Ripple

I think of our lives as ripples spreading out as we pass briefly through this world - interacting with other ripples, for better or worse. As the ripples spread long after we have dropped beneath the surface, we should strive to send out positive energy, love, humanity.

Landscapes or Portrait

 Yesterday saw the launch of the iPad and finally, for computers, the question of Landscape or Portrait becomes irrelevant. In a way, it has been quite arbitrary that our screens have always been landscape when so much of what we have done on them is to create documents that will be printed in Portrait orientation. What about photographs I hear you say, but when computers started out, their makers could hardly have dreamed of the current blossoming of digital images poured onto a world wide web by non-technical bods. Perhaps they oriented their "Monitors" landscape-wise because they resembled TV screens and no they probably weren't thinking that one day you would be able to watch TV on your computer!
Of course, back in those days, you couldn't see a representation of your document on screen - just text and that was in a primitive screen font - no fonts, styles, WYSIWIG or GUI. You had to type till your screen was full and then press the PrtScn key to send all that text to the printer then Scroll down to some fresh screen and carry on. Computers are like archaeological sites with bits of the past sticking up here and there - the PrtScn key is still there and very useful it still it is. It has a slightly different usefulness but its really still doing the same thing - it sends whatever is on the Screen to the Clipboard from whence you can paste it into a graphics programme and have your wicked way with it.
Going back to Photos you might argue that most of them are landscape but when they are not then they end up being so much smaller in Portrait than their broad bottomed sisters and brothers sitting in Landscape - either that or YOU get a crick in the neck looking at them. Of course, with the advent of laptops you could stand them on their side - the keyboard side forming a handy prop but still not very handy for editing.
When the web page came along things got more complicated still - how big is a web page when you come to print it - after all some pages just go on and on or should that be down and down! Some of you may remember my own attempts to create pages that looked the same both on screen and when printed out. You can still see them and judge their success at http://www.artscastle.com/Motime_Miscellany/ .
Now I dare say there were already some snazzy (and expensive) monitors that could be swizzled round to show things in portrait but it was mobile phones that really gave us the two way screen - those little computers in our pocket - those little gems of consumer lust. Re-orient the picture on the screen and the Portrait/Landscape dilemma is a thing of the past and of course if you own an iPhone with its quintessential Apple design ethos then the edge to edge picture gives no clue as to whether the device even has an orientation. So now, in a convergence of computer, picture, phone and almost anything else you can think of and write an "App" for - carried forward to the iPad we can at last choose to view photos and documents in either Portrait or Landscape but you will be able to use the qwerty keyboard at the bottom of the portrait touch-screen to edit a document in Portrait!
How do you like them Apples?

posted by: Frewin at 18:06 | link | comments |
design, ipod

You've got Mail

The turn of the year finds me still without gainful employment but whilst I might have expected that joblessness would give me plenty of time to do indulge in the finer things in life such as writing and keeping in touch with friends, job hunting, my two choirs and endless requests for babysitting have more than filled the time. Perhaps too, if I'm honest, I couldn't bring myself to indulge guiltlessly in those moments I might have written. Es la Vida!

Unemployed life has had its moments and I was asked to be a Guest Blogger on one of the job sites - The IT Board - where I was searching for work. I submitted two posts and the second, more personal one, was posted yesterday on Christmas Eve when people might have let up on the job search and be up for a little personal reflection. It deals with the far sightedness of my school teachers in putting together a computing course in the days when even they had never laid hands or probably eyes on a computer - you can read it here

So when last night I watched the classic documentary "Night Mail" that follows the course of the Express Mail Train from London to Glasgow, I was primed to notice the utter difference in technology between then and now. So much was mechanical - the train engine for a start - steam of course. There was electricity in the communications - that is to say - the telephone and I think the even older telegraph was used to confirm notice of the trains departure. The many signal boxes all staffed by men pulling levers on mechanically linked points and relaying telephone messages to pass news of the train's passage on to the next junction.

The cheery exchanges between the workers sorting mail as the train sped on, whilst not scripted did not seem wholly spontaneous but delivered by people not yet conditioned to media exposure by an ever present TV in the living room, they were real enough. This was not Cinema Verité and indeed the final sequence set to the soundtrack of Sir John Betjemen's specially commissioned poem elevates the film to poetic art and ensured its place in the history of documentary.

