Taking the rest of the day off

Science/blogging

The previous post concerning the latest outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Britain is not quite complete. It might have been entitled " The answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind (perhaps)" but that hypothesis - which is not mine, I hasten to add - has now been somewhat overtaken by events.

The strain of virus is unusual, and corresponds with one being used in a research laboratory just three miles down the road from the sole outbreak so far in Surrey. The obvious conclusion is that there has been a breakdown in biosecurity.

Serious though that is, it will be a relief if that is indeed the cause, assuming the present outbreak was spotted fast enough to prevent it spreading. Full marks to Gordon Brown ( not up till now my favourite politician, at least in his role as stealth-taxing Chancellor) for cancelling his holiday plans to chair those Cobra meetings.

Yours truly currently has guest spot on Colin Randall's Salut! blog. There is to be a second instalment towards the end of next week.







If you arrive at this post late, say in a fortnight's time (that's two weeks if you're American), you will find my dreams and daemons laid bare in Salut!'s archives under "Forum" in the left hand margin.

Thanks, Colin, for the invitation.

BTW: Blogger allows me to use "Salut" as a tag, but not "Salut!" !

PS Apologies to recent visitors if they have had problems with this site, like getting multiple images as soon as they try to scroll down. The source of the problem has been pinpointed and dealt with. It was the recent post which had 10 of YouTube's thumbnails on the one page. This post has been placed into Edit mode, where it's now invisible, and will remain so until I have time to go through and replace those memory-hungry thumbnails with simple URL links - they make less demand on a computer resources.

Louise please note (if you're reading this): I've had exactly the same problem with your site, ever since you switched to the dark blue page and/or have inserted lots of images.

New look Dreams and Daemons - Day 1

Politics

For several days now, the Telegraph has been urging us to sign its petition, calling on Gordon Brown to honour promises that we, the UK public, would be allowed a referendum on Europe in the event of more powers being conceded to Brussels.

Well, in what must be on one of the most dastardly acts by any PM in decades, Tony Blair, at the 59th minute of the 11th hour of his benighted premiership, did just that, allowing a failed Constitution to be resurrected as as Treaty, effectively selling the UK down the river. Borroso is telling Brown that he is duty-bound to honour Tony Blair's treacherous undertakings.

The Telegraph has 3276 responses its petition so far. I have not tried reading them all, but most needless to say are predictably against ceding any more power to the EU, which most folk see as intent on becoming a United States of Europe.

Whilst agreeing with much of what is being said about the arrogance of Brussels bureaucracy, its contempt for democratic processes, there's another side of the argument that is not being articulated. I have sent the following, with tongue in cheek, obviously, but I confess to wobbling on the assumption that we need to keep Europe at arm's length (supposing that were possible).

Here's what I've submitted:

"Why don't we just accept that we're a clapped out nation, thanks to comprehensive education, political correctness, over-taxation, uncontrolled immigration, corporate greed, social atomisation, gutter press and so-called reality TV, booze culture, knife culture, gridlock on roads, rail and utility privatization, government spin and dossier doctoring, imperial pretensions and self-appointed global policing, devaluation of university degrees, mismanagement of the NHS, squandering of billions of taxpayers' money on botched projects, overpriced public transport, rip-off consumer goods indistry, destruction of industrial base, national obsession with celebrity and trivia in general, dumbed down media, home-grown terrorists, break-up of the UK, unaffordable homes, record levels of debt, ASBOs a badge of strret cred, highest level of divorce in Europe, graduate debt .... sorry, I'll have to stop there - there's somebody at the door - probably a crooked utility salesman or distraction burglars.

Given that our country has been so thoroughly trashed in the last 20 years, can Barosso's EU Empire really do any worse ?

Why not give wholehearted membership of the EU a try ? Can things really get any worse than they are now, short of outbreaks of rioting in the streets ? Might things not become better in a fully-fledged United States of Europe ? Let's face it: the UK is a busted flush."

With this new format, using standardized headings (politics, humour etc) I've been a bit slow to realize how to exploit the format to best effect.

So far I've been entering text under the headings in any order, depending on which ideas come first, and leaving you, the reader, to hunt for new content.

That's hardly user-friendly now, is it ? So what I'm doing now is placing the most-recently updated heading at the top of the page.

So here's the most recent one to be updated: Moan of the Day, with star-billing for, da da,

lastminute.com.

Moan of the Day

Update Monday July 16

We finally received a reply from lastminute.com this morning. It was most apologetic for the delay in responding to our complaint ( see below). The misleading description of our Madrid hotel as having an "ideal central location" had been supplied, they said, by the hotel, which was unwilling to entertain any claim for compensation. We were pleased, then, to be told that as a gesture of goodwill, lastminute.com was returning £100 to our account, no less. That's actually a bit more than I was expecting, but I'm not complaining !

The hotel was called Confortel Suites. It's on a street called Lopez de Hoya in the Prosperidad district, on the north-eastern side of Madrid. The nearest Metro station, 10 stops from central Madrid was called Alfonso XIII.

Finding ourselves in the the outer suburbs was not our only complaint. After one night there, Jane was suffering dizziness and nausea, which we traced to a bad smell from the bathroom. I discovered that the wash-hand basin had been plumbed in without benefit of a U-bend.

We were moved to a different room, which was free of odour (despite having the same slaphappy plumbing). One assumes that the sink in the first room was closer to the main soil pipe.

Anyone considering a visit to Madrid may do well to consider giving Confortel Suites a miss - unless, that is, they like long Tube journeys, and the smell of drains.

Anyway our thanks to lastminute.com. They took their time responding, but finally recognized the legitimacy of our complaint. There are many things we weren't able to see or do in Madrid, especially in the evening, through being unwilling to make that long and tedious return journey twice in one day.

Original post

Be very wary of lastminute.com, especially its so-called "Secret Hotels" deals. That's where you don't know which hotel you will be in until after you have paid.

Now why would anyone willingly agree to such terms, you may ask ?

Because you can find yourself booked into a good, well-situated hotel at half or less the normal price. We used the "secret hotel" deal on our last visit to London, and found ourselves in the Holiday Inn near Gloucester Rd tube station - but then we were told that we would be somewhere in Kensington.

Perhaps as the result of that one good experience we lowered out guard, and tried the same deal in Madrid last month. Lastminute.com stated we would be "in an ideal central location... ideal for business travellers or leisure visitors".

We arrived at night, and had the jolting experience next morning of finding we were on the north-east outskirts of Madrid, a ten euro taxi ride to the centre, or 10 stops on the Metro, no less, needing a change.

Well, we were not amused, needless to say, and said so at reception. But decided to put up with it, and not let it get us down, whilst resolving to lodge a strong protest to lastminute.com when we got home, and press for some compensation for the extra out-of-pocket expenses.

There's worse to come. It took a while to find a "contact us/complain" facility on the website. We finally found it, complained we had been seriously misled, that it had impacted on our enjoyment of our holiday.

Back came an auto-reply saying we might have to wait 28 days for our complaint to be dealt with. We sent a second message a few days later, saying we expected our complaint to be dealt with more speedily. It was, after all, a simple matter of misleading description - a hotel that is 10 stops on the tube from the centre is hardly "an ideal central location". It's as if one booked for a central London hotel, and found oneself out at Golders Green (yes, I've counted 10 stations from Picadilly Circus).

Apart from a second auto reply, we've had no reply as yet to our complaint, made some 3 weeks ago !

Lastminute.com would not exist if it were not for the internet. One has to take on trust the few words of description that one reads on its website. If lastminute.com betrays that trust, and then fails to respond to complaints posted through its own website facility, then it is guilty under the Trade Descriptions Act.

