent of when the Soviet dictators used to list how many tractors their factories were producing and how wonderful their economy was. Of course, politicians like to use the term ‘invest’ rather than ‘spend’. 'Waste' might be the best term. But its not often that they like to remind themselves it is actually the taxpayers’ money there are spending (and often wasting). Quite frankly my attitude would be; ‘So what if you’ve spent all these tens of billions of our money. Shouldn’t things be a heck of lot better than they actually are?’
Remember that 1997 song…‘Things can only get better…’

Sport and Money

2007-05-13T12:09:00.000+01:00

For once, I’m going to pay tribute to Australia. Yes you did read that right.
Their government is opting not to send their cricket team to the brutal dictatorship that is Zimbabwe. If they back up their words with action they will be doing far more than the UK government did - which was no more than utter sound bites about how inappropriate it would be for England to go there, then not back it up with money to pay the fines imposed by the ICC.
The spineless men who run international cricket (and it is all out of touch, time-serving men ) should be deeply ashamed of themselves. They see nothing wrong or abnormal about Zimbabwe. Maybe they should make an effort to go there and see what its like for ordinary people struggling to feed their families or being beaten by police because they want to speak freely.

Maybe they, and others in cricket, could take an example from the upstanding of Stuart MacGill who expressed a individual conscience about how wrong it would be go to Zimbabwe and pretend that everything was normal there. Wouldn’t it be tremendous if more people in all sorts of positions of power and influence really stood up and told us what they really thought rather than trotting out media-trained, non-committal cliches and banal platitudes?

The ICC men are in danger of damaging cricket with their enthralment for making as much money as possible out of the game, plenty of which trickles down into their own pockets to fuel their own more-than-comfortable lifestyles. The ICC has come to be obsessed with advertising and television money. This is almost entirely down to the power of the television market in India, the greedy contracts drawn up there which means players have to play as many games as possible to fit into the television schedules, and countries have to reciprocate games with each other.

Just what is it about the self-serving bureaucrats who run all the major sports that makes them so out of touch and repulsive. Think of Sepp Blatter at FIFA. This odious Swiss cannot gourge himself enough on the publicity of being in the position he is in, handing out favours to even more odius, corrupt officials from other countries.

Think of the FA in England and Brian Barwick swimming in all the millions of TV money. Think of his horrendous cock-up in deciding to hand Sven a brand new lucrative contract just months before we all received final confirmation of how inept and incapable a manager he really was. What does Barwick do next? He decides to give the job to Steve McClaren, a man who even managed to make Sven look like he had the Midas touch. If the England fans want someone to target abuse at, it would be better aimed at the man who appoints the failed managers. It’s a bit like Freddy Shepherd at Newcastle, am an who’s frittered away millions on failed managers…all appointed by him. But the Newcastle fans don’t seem to mind. If only the rumour about Sven wanting the Newcastle job could have come to fruition..things might have come full circle.

Think of the idiots who run rugby at the top level. Francis Baron runs the English RFU. It took him a year or so longer than the rest of the country’s rugby supporters to realise that the head coach he had appointed - Andy Robinson - was nowhere near up to doing the job. He is another man in thrall to the mantra of playing as many games as possible so they generate as much money as possible from television and gate receipts.

Its why there are so many corporate boxes in Twickenham and other stadiums, and why ticket prices have become so over-priced. To my mind, how can someone who sits in a corporate box not really following the sporting action with the same enthusiasm as the rest of the ground call themselves a genuine fan? They are not. Can they really claim to share the passion, the disappointment, the ecstasy? Somehow I doubt it. But they do keep the self-serving sports bureaucrats content though.

Zimbabwe, Africa & Us

2007-05-12T13:38:00.000+01:00

Zimbabwe has been elected to head the UN’s Commission on Sustainable Development…which tells you everything you need to know about why the UN has been and always will be so uselessly ineffectual in world affairs.

Sure, the UN does lots of good all around the world, much of it unheralded work in unpopular places. But for all those who naively imagine we can live in a UN led utopian paradise where nasty regimes can be talked out of not going to war and be gently persuaded not to abuse their own citizens, then instances like this provide another firm slap in the face. The UN is a giant, expensive, ineffectual, powerless talking shop. And now the leaders of Africa have seen something they can copy and aspire to…hence the African Union.

What exactly is the point of the African Union when all it does it slap Robert Mugabe on the back for wrecking and ravaging his own country? What is the point of the African Union when the government in Sudan encourages ethnic cleansing within its own country and it also does not get held to account or even condemned?

In the West (as we like to strangely call ourselves) we look down on much of the misery and destruction in Africa, build up a guilt complex which then overflows and translates itself into the ‘something must be done’ mentality. So we try to make ourselves feel better about our guilt complex of having so much wealth by giving money to poor people in Africa thanks to Bono and Bob Geldof

Unpopular and unpalatable as it is for me to say this, but throwing millions, even billions of dollars in aid at Africa is all a giant fallacy. Think hard about where all that money actually goes to. It wont reach the poor, desperate people who really need it. That money will just swell the Swiss bank accounts of rulers like Mugabe. It will pay for expensive cars and private jets. It will pay for their wives to go on expensive shopping sprees.