Returning to my opening, that it has been too long since I was here with you, my friends, I leave you with the last lines of Betjemen's poem as the train pulls in to Glasgow...

Asleep in granite Aberdeen,
They continue their dreams,
And shall wake soon and long for letters,
And none will hear the postman's knock
Without a quickening of the heart,
For who can bear to feel himself forgotten? 

posted by: Frewin at 11:34 | link | comments |

I have heard the future...

I am always skeptical when someone claims "this will change your life" but I have heard the future and it's name is Spotify!

Actually it hasn't changed my life but it has completely changed the way I listen to music and music is a big part of my life. I have written before about my iPod and the difference between what critics feared that device would do to our way of listening and my own experience but this latest development, and its only software, has already impacted my listening more and faster.

For the uninitiated, what is Spotify?

Spotify is a treasure chest of all the albums you ever wanted to listen to but never had the money or the opportunity to. Well nearly all - they are adding 10,00 tracks a day and are approaching 50% of all recoded music! And its legal! And its FREE!

As long as you have Broadband, you can find the entire back catalogue of most musicians right up to their current releases and listen to it on your computer whilst browsing their biography and crosslinking to their influences and unlike YouTube, unless you have a truly slow connection, there will be no stopping and starting. Amazing! What's the catch?

If you want to listen to Spotify for free then you have to listen to some ads though I have to say they are nowhere near as frequent or annoying as commercial TV can be and since many of the ads are for current music anyway, they don't unduly disturb the flow. If you don't want the ads you can subscribe to the sevice for £9.99 (UK). You can even be ad free for a day so that you can set up a party playlist which plays without interuptions.

Spotify could be set to be the model for the way we access all that media that record companies and film studios have been trying to protect from the piracy of the Download Generation. It allows you to listen to but not to own all that music and of course the record companies hope that having listened, you will want to carry that music around with you on whatever small miracle of technology you use to listen to music or to keep on your computer even when not connected to the internet. One of the next big consumer hardware crazes to hit the shelves once the recession is over and we all start borrowing and spending again like lemmings, is likely to be The Media Centre. One small set top box will store all your music, films and photos and play them through your TV and stereo This is the much hyped convergence in action. Media centres are really computers and at present you still need to connect them to your existing computer to load them up with say, your CD collection or your family photos. In the future, the whole idea of buying a physical CD and cluttering your shelves with them will become less attractive and Spotify is like bringing your very own listening post into your own home but without the headphones that who knows who has worn and with half the world's recorded music to choose from! If listening on Spotify and then buying stops illegal downloading, cuts out the physical product and makes the music cheaper then everybody wins except perhaps the record stores. But then they said bookshops, especially small ones, would go out of business when supermarkets sold cheap books but the opposite is true, the internet has allowed small specialist bookshops to trade rare books to niche customers all over the world. Using Spotify you can click on ads to purchase current music but you can also delve into the older albums of your favourite musicians and if owning that piece of vinyl and its sleeve artwork is important to you - it'll be out there somewhere in some High Fidelity like shop or other...

So how has Spotify changed my listening? I don't have a lot of money to spend on music except at birthdays and Christmas and I won't go down the road of illegal file downloading so a lot of my new music has been in thee form of free CD's with Uncut and Mojo magazines. Call me a cheapskate but this habit has also broadened my musical taste and filled in gaps in my knowledge of the development of music and musicians and Spotify extends this process. I can go through back issues of the magazines and no longer need to wonder what the albums being reviewed might sound like. I'm like a kid in a candy store! So I will buy CD's with my Christmas money and I will still buy the magazines unless that is, they converge with Spotify and make it an even richer experience - now there's a thought! 

posted by: Frewin at 08:07 | link | comments (1) |

The Last Post?

For anyone who visits here from outside Mo'time, this post is partly for you to let you know that the name of our beloved Blog site is changing so if you want to continue tuning in here, you will need to change the link to http://ripple.us.splinder.com and it will be live there as of Friday 19th June 2009!