I hope through tags and feeds, Tradings Standards Office will be reading this, or the BBC's Watchdog programme, or anyone, for that matter, thinking of using the services of lastminute.com. That organization is taking huge liberties with its online customers, and spoiling folks' holiday plans. Do they really wish to gain the reputation of being a grubby organization?

Politics

Gordon Brown wants us to believe that spin has no part to play in his brand of politics. Yet his response the welcome MCB statement condemning the actions of the mad medic fire-bombers was to place an embargo on use of the terms Muslim or even Islamist when describing those who engage in suicide bombing. That was presumably a sop to the MCB line that condemns the media for describing as Muslims or Islamists people who wage jihad in the name of Islam. It is tantamount, the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB) claims, to describing IRA terrorists as "Catholic terrorists".

That is ridiculous: the IRA campaign was never about imposing a fundamentalist form of Catholicism on Ulster, even assuming such a thing existed. Nor did the IRA ever resort to suicide bombing, because its agenda was primarily political, not religious. Nor were there any Catholic priests urging the IRA to become suicide bombers, with promises of rewards of the flesh awaiting them in paradise, even if some priests were sympathetic to the aims of the IRA, if ot the methods .

If it is true that Gordon Brown has banned use of the M or I word, then that in my view is a depressing and dangerous concession to political correctness. It makes us all a hostage to fortune, allowing the MCB, if so inclined, to retreat back to its previous state of denial, but one that is enormously strengthened, and can then be presented as a propaganda coup. Brown's line should have been : "Now you're talking sense, and not before time. But let's not stop there. Let's get a few other things straight while we're about it".

By rewarding the MCB with the right to dissociate non-terrorist Muslims from what is done in their name, by extremists in their midst ( whose identities are often known, or suspected, but rarely if ever reported, because they are basically "nice boys") Brown is guilty, if not of positive spin, but of negative spin. But it's spin all the same, because by gagging his Ministers and others in Government, preventing them from telling it the way it is, he's putting an undeserved gloss on things, by default.

The Koran and hidiths are open to numerous interpretations, some of them involving indiscriminate slaughter of non-Muslims. For as long as misguided individuals, including (amazingly) hospital doctors, whose intended role was to save life, try their level best to kill us in the name of Islam, then we are entitled, indeed obliged, to describe them as Islamist terrorists. That sends a no-nonsense signal to mainstream non-violent Islam that it's time it put its house in order.

If the IRA had acted in the name of Christianity, we in the West (not just the UK) - Christians, other religions, agnostics and atheists - would have been out in the streets protesting furiously at their attempt to sign us up to their psychotic tendencies.

Gordon Brown has failed his first test, and by his own yardstick, namely his claim that spin is a thing of the past.

Personalities

Watch this space


Blog watch

This heading was intended as a bit of self-chivvying - to get me touring some of the millions of other blogs out there, and reporting back on anything that stood out from the background.

But I'm hijacking this title today for something different that may look like self-promotion (which it is) but is possibly a pearl of wisdom for fellow bloggers.

Down at the bottom of this page is my Mark II hit counter, the same as the one of Sarah Hague's (where I discovered it). If you click on it, you will find it gives an amazing amount of detail about visitors to this site, eg the site from which they have arrived.

An increasing number of visitors come to this site from Google searches, and the hit meter even reveals what people have entered into their search profile.

Yesterday I was toying with the idea of putting up a post on search-engine superfluity - a majority of folk enter whole phrases into Google, when as we know it ignores words like "from", "to", "in" etc unless part of a phrase within quotation marks.

But something else caught my attention that has left me absolutely gobsmacked, and not a little delighted too. Someone ( a visitor to this site, but I won't say who) had simply entered "conforama" ( the French furniture chain) and had been led to this site ? Why, I wondered ? So I entered conforama, and guess what ? Dreams and Daemons was on the second page of listings. All I had done was list Conforama among stores that sell dodgy imported goods. It was not singled out for particular attention.

Today I discovered a visitor from Adelaide in South Australia, and wondered if it was the splendid "Bearsy" who, along with his missus Boadicea makes brilliant contribution to My Tel ( which I still read, but no longer post to).

But then I looked at the Google search profile from Adelaide. It was simply "places to visit in Madrid". When I keyed it into Google, I found my recent post on Madrid there on the very first page of listings !

Why you may ask is a personal blog with a modest Technorati ranking appearing so high in Google searches ?

I think it's because of "info-mass", my own variant on the term "bio-mass". This blog has been going for some 9 months during which time I've posted on a wide range of topics that through tags have linked to hundreds of other sites. Google rankings are apparently determined largely by one's web of linkages, and as the months go by, a site like this acquires a progressively higher profile.

The moral then, to fellow bloggers, is to be patient, take a long term view, keep posting, and as time goes by one gets picked up by the search engines, attracting more and more visitors, creating more hits and links, attracting more visitors etc etc. It's in effect a virtuous circle.

There will be some who judge a site purely by the number of comments. I won't pretend that I'm indifferent to the relative paucity on this site, but I hope these few words will demonstrate that success or otherwise in blogging can be measured by more than one yardstick.



Living in France

Buying and selling property in France can hit one with much larger expenses than in Britain, especially estate agents fees. last week I was quoted a whopping fee of 6% to sell a small guest apartment, which is a five figure sum in euros !

In fact, I'll probably let it out instead, but it was an opportunity to try direct selling through the internet. I keyed in "Antibes property" into Google to get a high-profile listing, paid my £59 last Friday for an ad with 4 photos, and it appeared yesterday:

http://www.frenchpropertylinks.com/frenchpropertyextradetails.asp?property=PremierAdvert1167448M6


I'll let you know if and when there's a response.

Already the firm has emailed to warn of crooks who offer to buy the property without viewing it. They weren't specific, but we've heard that it typically involves persuading gullible folk to accept cash, which is counterfeit, needless to say.


Lifestyle

Watch this space

Money matters

"Olympics Budget is out of Control" was the title of an article by Brendan Carlin in today's Telegraph (Tue 10th). Here's the first comment that went up, from your truly, NTS:


"Calculated per competing athlete, of which there were some 11,100 at the most recent (Athens) Olympics, a bill for £9bn represents well over three quarters of a million pounds per sprinter, long jumper, javelin thrower etc.

There is simply no justification for this level of expenditure, especially as it comes every 4 years, and is foist in the first instance on cities rather than entire countries.

London should be the last old-syle Olympics. There should then be a permanent site, carefully chosen for clean unpolluted air (which rules out a number of previous venues, Athens included).

We should now swallow our pride, and propose a belated sharing of the 2012 Olympics with Paris, or perhaps Madrid and other failed contenders.

The disastrous way in which London came to be selected with a blank cheque from Blair, Brown, Livingstone and Coe, is a signal lesson in what happens when Parliament cedes too much power to the Executive. The media also failed to exercise proper vigilance, preferring instead the easy headlines to be gained from the narcissistic showbiz presentations that took place in Singapore. "



Humour
Cannot resist plagiarising a joke that appeared from a contributor on Damian Thompson's Telegraph blog:

I can beat that one
peterNW1 10 Jul 2007 00:03

St Peter decides to take the day off to go fishing, so Jesus offers to keep an eye on the Pearly Gates for him. Jesus is not sure what to do, so Peter tells him to find out a bit about people as they arrive in Heaven, and this will help him decide if he can let them in. After a while, Jesus sees a little old man with white hair and a white beard approaching who looks very, very familiar. He asks the old man to tell him about himself. The old man says, "I had a very sad life. I was a carpenter and had a son who I lost at a relatively young age, and although he was not my natural child, I loved him dearly." Jesus looks closely at the old man, "How would you recognise your son"? "He has holes in his hands and feet". Jesus wells up with emotion. He throws his arms around the old man and cries, "Joseph!" The old man replies, "Pinocchio?"

