Michael Jackson and Seve Ballesteros
The news is dominated by the death of Michael Jackson. I wasn’t a fan at all and the outpourings are in my view totally over the top. He may or may not have done things he shouldn’t and we can look forward to large amounts of allegations that can’t be verified one way or another.
Jackson may be dead, but long live the Michael Jackson industry!
Much more important news today is that Seve Ballesteros has made what seems to be a pretty good recovery from his brain tumour.
He was in a far worse state than Jackson and it shows that by focusing on the future and doing everything you can to help, you can make a recovery from the darkest places.
Good luck to Seve!
Mark Thompson’s Expenses
There has been a lot of fuss about the BBC’s Director General Mark Thompson’s expense of cutting his holiday short because of the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross affair, that some call Sachsgate. Here’s an article in the Guardian.
Thompson claimed £2,236.90 to cut his family holiday in Italy short and fly back to the UK on 30 October last year to deal with the Sachsgate row that engulfed the BBC after offensive messages left on actor Andrew Sachs’s answer machine by Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross were subsequently broadcast in Radio 2.
Mark Thompson was on BBC Breakfast this morning and said that it was a driving holiday with his family in Sicily and as the Trustees of the BBC wanted him to get back, it would not have been the a good idea to leave them behind without a car.
Quite right!
Some years ago, my late wife and I spent a very enjoyable holiday driving around Sicily looking at all the sites. They are wonderful by the way and the holiday was finished by a memorable performance of Jesus Christ Superstar in the amphitheatre at Taormina.
Sicily is not Italy, in that there are long drives between the sites, cafes and hotels are far apart and except in cites like Palermo and Taormina, it is not a country you can enjoy by yourself. So as Mark Thompson had to come home, he had to bring his wife and family back.
Out of curiosity I just tried to book flights for two adults and two children back from Sicily, either today or tomorrow.
Ryanair wanted to charge me about £700 for this, but it would get you to Stansted and knowing Sicily well, it might not be too easy to book the flight from there. With Ryanair’s new conditions on baggage and ticketing, I suspect that a family might find that this airline would not be possible. I use them a lot and plan what I take before I leave.
I also tried British Airways. They only fly from Catania and that gets you to Gatwick. The cost was £3703.94!
So I think we got good value for his flight back.
I suspect too that Mark Thompson got a hell of a lot of grief from his family!
President Ahmadinejad’s Personal Hygiene
This is another from PopBitch.
One of the things Iran’s President Ahmadinejad is most known for in political and diplomatic circles is his B.O. He has been described to us as smelling “musty” and “like a billy-goat”. Our drunk Whitehall source this week gave an interesting take on the West’s attitude towards him. The Chinese are said to be appalled by Ahmadinejad’s standards of personal hygiene – it offends their cultural norms. And so, despite everything – democracy, freedom ‘n all that, Britain and the US don’t mind him staying in power. The Chinese are not likely to give political support to somebody so weird/smelly. Which will help delay Iran getting nuclear weapons.
Let’s hope the last bit of the story is right.
On another serious note, someone who treats his countrymen and especially countrywomen, doesn’t deserve to be in power. The sooner he goes and Iran gets a proper non-religious democracy the better.
But I doubt, I’ll see that in my lifetime.
Can anybody name a Muslim country that has moved from a religius dictatorship to something even a little bit better?
A Disabled Mess
There is a court case going in London at the moment about discrimination on grounds of disability. It concerns Abercrombie and Fitch and a student who was employed by them to work as a sales and stockroom assistant. The had been born without her left forearm.
I’m not going to talk about the rights and wrongs of this case, as I have no legal training. Although, as my late wife was a barrister, I do have more than the average grasp of a barrack room lawyer.
I think that everybody takes much too much notice of disability.
I was brought up after the war and virtually every year in my schools had someone who had a withered arm or leg through polio. We didn’t bother and they usually got on with it. Perhaps the most famous polio victim was the great Indian bowler Chandrasekhar, who used to bowl with his damaged arm. No-one could tell how it would spin. There was also Murray Halberg, who won Olympic medals over 5,000 and 10,000 metres.
This was long before disabled sports and no-one bothered. But both were champions in their sports.
I also remember employing a guy with one leg. We were the first to give him an interview and he got the job as he was eminently suitable. But everybody else had turned him down at the application stage, as he was disabled. In my view and I suspect his, he wasn’t, as he probably did most things that we all do. He trained people all over the world for the company for a start.
The girl in the story may be disabled in the legal sense, but she is totally capable of performing the job for which she was hired and should not be hidden away in a back room. Compare this with a b ranch of one well-know chain store that I know, which employs someone with Down’s Syndrome on the till. That’s positive for everyone!
But perhaps for me the saddest thing in this tale is that it has come to court.
No-one will benefit!
Except of course lawyers.
Romanians in Belfast
Over the last few days there have been a lot of attacks on Romanians in Belfast. Racist? Of course they are.
But then Northern Ireland they know all about racism and sectarianism! It may have been pushed under the surface between Catholics and Protestants, but it does appear to have come out again, where these Romanians are concerned.
Here’s a report from the BBC explaining the backround.
I get very heated about racism and immigrants being treated very badly.
Read Robert Winder’s excellent book Bloody Foreigners and there is a piece about poor Jews and Germans coming to work in the fur trade in the East End of London.
An 1854 police report estimated that there were two thousand destitute Germans in what Alexander Herzen called ‘the miry bottom’ of London. Von Meysenburg wrote, ‘Poor German families there are by the hundreds. The work is stamping raw pelts at a German fur factory, Imagine a big barrel in a very warm room, filled to the very top with ermine and sable skins. A man climbs into the barrel stark naked and stamps and works with his hands and feet from morning until night.
That could well have been my father’s antecendents, as they are down in the census as fur skin dressers and they lived in the poorest parts of the East End.
Winder’s book also contains a whole chapter on Huguenots. My mother’s family are all descended from these religious refugees from France.
So when I hear stories like this from Belfast, I reach for my disgust hooter. And use it.
The Anonymous Widower 