But I suspect most of those who follow this writer are the friends I have made here on Mo'time so this seems a good time to look back over the three and a bit years I have been enjoying this small but very social corner of the net. I have to confess that I have not been writing much recently but I don't beat myself up about it because after all it is done for pleasure and if other things claim my attention more at present, so be it. Yet at the outset, Mo'time was a lifeline when we had just moved here, i was starting work in a new area and doing up a house and practically the only social life i had was with you guys hereabouts!

Later I actally progressed to meeting another Mo,timer in the flesh - all the way from America which tale is told here! I still have hopes of one day meeting Jackal who as far as I know is the nearest Mo'timer to Yorkshire.
But it is the getting to know something of the lives of others as much as the support I have received that has been such a great pleasure - In My Life - you never failed to be there with a positive comment! I have been transported into the life of a female fuelie in Antarctica and camped inside an electric bear proof fence whilst decommissioning Uranium mines. I have read of the aspirations of young people from Scandiavia, the Middle East and espcially exciting if terse, China. I have read of the pleasures of teaching English in China and picked up technology tips from an innovative college teacher.

There have been new babies and old bodies, pets (you know who you are!) and job triumphs and job changes and job stagnation and job abscence.

There has been humour - Rustymadgal I salute you for your great graphics and Coopergreen for your way with words. I have tried to marry graphic standards with internet content to produce some printable PDF's of notable posts - and you can visit them here at miscellany.

I am as you will sureley have gathered by now, a fully out Humanist - a Spiritual Humanist and if you somehow missed that - you will see plenty of tags on the left of the page, but perhaps my favourite post was not so overtly preaching but nonetheless a very humanist story about the man and his family, who used to own what is now our house.

There have been arguments - I have had to rant too often about a certain middle Eastern country - all I will say now is that I foresee an endless replay of what happened in Northern Ireland after the IRA got the peace process rolling. the Protestant majority constantly raised the bar for what was required and constantly disputed what had been achieved which is a game that can stall any real progress for years. After all there are always some on the underdog side who want to keep the violence going either because they believe that is the only way or they are just too frustrated. But eventually the Protestants were put against the wall and told that if they ever wanted to have power they had no choice but to share it and eventually that's what they did. I so hope a certain country gets the point about their own fragmented state - sooner rather than later - somehow I doubt it...

Well that's something old and something blue - as for the borrowed, I have to say that one thing that drove more people to this blog than anything else, was a poem another Mo'timer quoted from, I searched for and put in it's entirety in a post. It was by a Polish writer - I won't even mention it again by name because although I credited him quite properly, I never expected to draw so much attention on another's back so to speak - but literally every week, to this day, somebody searching for that poet or that poem, discovers it on Ripple...

So finally to the new - if, like me, you love to listen to music, the following site - and I don't say this lightly, will change your life!

spotify.com

You will find almost all the music you ever wanted to listen to, for FREE! - LEGALLY!
I wrote once before about my iPod but spotify tuns your computer, as long as it is connected to the internet, into the ultimate iPod - the iPod to make iPods and iTune Stores and pirate download sites HISTORY!!!!! you can tel I'm excited - don't waste another moment - go sign up for it - FOR FREE! (A few ads every 20 mins pays for it unless you want to pay to be ad free)

So Mo'time is dead (almost) Long Live us.splinder! No it doesn't have quite the same ring but life is nothing if not change so I may ( I hope I will!) see you here again under a different banner...

posted by: Frewin at 21:12 | link | comments (5) |
friendship, humanism, spiritual humanism, stopping war, zen of sandwiches, miscellany

So proud - shameless plug!

My eldest stepdaughter who like so many today, is beset with financial worries and working night shifts in a care home to keep afloat, has nevertheless found the energy for a whole new passion for painting and I am so proud of her and amazed at the work.

I have just finished puttiing together a website to show the work at www.aranyaniart.com and you can see one of the paintings below.

Please have a look and if you like it, leave a comment here which I will pass on or email one to her from the site.

posted by: Frewin at 09:18 | link | comments (9) |

When is a Jewish state NOT a Jewish state?