What happens when King Tony the First finally abdicates?

Apologies first of all. I said in my last post that there would be a second progress report on MyTelegraph. That has been delayed for another day or two while I sought an OK from the Telegraph, and gave extra time for thoughts to crystallize.

*

Here's what I posted to MyTelegraph this morning, prompted by the headline in this morning's Telegraph "Brown to inherit Blair's surrender to Brussels"

(In case you were wondering, it's not the only paper we read. Sunday is the day that one or other of us trudges out to buy the "dead tree" version of the Sunday Times. Old habits die hard.)

*

Our Constitutional Mockery
Posted by ColinB at 07:56 on 06 May 2007

We are now just weeks away from Gordon Brown's "coronation".

Those of us who consider it absurd have been told to shut up. It's the British way of doing things: we just vote for candidates at General Elections with certain party political labels.

Parliament and political parties do the rest, like decide who is to occupy No.10, and be on our TV screens every night, acting for all the world like a (directly elected) US President.

Even mad George III would have been jealous of the power wielded by a modern British PM, accountable to virtually no-one except his own lackeys, such being his powers of patronage.

To rub salt in the wound, we read today that His Toniness is determined to leave us with a permanent legacy of his 10 year reign at No.10.

In his twilight weeks in office, he is to surrender more powers to Brussels, and do so in a way that makes it impossible for Brown to undo those 11th hour changes.

I will spare you the details - they are the subject of this morning's headline article in the Sunday Telegraph. Here are few key words. Revived European consitution, EU law, EU President. I leave you to join up the dots.

How democratic is that ? How democratic is our entire system that allows Parliament to foist on us leaders about whom we, the public , initially know next to nothing ? We then learn the hard way what these people really stand for, which, as often as not, is self-advancement, pure and simple.

Where are the powers that prevent these same individuals turning into virtually omnipotent rulers, who lead us into wars we don't want, who sign away our rights to outside powers, and who, to "secure their legacy", attempt to tie the hands of their successors.

Our British so-called democracy is nothing of the sort. It's basically dual monarchy: a figurehead sovereign who opens Parliament, who recites the speech of the real Monarch in waiting.

Keep reading your Samuel Pepys's diary if you really want to understand how Britain works. Constitutional monarchy ? Constitutional mockery more like it!

Updated Sunday pm:

Added this to the Comments section, in response to a question about how Brown is designated as Blair's successor:

Effectively disenfranchised

ColinB06 May 2007 10:16

"Brown succeeds Blair because of that infamous arrangement made over the crème brûlée in Granita shortly after John Smith died.

It's a case of Buggins' turn. I would question whether "Blair was voted as Prime Minister".

In my own Bucks constituency the choice was between voting for the Conservative candidate, who could be a labrador, and would still get elected, and a motley collection of other candidates, none of whom had a hope of winning.

It follows that millions of voters up and down the country have had no way of registering their opinion on Tony Blair 's 10 years reign - except by abstaining or making a protest vote.

If we accept that Britain's PM should be the focus of a personality cult, then surely he or she should be elected directly, comparable to a US President.

Personally, I'd prefer that our PMs were more in the mould of Clement Atlee or Harold MacMillan - guiding discussion within Cabinet, delegating as much as possible to Ministers chosen for more than arse-licking propensities.

In other words the PM should see his/her role as just that : prime amongst ministers, and to foster a collegiate atmosphere at No.10 rather than this present narcissistic Louise XIV gilded sofa-style of government."

Comments welcome by email to: sciencebod01@aol.com

"The plot thickens over pensions fiasco"

Apologies for the plagiarism - I have borrowed the title of a Telegraph leader today to head up this post on the growing scandal of Brown's raid on pensions.

As mentioned before, yours truly was someone who nearly a year ago began needling the Press on how they had allowed Brown to get away with his annual extraction of an eye-watering £5billion a year from the nation's pension pot.

Someone yesterday mentioned another murky area, namely the way in which awards had been made for 3G mobile phone contracts. I mentally composed a submission, but held back because the Telly had failed to post 2 previous comments ( see yesterday's post).

So it's just belatedly been sent as a comment, hopefully to appear under the Telegraph leader:

Here it is: "Someone reminded us yesterday about Brown's way of awarding 3G mobile phone bandwidth - by auction to the highest bidder, and how this had hit the value of his Vodafone shares (UK's fourth largest company, and a major component therefore of investments linked to the FTSE index).Brown extracted some £20 billion by way of upfront payments, and at the time everyone said how smart he had been, compared with the French who had used the more conventional "beauty parade" for awarding those contracts.The big question in people's minds at the time was what Brown would do with all that dosh, so when he announced that it was to repay part of the National Debt, we all thought, how responsible, how prudent. But if the UK had been paying, say, 5% to service that debt, then it means Brown has had an extra £1 billion pounds staying in his coffers each year that would previously have gone out. Does anyone know how that billion is being spent ? No, I didn't think so.

(Expect a PS later today about the knock-on effects of that auction on Vodafone and the other mobile phone companies re their spat with the EU over roaming charges - their way of trying to recoup some of that admission fee to the brave new world 3G.)"


Update Tuesday 11:20 Just had an email from Sarah. She thinks it was that T word which prevented two of my posts to the Telly failing to appear yesterday. Like T = rival newspaper ....

If that's the case, then the Telly's moderators need to learn that cross-referencing is too important on the internet for it to be blocked in this fashion . Are you reading me, Shane Richmond, Ceri Radford ?

(and Richard of Orléans continues to claim - with his toxic blend of speculation and malevolence - that I'm desperate to guest-blog for the Telly !)

Update 13:00 have just submitted a second comment to the same "leader" thread (though past experience suggest I may have left it too late in the day - comments received much after midday tend not to appear at all !)

"Brown's pension grab fooled not just the public, but the press as well, including big name financial commentators. And it was the first of many such stealth taxes.

Tax Freedom Day, we are told, comes on June 1st this year. Might I suggest that every time the Chancellor, or his successor, delivers a Budget speech, that he be required to state what effect his new measures will have on Tax Freedom Day.

Better still would be for David Cameron to drop his absurd obsession with our individual carbon footprints, and rename his Party the April 1st Party. It would set as its prime aim the moving of Tax Freedom Day forward to that date. Anything later makes us, the electorate, look like the April Fool. Why should any Government take, or need, more than 25% of our earnings ?"

Comments welcomed: emails to sciencebod01@aol.com

Update 16:45 Both of these submissions in response to the Telly's leader have now gone up. Oh me of little faith !

Update 20:45 The Telegraph, unusually, is still accepting late submissions, in response to Brown and Blair appearing before the cameras today. See "Brown unrepentant over pensions raid" So off went this one, which if published will be my third contribution to a lively (if unforgiving) thread:


"Everything we have heard today is what I believe is called post-hoc rationalisation. Well before the '97 General Election, Gordon Brown had created his working party whose job was to devise means of creating a political war chest. It was to be bursting at the seams with eye-watering sums of money - billions, not millions - for the purposes of social engineering and electoral advantage in winning second and third terms at the polls.