But most depressing of it all, that money will go into reinforcing nasty unaccountable regimes and it will contribute to giving them more tools to repress the poor, long-suffering people that we in the West so wanted to help.

The critical problem for Africa is the woeful failing of its political leadership. Until this is meaningfully addressed, depressing thought as it is, then the continent and the people will continue to wallow in misery like those in Zimbabwe.

I’ll tell you straight the one single thing that would do more than anything else, more than any bloated UN conferences or extravagant pop concerts, to change the lives of ordinary Africans for the better. Open up the trade system. Let us buy what they produce. Particularly in Europe lets dismantle the protectionism of our economies which stops us buying things that poor Africans make and grow. Its not just Europe though. Japan is too protectionist, but America is also particularly bad especially when it comes to subsidising cotton farming.

Just handing out money to unpleasant African dictators has failed, made things worse even, because of the corruption and dependency. Give a man a fish and he eats today. Give him the opportunity and means to fish himself and he can feed himself for life. It’s the only way.
And the great irony or liberating our trade systems is that we would all be better as well because we would pay lower prices and save billions in wasteful subsidies that we pay to our own farmers to produce mountains and lakes of food and drink that no will ever eat or drink.

The main obstacle to European trade opening up is of course the French. The Common Agricultural Policy, whereby 50% of the EU’s budget is splurged on just 5% of its people, largely dominated by French farmers. Those numbers sound ridiculous, I hear you say. How could so few people receive so much money for doing so little with such far-reaching consequences? Well I would put a lot of the blame on Jacques Chirac, the former French president whose rural roots were so critical to him staying in power.

In a trade off with Germany to ensure there would never again be another war in Europe - the whole founding point of European integration - France got to assume much of the political power in Europe. Only now is it being forced to gradually and begrudgingly relinquish some of it. France obviously dominated the EU before it enlarged and looked after it farmers….at an obscene cost both to European taxpayers, European consumers, but also for the lives of Africans.

So if you really want to make a difference to the lives of ordinary Africans, then campaigning for us all to open up our trade is the best way to start.

Blair's last day, My First Blog

2007-05-10T19:42:00.000+01:00

On the day Tony Blair finally resigned I decided to create a blog. It's time for some plain speaking and clear candid opinions on lots of things.
Who knows where all this might lead? But mostly its very likely to revolve around the three aspects of life which engage and fascinate me above all others: travel, politics and of course, sport. Occasionally, in fact very probably, I shall stumble off at tangents, but then that's half the fun I suppose. As is being controversial

What will be Blair's real legacy be? I will come back to that in due course. But probably not the one he and his crony chums (exhibit 1 - Peter Mandelson) with their vested interests in his years in power being viewed kindly are so keen to have us believe.

So the much underhyped 'long goodbye' farewell tour can get underway. It might end up making the drawn out cricket world cup feel like it was condensed into just a couple of hours. Lots more synthetic toothy grins. Lots of fake sincerity. The only consolation is that we now know we won't have to endure too much more of it all. Instead we get cuddly, cheerful Gordon - there's soething very Soviet Politburo about that man, but we can come back to that later as well, I'm sure.

Cherie can have one last self-indulgent shopping binge. Maybe time for one or two more speeches to promote and flog herself as 'First Lady' (don't call her that at work of course - not that being a human rights lawyer under a meddling Labour government would bring home enough to pay the bills...well enough to pay off the bill on an extravagant new central London mansion anyway)

But for me, the highlight of it all is knowing that the grotesque, power-abusing, useless outdated political beast that is John Prescott will finally be moving on to pastures new as well. Can't someone arrange for him to be sent on a permanent junket somewhere where his contempt for the electorate and appetite for abusing for power would fit right in. Somewhere like Zimbabwe perhaps. Somewhere where the situation is so desperate and depressing that even he wont be able to find a way of making it any worse. Preferably send him by horse with his expensive cowboy boots and hat on, wielding a croquet mallett. And let him try implementing an integrated transport policy in a country where drivers have to queue 4 days to fill their cars with petrol. At least he could teach them to play croquet

The end of Blair also means no more Fatty Falconer spouting forth on the importance of the latest promotion his old flat-mate (Tony Blair) had just given him, or attempting to dig his boss out of a hole with excessive and preplexing legal speak. Is it just me, or do you get the feeling that lawyers have accumulated too much power in our country. So many people are afraid of them nowadays, afraid of saying things which might result in being sued or causing offence to someone. Along with the burgeoning armies of accountants, it is the lawyers who have come to run much of our country.

Who else can we take great pleasure in seeing dissappearing into the political wilderness. Well there's Margaret Beckett for a start. And Patricia Hewett of course. What tremendous losses of leadership and competence that would represent to our country.

John Reid has also decided to do a dissappearing act. Great timing there just after he'd made such a hoo-ha about splitting the Home Office in two and him being the only man who could make it fit for purpose again. He kind of sums up so much of what the Blair Labour government stood for - nine jobs in ten years (none of them done competently), lots of forceful media appearances to explain lots of incompetence and when the spotlight becomes too unfavourable or intense, why not just draw a line and move on?