So last sunday I am lying in bed listening to BBC Radio 4's programme "Sunday" - what is an atheist Humanist doing listening to religious programmes you may ask? Snoring! My partner puts the radio on to go to sleep because she asserts I snore less with it on and often it stays on all night but having said that, "Sunday" is a very good magazine style programme about religion rather than being religious. Last week it came from Jerusalem because of the forthcoming election there.

The phenomena of Israel is like an onion and just when you think you understand something about the shape of the problem - bouff! - off comes another layer...

I had always thought of Israel, the self proclaimed Jewish state, as therefore being a religious state. I had known that many of the precursor activists of the state when it was Palestine, were secular Jews but I had not realised that the founders of the State of Israel were avowedly secular and went to great pains to exclude religion from the constitution of Israel.
Were it any other state, this might not be surprising - the Republican ideal is embodied in for example, the American Constitution in which a clear separation is made between Religion and State even if recent Presidents have tried to blur that particular safeguard against religious intolerance and interference. But in the case of Israel, many people besides myself must have similarly been under the misapprehension that the Jewish in Jewish State referred to the Jewish religion. In fact, it refers to Race and not Religion.

More astoundingly, in a Moslem paper in Bradford, my nearest city and which hsa a large Moslem population, I saw an article by a Jewish Rabbi calling for the dismantling of the State of Israel! He claimed that because God had expelled the Jews from their homeland, the formation of Israel is therefore an affront to God.

One could be forgiven for thinking that Israel was a religious state because one of the key actions in the 1947 war was to appropriate the whole of Jerusalem and not just the territory "given" by the International community and Jerusalem is seen as a centre of religious power ( though not just for Jews) and we are always shown iconic images of Orthodox Jews praying at the Wailing Wall as stock shots of Jerusalem on news footage. I previously understood the nature of being Jewish to be a race defined by its religious practices but in Israel, the observant religious are a minority, many might celebrate the Jewish New Year in the same way I as an atheist celebrate Christmas but it is a very secular population.

On this week's edition of "Sunday" (yes I was snoring again!), the follow up to the election was exploring in more detail the aims of Lieberman and his "Israel is Our Home!" party who now find themselves holding the balance of power in forming a coalition with either the hard line right or a more open to change and negociation with the Palestinians party. Lieberman wants all Israeli citizens including Arabs, to take an oath of Allegiance, there will be no negociating with the Palestinians and no dual state. Some of the support for this party comes from immigrants to Israel from countries like Russia who find themselves in a quandry. Despite the secular constitution, certain aspects of Israeli law such as marriage law, means that these immigrants are not allowed to marry because thet are not regarded as truly Jewish in the strict religious sense. Presumably they regard themselves as Jewish in the racial sense.

Also on the programme this week was a report on the rise of anti-Semitism world wide  as evidenced by graffiti and trhe use of rhetoric likening the Israeli action in Gaza to that of the Nazis. How can this be? Well perhaps now we see that the State of Israel is not really  the religious place many of us assumed it to be but just another state out to secure its survival and power, it becomes a liitle clearer. We all abhor what was done by the Nazis ( and Hutus in Rwanda, the Serbs in Yugoslavia and all other perpotrators of genocide - the eradication of people on the basis of race and or religion) but we should equally abhor the treatment of the Palestinians by the State of Israel. That does not make us racist, it is not anti-Semitic, it is anti the actions of a State. A state that identifies itself as Jewish and draws justification and support from that apparent Jewishness. that is often forced into political compromises by widely differing elements within its constituency. It has a split personality between religious and secular and all of us need to undestand more about it if we are to in any way try to deal with the problems that the actions of Israel throw up for the whole world.

So when is a Jewish state not a Jewish state? Well, what exactly does it mean to be Jewish? That is the question...

Perhaps the answer as with so many conflicts around the world, is to take out the apparent descriptors eg. Catholic and Protestant in Northern Ireland and simply refer to the Haves and the Have-nots. The Haves have the power and wealth - more than the Have-nots anyway and they just try to hang onto it no matter what. That is all that is happening in Israel.

posted by: Frewin at 08:51 | link | comments (2) |
disproportionate force, Israel/Palestine

Happy New Year?

Firstly let me wish you all a Happy New Year and we all need all the best wishes we can in these dark times! At least on a personal level we can still hope for the best and savour what we may of life!