Only later did his acolytes - Ed Balls et al - provide those plausible-sounding reasons why this would be in the long term interests of uk plc- at least as measured by the headline GDP figure.

If Brown had been motivated by a true concern for business, as distinct from political advantage, he could have been candid about what he was trying to achieve. Instead, we had stealth, evasiveness and spin.

Today's explanations simply do not ring true. He's now running scared, as well he might."

Update Wed 4th April

My eldest son arrived last night for a few days, so I shall be keeping a lowish profile, although I could not resist goading one "Sipu" to reveal exactly what he/she objected to on David Llewellyn's post on Marc Quinn's statue of Alison Lapper in Trafalgar Square. I suspect Sipu has some non-PC thoughts on the subject of disability and/or nudity, in which case I'd say, let's air them. Isn't that what blogs are for ?

It being the season for guest blogging, I asked Jane this morning if she'd like to take the next slot. She's agreed to do so, and will talking about the work she does on behalf of the Antiboulenc society. It's sometimes described as the artistic and cultural society of Antibes, but that does not really do justice to the range of activities that it embraces. Expect Jane's post on Friday, or le weekend at the latest.

Well, I was partly right about the Telly's Comments facility on their leaders. They continue to invite comments, when in fact the thread is closed. So the third one (above) did not appear. Resourceful chap that I am, I changed a word or two, sharpened it somewhat, and sent it to Jeff Randall's article instead. It has just appeared.

Thanks for the email Louise. In fact the two comments of mine referred to earlier never did appear, probably for the reason (backed by Sarah) that they contained the unmentionable T word. So the prize is Sarah's for the taking. Reminder: third prize - a pair of hippo socks; second prize: one hippo sock; first prize: no hippo socks. Well done, Sarah. Your prize is not winging its way to you as I write.

Afterthought: I reminded my son last night about the occasion when he and his two siblings goaded their mum and dad to go on one of the rides at Alton Towers, years ago when he was still in his teens. The aftermath is described on Simon Coulter's Disneyworld post.....

Update: Wed 13:40 Richard of Orléans now seems to be in political freefall, judging by his anti-immigrant comments on his Sologne blog ( I decline to provide a link). OK, so it's white immigrants who are the subject of his continuing invective, his fellow Brits in fact, and there will be some who continue to view his comments as tongue in cheek. Some tongue, some cheek, as Churchill didn't say. Today he looks to Le Pen for a crackdown on what he sees as an invasion of his adopted homeland, adopting the language and posture of the BNP. And what if Le Pen decides not to sink to R of O's level of baiting and demonisation ? Whither R of O politically?


Comments welcome, email to sciencebod01@aol.com.

Competition 3 - what did I say that was wrong ?

The Telly put up a new topic today on its "Your View". It asked the question: "How will Gordon Brown's pension raid affect you ? ".
Here was the preamble, which as you see asked supplementary questions that went further than indicated in the title, eg like whether Gordon Brown is suitable PM material.


"Gordon Brown was accused yesterday of overseeing the "failure" of the pensions system after ignoring officials' advice on a controversial tax reform.
Confidential memos - finally made public after a two-year battle - showed Treasury officials raised concerns that changing the way dividends were taxed would cost pension providers up to £4 billion a year and leave pensioners and low-paid workers worse off.
Mr Brown was also advised that the move would accelerate the closure of lucrative final salary pension schemes and cause share prices to dive by up to 20 per cent, according to the documents.
Shadow Chancellor George Osborne seized on the revelations, claiming: "It is time Gordon Brown faced the music for the damage he's done to British pensions."
What do you think? Should Gordon Brown face an independent inquiry into the impact of the tax reform on the pensions system, as the Tories suggest? How will Mr Brown’s pensions ‘raid’ affect you? Has his fiscal management caused you to doubt what kind of Prime Minister he would make?


Yours truly posted a comment that went up early in the first batch ( see below).

But I later in the day sent a second one, which did not appear. Grrr. A little reminder was sent, but still no success. Grrrrrrrrr.

Later, I responded to a point made by one "Michael", but that did not appear either.
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr


So here's the Competition. Tell me what I said that stuck in the craw of those Telly moderators (who are usually so obliging !).

First reject: sent approx 15:30 London time

"Maybe Gordon Brown thinks he can ride this one out, or hide away in Afghanistan, hoping it will have all blown over by the time he gets home. Think again, Gordon Brown. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, certainly, but it's another express train bearing down on you at top speed.

It's our old friend from the 1960s called "Balance of payments crisis", like the one that forced Wilson to devalue the pound.

Here, verbatim, are the glad tidings that were in the Business section of That Other Sunday Newspaper:

"Britain"s current-account deficit rose to £43.4 billion last year, from £29.2billion in 2005. The deficit on trade in goods rose by £14.9 billion to £83.7 billion, due to a greater rise in imports than exports across all categories. (But this was only partly offset by) the services surplus, which rose by (a mere )£5.3 billion to £29.6 billion. The current account deficit was 3.4% of GDP last year, its highest since 1990, compared with 2.4% in 2005."

(The few extra words in brackets are my own).

Maybe we should forgive Tony Blair for staying long past his sell-by date: maybe he felt that his next door neighbour's chickens needed a little more time to come home to roost. Certainly these figures should put paid to any idea that Brown has managed all aspects of the economy.

What he has done is to massage the headline GDP growth figure, at the expense of pretty well everything else - pensions, house prices, red tape, bloated State sector and now - balance of payments.

The man should should tender his resignation forthwith. I would suggest calling in Frank Field as a caretaker Chancellor - a trustworthy and unifying figure, one who can start sorting out Brown's mess.


Second reject: sent approx 17:00 London time


"Michael says this is one of the biggest news stories of the year. How's that for British understatement ! One wonders if he has seen today's Times: here are the opening words in an article by Lord William Rees-Mogg, a former editor:

"In more than 220 years The Times has published many historic reports; few of them have been more significant than last Saturday’s exposure of the Civil Service briefings before Gordon Brown’s 1997 stealth tax on pension funds."


Answers to: sciencebod01@aol.com please. All will be published, subject to them being within the bounds of good taste, as judged arbitrarily and subjectively by my team of minions at Blog Central.

First email (from Louise): What's the prize, Colin ?

Oops. One forgot about that small detail, Louise. Give us half an hour to ponder on that one. In the meantime, enjoy your meeting of the anti-hamster league ! And before you ask: not guilty.
OK, I've thought. The prize is ........ pause for effect ....... that pair of hippo socks that you so admired, Louise.

One small problem. How do we know you have the right answer, unless you are in a long term relationship with one of the Telly's moderators ? I can't see one of them posting here, can you ?


Update 22:00 French time: have just sent this as a "comment" to the Gordon Brown thread:

Dear Moderators
I have just this minute offered a valuable prize to the person who can come up with the best explanation for why my last two posts to this thread have been rejected. Competition details on my "Dreams and Daemons" blog:
http://www.dreams-and-daemons.blogspot.com/
It's all in good fun: that goes without saying, but I thought I'd better say it, all the same.

Update Tuesday: Well, you're apparently all as perplexed as I am as to why the Telly's suddenly blocking my comments. But I see that Louise is getting the same blue pencil treatment, simply for agreeing with comments made by the Telly's Trusty Trio. Having slept on it, here are two explanations. First one: they don't like my references to the T word. And no, that's not T for Telegraph. It's T for Toffee-nosed, or, more politely, and historically, Thunderer.

Second possibility: either they did not know about the scandalous, and under-reported balance of payments figures, and don't like us hoi polloi using "Your View" to point them out, or they did, and have a big story planned, and don't want someone stealing their thunder.

You see, David Smith in the Sunday Times makes scant reference to the figures, appalling though they are, saying no one gives a hoot about the balance of payments these days, that it's accepted that the UK always runs a chronic deficit, that its tolerable while there's great gobs of capital flowing into the country bla bla bla.

He makes it all sound like a psychological thing, akin to share prices. Well, it ain't - the exchange rates are governed by harder laws of supply and demand than that ,Mr.Smith, as I'm sure you know full well . If we go importing vastly more goods and services than we export, then sooner or later there will be a day of reckoning. At the moment, the pound is seen as relatively strong, because of the weakness of the dollar and the yen. But that could change, and then overnight the foreign exchange dealers wake up to what they have known and ignored for too long - that Britain has a tax-and-spend Chancellor who's been quietly spinning away for the best part of 10 years, putting a false gloss on things. The UK's system has allowed him to get away with that, though the Times's recent coup in getting the Freedom of Infomation Act finally to work in making the Treasury cough up the advice Brown was given on pensions may signal that his game is finally up. What else has this mega confidence trickster been keeping from us ? My advice, in a nutshell: : buy gold !

Oops, nearly forgot: this is the first of my three submissions to "Your View" that was accepted:


"I worked for a smallish organization for 12 years that ran into difficulties, and was subsequently "rescued" by a competitor. The final-salary pension scheme was closed to newcomers and then ring-fenced, so I thought all was well.

But after THAT budget one began to see signs that the scheme was not well. The new company had to go propping up it up with voluntary payments of tens of thousands of pounds a month in order to meet the Government's deadline for proof of future ability to meet liabilities. Brown's tax raid was cited by the Trustees as a major blow, though the fall in equities, increased longevity were other factors.

I had always assumed that my scheme was rock-solid, despite these difficulties, through knowing that when one reached retirement age, the fund purchased an annuity on one's behalf, to pay one's pension in perpetuity, and freeing one from the changing fortunes of one's employers. That is no longer the case. If my merged company went bust, then I am at the mercy of the safety-net schemes, and who knows how reliable they might be in the event of a major melt-down following, say, some international crisis ?

Brown's raid has undoubtedly contributed to the poor performance of other investment - the so-called tax-exempt payouts from "Friendly Societies" ( a misnomer if ever there was), of ISAs linked to the FTSE index, which have lagged some 30% behind those linked to a mix of European funds over a 6 year period since the dotcom crash.

And there's been a vicious circle between pensions and stockmarket values: pension funds, over-exposed to weak equities have tried to dump equities, to meet those Government tests of future viability, and in so doing have further depressed those same equity values; meaning more have to be dumped. Brown's raid was the equivalent of a ship being torpedoes, and holed below the water line. He got away with it, through exploiting his initial honeymoon period with the electorate, and with a non-too numerate media.

What appals me is the revelation that Gordon Brown set out to find his £5bn pot of political spending money even before winning the '97 election. He must have known that one cannot bleed that amount of cash from the nation's pension pot without there being long-term consequences, as clearly warned at the time. Yet he went ahead, and has caused untold anxiety and misery to millions who have seen a life time of prudent preparation for retirement essentially turned into a junk bond.

He should do the honorable thing and resign. There should be no possibility of him being considered for the premiership until we have seen how he performs in a different department of state, eg the Foreign Office or the Home Office. Personally, I do not consider him temperamentally suited to be PM: he never did inspire trust, and recent events have just shown the long term damage that can result from a individual exercising power in a system that lacks transparency and accountability."

Competition 2 - suggest a caption

Original caption: These children are a bit young to vote yet, Gordon

The above photograph appeared on the Little and Large Telly blog yesterday, with that fairly innocuous caption, the one you see above.

You may have read today's headlines re Gordon Brown. Thanks to the Freedom of Information Act, we now know, almost 10 years after the event, how he jettisoned Treasury advice, and then, without batting an eyelid, torpedoed Britain's final salary pension schemes below the water line. He did it by the absurdly simple act of withdrawing their 20% tax relief on investment dividends . He slipped in this little Treasury earner during his "honeymoon period". It was the first of his many subsequent stealth taxes.

In view of the iniquity of what he did - sucking 5bn pounds a year, every year, of lifeblood out of pension funds, I think some pithier captions are called for.

This blogger made his feelings clear about Brown's raid on pension funds almost a year ago in the Times. I'll see if it can be googled out of the archives, and post here later. (ed: quickly located, see below)

In the meantime here are four alternative captions. I got the ball rolling with the first three.

"Have you been shown how to fill out a tax return yet?"

"Yes, but there's now much less hayfever since schools got rid of their playing fields"

"Then you tell your Daddy from me that tosser is not a nice word....... "

Phil Slocombe's caption:

"Just think of me like Father Christmas"

Those Telly moderators must have been at peace with the world yesterday, publishing them all , incuding that distinctly dodgy third one.

And as you can see, Phil Slocombe, bless him, one of the Trusty Trio of new guest bloggers, brought in from that wilderness called "Your View", joined in on the fun. too. Thanks Phil- but then you did owe me one (having primed the comments on your maiden blog :-)

Perhaps my die-hard band of readers can think of some more. But please don't send them here ( which might look like internet piracy). Send them direct to the blog instead. I'll cut and paste new ones as they appear.

Footnote: from the archives (see above):

Would Gordon Brown make a good prime minister:

"You asked whether Gordon Brown "looks a billion dollars".

To me he looks more like £5bn, taken each year from our pension funds.

This was not done as a response to some dire national emergency.

He made his raid shortly after taking up office, as a kind of pre-emptive strike, and, for reasons I do not understand, was given a comparatively easy ride by the press and media generally.

He was allowed to get away with committing a (to my mind) hugely irresponsible act, the knock-on effects of which have caused so much anxiety and pension shortfalls for millions of folk.

Did Chancellor Brown, looking for a quick fiscal fix, correctly guess he could get away with it, knowing that the press tends to go easy on new ministers deemed to be in their "honeymoon period"?

There are other reckless acts one could cite, like the decision to sell off gold reserves, and then announcing publicly what he proposed to do in advance.

Dumping so much gold on the market had the inevitable effect of depressing its price.

Billions extra could have been saved if he had done the sensible thing of drip-feeding into the market, especially given today's prices.

And let's not forget that the so-called extra "penny in the pound" on NI contributions was in reality a 10 per cent increase, and effectively a stealth increase in income tax.

Or the profligate spending on unnecessary public servants, botched computerisation project, etc.

I believe there to be a serious flaw in the way this man operates - by stealth and by fait accompli - one which I consider inimical to democratic processes.

He's a dangerous loner. I voted for Blair (though now regretting it) but Labour will never get my vote if Brown succeeds Blair. "

Colin Berry, Antibes, France

Times April 12th 2006

Is Gordon Brown fit to be PM ?

5th and final update:24th March No need to scroll down for this one. It can be said here very quickly. The headline of today's Times reads "Final Budget backfires for Brown as poll rating slumps" .

Don't say I didn't warn you, Gordon, that you really had to get this one right. Expectations were running so high, thanks to all the pre-Budget leaking and trailing from the Treasury, which Philip Johnston (Telly) and others all lapped up so uncritically. And what did you go and do ? You went and blew it, and with it probably blown your chances of succeeding Blair, or at any rate, of serving a full term as PM !

4th update: 23rd March 18:50 ( reply to Louise, in green)

3rd update:22nd March 13:30 (email from Louise at C&C): please scroll down to the blue font:

2nd update: 22nd March 11:40
Please scroll to end

Updated 22nd March (the morning after the Budget Day before!)

(Scroll to end for today's immediate reaction)

This is intended as an organic blog. I sow the seed, invite emails (comments being blocked), and see where it goes. As I said yesterday, every effort will be made to incorporate your ideas into a running commentary.

The seed ? The Telly's leader today is wondering what surprises if any Gordon Brown has in store with his Budget tomorrow.

Someone ought to tell Philip Johnston (Telly blog) that it's far from being a foregone conclusion.
Well someone did, actually ( me !) .

Sample quote: from Philip J. "Nowadays, it wouldn't matter if the same thing happened to Mr Brown's Budget since we know most of it already. Except, that with Mr Brown, as many have found out to their cost, the devil will be in the detail. "


The Telly's leader invites our comments. Here's one I've just this minute sent off.


"The UK constitution, or lack thereof, permits the PM to subsume the role of Foreign Secretary too, often reducing the latter to mere messenger boy (or girl). Brown as PM could cause the role of Chancellor to go the same way. The result: an omnipotent, untouchable one-man triumvirate.

Place that amount of power into the hands of someone with demonstrated control freak tendencies, and we could all be pining in 5 years time for a return to Blair's Golden Age of power delegation. (I never thought I'd say that).

Only you can rescue us now, David Cameron. You must drive home the message that while Brown controls(obsessively) he's shown himself to be a total loss as a manager, except for one decision - probably made for the wrong reasons- namely to delegate control of interest rates to the Bank of England. Without that self-denying ordinance, his chickens would have come home to roost a long time ago, and the UK economy have gone down the plughole."


emails to: sciencebod01@aol.com

(Am out for two or three hours this afternoon - meeting daughter at airport, who's visiting for a few days).

Updated 22nd March

Well, much scepticism in the Press today about whether Brown's 2p reduction in the standard rate of tax is worth the candle, given that he has replaced the starting 10p band with the new 20p band. (Incidentally, some newspapers reported him as having "abolished" the 10p band, giving a totally misleading impression".

I mentioned above a strange and unsatisfactory post from one Philip Johnston 3 days ago in the Telly blogs. You won't find him in the list of contributors on the right, but I've since learned that he is the paper's home affairs editor. Here's how he ended his post:


"In 1996, virtually the entire contents of Kenneth Clarke's last budget were leaked to the Daily Mirror on the eve of presentation, but the paper resisted the temptation to publish any of the contents, instead returning the documents to the Treasury. Nowadays, it wouldn't matter if the same thing happened to Mr Brown's Budget since we know most of it alreadyExcept, that with Mr Brown, as many have found out to their cost, the devil will be in the detail."

Here's what I said. I think I can fairly claim (immodestly) that events have confirmed my hunch that PJ is either very gullible (read his entire post) or very complacent or both.

"I agree with Mark. If as Philip Johnston says, he and the meeja are already privy to the Budget, then why aren't we lesser mortals also allowed to know the specifics of what Brown has in store ? We can then see what emerges on Budget day, and decide whether Philip's touching faith in Brown's new transparency was justified or not. But don't hold your breath, as they say. Brown is a wily operator who likes to spring surprises - hardly what the country needs as a successor to Blair. "

Some papers are saying that this final budget to was designed to be Brown's springboard for the Premiership. They too seem remarkably naïve, poor dears.

This Budget is a reminder, if any were needed, of the man's geekishness and deviousness. He's been too long on Planet No.11. Definitely not PM material !

Updated again:11:40

This is nothing whatsoever to do with Gordon Brown. It's about Shane Richmond's recent blog on the subject of the Telly's moderation policies. Louise and the mysterious Anne Gilbert have both posted comments, giving yours truly a bit of stick.

I sent a rebuttal yesterday, but was not surprised that it failed to clear the Telly's moderators. Does the general readership really need to know about the infighting that occurs on personal blogs ? Did Louise or AG think of that before putting our recent disputes into the wider MSM domain ? Is this yet another example of the kangaroo court in action ? R of O has a lot to answer for: he has set a friightful precedent, and Louise considers his baiting to be an OK part of blogging. It's not Louise - baiting is the nasty, unacceptable face of human nature.

Anyway, here's the one that the Telly would not publish:

"Haven't you rather missed the point, Louise ? The Telegraph moderates. In contrast, you rarely do, if ever. In fact, you persistently allow people to make defamatory comments about others that would never see the light of day on the Telly's or any other MSM blog, for the reasons that Shane has set out.

So I feel fully justified in having criticized your lax policies. There is no inconsistency in my position, and I have made no secret of my preference for professionally-moderated MSM blogs.

That was a good punning title, "Anne Gilbert". But I've already used an earlier post of Shane's to explain my experimental blog policy. It's not true that I have "banned all comments". I am asking that they be sent by email, so they can be incorporated into the body of an evolving blog post. All too often there tends to be a huge disconnect between a post and the subsequent comments

The reason for blocking comments was also alluded to. A particular individual was placing abusive comments on my blog using a pseudonym. But he later posted to another blog under both his original name and pseudonym. Unfortunately for him, that blog happened to have an embedded hit counter that allowed anyone, myself included, to access a log of visitors to the site, listed chronologically by computer number, geographical location, ISP, OS, web browser etc. Once I had a fix, I had no hesitation in exposing this individual as a "troll" because he had remained silent when another poster had earlier accused me of being the very pseudonym under which he himself was operating. Indeed, the same guilty party, ie troll, was claiming just yesterday that I was "Anne Gilbert" as well, so your appearance here has left even more egg on his face !

If you want to use Shane's blogs to denounce hypocrites, "Anne Gilbert", you should start with the individual who posts under the pseudonym "Lacombe Lucien". I have given his better known identity on my own blog, but won't repeat it here, not wishing to jeopardise the appearance of this (hopefully)restrained comment.

To add a final twist, I once suspected "Lacombe Lucien", or rather his real identity, to be posting under the name of, er, "Anne Gilbert". When challenged directly, I was assured that was not the case, and accepted the denial at face value, despite this individual dismissing contemptuously my own protestations of innocence re trolling.

I now have an open mind on whether "Anne Gilbert" is a unique identity, or simply one of the many aliases of Lacombe Lucien et al.

Having read all this, perhaps Telegraph readers will understand why I have abandoned personal blogging. It's a jungle out there: it only needs one or two mischief makers with a personal axe to grind - and, without moderation, the blog quickly degenerates into a rancorous scene, unbefitting supposedly mature adults.

When David Attenborough has ticked off all the world's wildlife on his checklist, he could usefully turn his attention to that human zoo called personal blogging."

3rd update: 22nd March 13:30 email from Louise at Chocs and Cuckoos

I'm sorry Colin, but it would appear that you do seem to allow one set of rules for Telly blogging and another for 'us'.

Last spring when I joined Colin Randall's blog, at one point I was on the receiving end (and Sarah too) of some pretty sharp comments from Richard. Don't ask me exactly when it was, as I can't remember.

The comments he made at that time were a damned sight nastier than anything you have received on my blog, and yet they were published, after moderation, by the Telly.

I imagine that Shane has not published your last post, as it is of little interest to Telly bloggers who do not read our blogs and therefore probably don't understand what you or I are talking about.

You would have been better off sending me an email (you have my address) rather than trying to go 'on line' with your comments.As I have already stated, my blogs are not particularly thought out - I type as I think of something, so my blogs are more in 'chat' mode rather than yours, for example, which are well researched and totally different to mine.

For me, a blog is a 24-48 hour wonder and then we move on to something new; you may have noticed that at times I do elaborate on one of my blogs through a posting, after seeing how people react.

After Colin Randall left the Telly and we started our own blogs, I did at one time, somewhere, say that we should make an effort to add different links to our blogs as it was becoming rather 'incestuous' - we were sending readers from pillar to post. Knowing the Telly bloggers on the CR blog, I am surprised that you didn't widen your links to those who are more in tune with your way of thinking as opposed to silly people like me who just post whatever comes into their head. I'm sure you would have far more satisfaction from your blogging and wouldn't get so upset by stupid one-liners that are posted on my blog, for example.

You criticise my lack of blue pencilling - I know what I will blue pencil but you cannot expect me to interprete your feelings - I'm not a psychiatrist and although it may offend you, it doesn't necessarily offend me. Since starting my blog I do not remember anything that was so offensive that it should have been trashed - personal stabs to my way of thinking are either to be ignored or replied to by the person involved. There are tons of articles out there on the psychology of blog writers and commentators - if you go through a few of them, you will see that often what a person writes on a blog has very little to do with their character in 'ordinary everyday life'.

So, there we are - we beg to differ - and that is part of the blogging fun. It will be interesting to see if you publish this on your blog - I must just add that this has been typed in less than five minutes and I haven't pored over the content for an hour!I do hope that your trip to visit the Telly will be productive and I do sincerely hope that you will let us all know how it went and with pictures too!

Regards, Louise

Thank you for taking the trouble to share your thoughts, Louise. I'm not able to give an immediate answer right now, but will get back to you later.

Update Friday 23rd March 18:50 Reply to Louise.

I consider Louise's behaviour quite extraordinary. First she posts to Shane Richmond's blog, accusing me of "speaking with a forked tongue" (how's that for bloggerly charm - with friends like that, who needs enemies ?). She then posts here, imperiously telling me that I had no business even trying to post a reply to the Telly, and should have been content merely to explain myself to her in a private email.

Maybe Louise needs to consider a few facts. Firstly, there is absolutely no inconsistency in principle between the way Shane runs his blog, and the way I run mine. Neither will allow comments to appear without prior moderation, as a protection against the various individuals who have abused the facility, notably R of O, Bill Taylor aka Lacombe Lucien , and various anonymice.

But it's a totally different story where Louise's blog is concerned. She has allowed these same individuals to place comments on her blog accusing me of trolling, under various pseudonyms or anonymously, which I have vehemently denied, but she then allows the same people to dismiss my denials, thus rubbing salt in the wound. And just yesterday she was allowing BT/LL to persist with his line in character assassination in the course of a cosy 1:1, despite BT/LL being guilty of the very things that he accuses me of.

They say people can be judged by the company they keep. That being so, there has been a sad change in Louise's priorities, and even her fundamental sense of what is right and wrong.
Her first email, published on this blog, showed her not just condoning the baiting behaviour of R of O, but even admitting to being amused. I think where you and I are concerned, Louise, it's time for a parting of the ways. I will keep off your blog, but with one proviso - you block any further attempts by your visitors to blacken my character. I did not troll in the period referred to, and will continue to post protests if your visitors persist in stating otherwise.

Yes, maybe I am guilty of telling you how to run your blog, Louise, but that's only because you are failing in your duty and responsibility to protect this blogger against victimisation on trumped-up charges. Indeed you encourage it by entering into dialogue with the likes of BT, with a track record in trolling, in which I and my alleged sins become the subject of conversation, and you then protest when I break in on the cosy fireside chat.

To summarise, you have allowed others to turn your blog into a kangaroo court in which false charges can made without a shred of evidence. Indeed, you actively encourage it. I would urge you, Louise, to read what Shane Richmond has to say on the subject of defamation of character, and put your house in order .

emails to: sciencebod01@aol.com

The Comments facility has been blocked, for reasons previously stated.

Those special relationships

Here's a picture of one of the recent additions to the seafront-furniture at Antibes.

ed: for full screen enlargement, just "point and click" on the photo

It really speaks for itself. It's a weather-resistant reproduction of a painting by Jean-Louis Ernest Meissonier , dated 1868. The plaque (see close-up below) reads "Antibes, la promenade à cheval, l'artiste et son fils Charles.

How's that, then, for a self-portrait ? To put yourself in centre picture, astride a horse, and then to fit in two family members as well . Yes, two: his son, who's also mounted, and his pet dog, by the looks of it, leading the way . It could be someone else's dog, I suppose. Or a private family joke !

But from a casual tourist perspective, the genius is in the siting of the picture. Not only is Antibes' fortified headland in the background, with those two iconic Saracen towers, but the picture is sited at or very close to where the artist must have sat when he painted it. Even for a first time visitor, it's fascinating to do a before -and- after comparison.

For local residents like ourselves, there's the extra interest from seeing precisely what used to be there, before most of the ramparts were knocked down in the late 19th century. It was felt, probably correctly, that Vauban's fortifications were a noose around the town, acting as a stranglehold on development.

It's fascinating to think that when it was painted, some 138 years ago, the hills behind Gourdon and Grasse were visible. They are now blanked out by the 20th century apartment blocks.

Sometimes pictures that I post to this blog enlarge when one "points and clicks" . Sometimes they don't, and I haven't yet figured out why. If this one enlarges (and I can't tell until I hit the Publish key) then you'll probably find that with this one, there's a real sense of being there.

ed: Glory be, the first one does indeed enlarge ! But not the second. Weird ..... But the second was dragged and dropped. Maybe that's the explanation .... Any ideas, you Blogger techies ?

That's despite the non-designer clothing etc. Some artists just have that knack, would you not agree, of making their pictures forever fresh and immediate ?

There are now at least 5 (and allegedly 6) of these repro' art features in Antibes. There's another just a few feet away which is by Claude Monet (1888, Antibes, effet d'après midi) , and almost identical to the one in my margin display, and from the same series.


Others include the charming and whimsical Raymond Peynet (1985, Les Amoureux aux Remparts), again, strategically sited to reproduce the artist's vantage point, with his behatted delicate-looking shoulder-length hair hero and bride in the foreground. His work, which is perhaps a little dated now ( that clothing again) is displayed in a dedicated museum in the centre of Antibes). And there's a pure town/seascape by Eugène Boudin, 1893, Le Port d'Antibes.

Further along, near where the pétanque is played, there's another by Henri-Edmond Cross , 1908, in pointilliste style, called simply Antibes . I used to be a dab hand myself (literally) in that genre, when marker pens first appeared on the shelves at WH Smith, but my work from that era, done during long and often boring biochemistry lectures, has now been sadly and irrevocably lost.

For the reasons mentioned earlier, I shall hold back from posting all the pictures now. If the present ones "enlarge on demand" then I'll try cautiously adding others later.

All are of the same design: enamelled (?) on to a sturdy lava base. Or maybe the artwork is a modern baked resin. Irrespective, one just hopes it will be spared the attentions of the spray-can vandals, whose handiwork is visible on the neighbouring public safety notices etc. How I wish the media would drop the term "graffiti artist". Anyone who blights the environment does not deserve to be dignified by the term "artist".


How good it is to see this civic pride, in what is admittedly an exceptional location that has captivated artists and vistitors alike for centuries. If Antibes can't get it right, who can ?


One of the things I like about France is the way in which art is integrated into everyday life. One sees it so many different ways - street furniture, such as lamps, fencing, barriers, things that in Britain would be seen as utilitarian, and done in the cheapest way possible.

It's the small details that make all the difference - bevelling an edge here, decorative perforation there, angling instead of boring right angles, out-of-plane alignment of slats, hexagonal setts in retaining walls, and so it goes on. Loving detail, and realization that there's more to life than keeping proletarian noses pressed against grindstones. even if that does ensure a continuing flow of billions into Treasury coffers, occasionally to be spent wisely, but as often as not, squandered upon one misguided pet project after another .

Note a touch of disillusionement with UK politics creeping in there. Beware, there's more of that to come. It 's possibly the imminent coronation of Gordon Brown which has a lot to do with it. I made my views on the brooding hermit of No.11 a while ago in a submission to the Times's debate

I used to think he ought to get out more. Well, now he's out, in Africa, India, promising to underwrite their education and infrastructure problems with UK taxpayers' money.
One hesitates to remind Gordon that charity begins at home. But his munificence with our money will sooner or later rebound on him. How long before we hear the inevitable charges of neocolonialism again ?

Visiting my old haunts in the Home Counties there's a roundabout that's been planted out, but the whole effect is destroyed by a collection of hurdle-like, foot-high advertising signs. They were installed presumably at the behest of the local insurance firm that paid for the so-called enhancement. But why be so crass as to advertise their sponsorship in situ, largely counterproductive in terms of aesthetics ? And why use private money anyway for something so public ? Just to save a miserable fraction of a penny on the rates when vast amounts disappear elsewhere into blackholes, (eg like my index-linked public service pension ) ?

Heathrow Airport is not Britain's greatest national asset, but at least it used to greet one, with a sign over that tunnel entrance (next to where the Concorde mock-up is parked) . The sign "Welcome to Heathrow Airport" disappeared sometime in the aftermath of the Thatcher era, and is now replaced with some smug self-satisfied advertising, again, for some financial services company, like Quickfleece and Partners (Bishopsgate).

Driving up the M1 over Christmas , it was depressing to pass under the same old concrete bridges that were there in my student days, en route to Birmingham on that pre-Honda but nevertheless nippy, BSA motorbike. Except those bridges used to be fresh grey concrete, not pretty, but at least new-looking . Now they are dirty yellow-grey, reminiscent of those wartime pillboxes, some with graffiti old and new. Those mean, penny-pinching bridges, totally devoid of grace or style (unlike the later ones on the M6) , just add to the monotony of having to grind up and down that dreary stretch of highway.

So why don't they replace them ? Where does all the taxpayers' money go, apart from the obvious, like machine-gunning Afghans in their own country. Oh, but one musn't be cynical : you see, they are the wrong kind of Afghans. They're the ones of a traditional mindset who have yet to grasp the subtleties of the western democratic process, like having to be governed by someone you didn't vote for.

But we don't normally go into countries that have what is now referred to in media-talk as an "insurgency campaign" . But this one is special : it's to do with GWB's misdirected and ruinously expensive War on Terror. And it goes without saying that we're expected immediately to spring to America's side. A post-9/11 loyalty test , to stand four square with America, Stars and Stripes fluttering, in her hour, correction, decade (or maybe century ?) of need, because we owe the Americans for coming in on our side in WW2 .

Well, yes, but only after the fall of France and the Low Countries. And only after the Dunkirk evacuation. And only after the Blitz and the Battle of Britain. In fact they waited until after Pearl Harbor, and Japan and Germany's formal declarations of war on the USA. That's when our so-called natural allies suddenly remembered that "special relationship" (if you'll excuse the anachronism, given that the term was not coined until Churchill's post war Fulton speech) .

So Britain became America's springboard for Europe. A kind of offshore aircraft carrier. How convenient. And kindly Uncle Sam gave us long -term loans that allowed us to spread the cost of Anglo-American victory over 60 years (the last instalment having just been paid). No wonder my father had to decline even a few weeks of ruinously expensive home-help in 1951, immediately after my mother died, and my grandmother was subsequently robbed of her retirement. And (back to topic) having to settle for those cheap and nasty bridges on the M1 in 1959.

Special relationship ? The only thing special about it is that we're supposed to be feel privileged and honoured having these back-slapping, arm-twisting , gold-reserve gobbling, long term loan shark -providing , other folks' future-mortgaging cousins as our friends and allies.

Frankly I don't care who wins the next Presidential election. The so-called special relationship will remain what it has always been: a marriage of convenience. America's convenience.

Just think, if we weren't so dewy eyed about the special relationship, we could pull a few battalions out of Afghanistan, and replace all those M1 bridges, and allow the Afghans to decide their own destiny by their own means, even if it meant having the" wrong bunch" in power from time to time.

But from an admittedly hard-nosed military perspective, isn't it a lot easier to let the wrong bunch in, and then target that country's military, all conveniently ensconced in their cosy barracks, than to deal with hit-and-run insurgents, sleeping rough under the stars ?

As for that lost cause called Iraq , well, I just hope the roofs of the US and UK embassies are strong enough to take those helicopters, needed for Saigon style evacuations when the time comes.


Here and there, along the M1, there's been some belated planting of saplings , presumably areas deemed to be environmentally sensitive for one reason or another. It'll be years before a softening effect is achieved, but it will be worth it when it comes. Why is this not more widespread, perhaps as part of a carbon -offsetting project ? But that's a subject on which I have mixed views, certainly different from those voiced on some linked blogs, and one on which I shall be posting shortly. In the mean time, I recommend Anatole Kaletsky's recent tour de force in the Times, which got some backs up, though not mine, as I made clear in some two or three comments.


PS Some may wonder why I have a "meegle" link in the margin, ie Google search for "Dreams and Daemons" . Well, there's some narcissism there , obviously. No sense in denying that. But it's also interesting to observe the new entries, and changes from one day to the next. Thanks to it, I discovered an update in the Guardian's OrganGrinder on Toby Harnden's brush with the wild men of the blogosphere.

More fascinating is the sudden appearance of two posts written weeks ago, one on our "Britannian heritage" the other on the struvite deposit that builds up in loos, often called "limescale" by those keen to sell harsh cleaning agents.

Why those particular posts should have re-surfaced is anyone's guess, but I like to think that at least a handful of folk coming to this blog , following links to my Toby Harnden "scoop" ( in saving to hard drive part of the Telly's blog before they pulled it) roamed around in the archives before moving on.

That was always the intention: to build up some serious content that would always be there, accessible via search engines etc.

I continue to be taunted on Colin Randall's Salut by the intelligent but belligerent citizen/journalist blogger Bill Taylor, a self-confessed wind-up merchant. It's for what he sees as the limited interest in this blog, based on an alleged paucity of comments. Yes, you guessed it. There's history, and it goes way back. And the backbiting continues, despite my abandoning Colin's blog in despair. More about that another day ( if it doesn't stop).

As mentioned before, comments, while generally welcome (provided they are courteous and constructive), are not the be-all and end-all of a blog, certainly not one in its early days.

There is probably no scientific yardstick for measuring the success of a blog, but interlinking with other blogs, as measured by Technorati, is a start. On that criterion, D&D is progressing nicely. Two weeks ago, it had more than a million more highly-ranked (ie linked) blogs. But that is currently down to 340,000, and dipped briefly below 250,000 last week, when the reaction to Toby Harnden's journalist's candour was at its height. Well, thanks Toby ! Your comments may not have done you any favours, given the amount of naivety that's out there about how the dead-tree press operates against deadlines. But you've certainly helped put D&D on the blogosphere map, albeit the equivalent for now of Easter Island. BTW, I know you weren't altogether happy about some of my wording, but the furore seems to have died down now: it's what my grandmother used to call a 9 day wonder.