Very soon the Palestinians of the Gaza strip will probably have peace again. I heard this from the horse's mouth - an Israeli politician speaking on the BBC earlier this week (though unfortunately I didn't catch who he was). He answered the question "What is Israel's endgame in Gaza?" with a candour amazing for any politician let alone one from a country facing such widespread disapprobation, this is the gist of what he said:- "Last year, at the conclusion of Israel's incursion into the Lebanon to retrieve 2 kidnapped Israeli soldiers, the government faced a lot of criticism from the Israeli people for its management of the war. But time has shown that the action was in fact a success in as much as it demonstrated to Hezbollah that any such future actions will be dealt with in a similar manner ie. a disproportionate reaction.  Hezbollah have not attacked Israel since and it is this success that has made us use that action as the template for the current action in Gaza. We are also motivated to act deciseively before President Elect Obama takes office as we don't want to present the new President with such a crisis immediately."

So not long now till Israel appears to agree to a ceasefire though what will happen if Hamas don't want to stop is anybody's guess for Israel really doesn't want to upset Obama so soon. Here's maybe why - money. America gives 2.5 Billion dollars each year as an single cash payment at the beginning of the Fiscal Year with no requirement to account for its use. Most of that is for defence and 26% of that doesn't even need to be spent on US arms.

Just for balance I include several sources you can check out:-
The Washington Report on Middle Eastern Affairs has this conservative account and this analysis of the full cost of Israel to the US. WRMEA is a magazine written by former US diplomatic officials up to and including Ambassadors but if you want a Jewish organistion's take on the same issue - Jewish Voice for Peace explains the true and full cost to America and in some ways to the world as well as how they see the real cost to Israel of this ongoing bankrolling of Israel's "defence".

Do the Israeli's think that President Obama might pull the plug on this defence spend? I doubt it and not because I believe in a conspiratous Jewish lobby so powerful that they can threaten to pull various rugs out from under the US economy - its more subtle and diffuse than that. Take just one point from the Jewish Voice for Peace -                                                                                                                                             "3. Harm to the U.S. and its citizens
Israel is required to use 75% of its military aid from the U.S. to buy arms and equipment such as Caterpillar bulldozers made in the U.S. It funnels this money to more than 1,000 U.S. arms suppliers, which in turn lobby for U.S. policies that benefit them at the expense of peace in the Middle East. As a result, the diversion of our tax dollars not only reduces funding for education and social programs but militarizes our public policy overall. U.S. military aid to Israel sets the U.S. in opposition to many Arab and European nations who recognize the horrors of the occupation. This makes U.S. citizens less safe because we are more hated. And the massive flow of arms into Israel is made even more dangerous by arms sales of lesser quality to other Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. While all this business fills the coffers of arms merchants, it makes the Middle East ever more unstable. Furthermore, when our government arms proponents of massive human rights abuses, we become complicit in their crimes and hated by their victims. U.S. support of Israel?s occupation of Palestinian lands and its abuse of human rights undermines any moral authority to criticize human rights abuses in other countries. And it shreds the U.S. of any credibility in acting to promote peace in the region."

With the US government shelling out billions to the motor industry to keep it afloat, they're going to deny the arms lobby an annual 2 billion Dollar plus injection? I don't think so...

That's only one reason amongst many but how did America get into this mess in the first place. I guess it thought, back in the 50's, that it needed a tame army in the heart of the Middle East to call on whenever. What it actually bought for it's money, was the fountainhead of International Terrorism. Nowadays with terrorists proliferating wherever there are poor and oppressed peoples who can be groomed by the likes of Al Queda, it is hard to remember the simple days of the 70's when most terrorism was either in support of the Palestinian Refugees or a bid to get to Cuba. Even today, Al Quaeda principally cites the Palestinian cause as a central grievance of East against West, Poor against Rich and their raison d'etre.

Note the use of the word Refugee - I am sure Israel thought that after 60 years, the people displaced or who fled from their land in 1948, would have accepted their lot, moved on, preferably literally but really, why should they. Israel doesn't refer to them as refugees very often as that would be to acknowledge their displacement and this subtle revisionism has carried over to many commentators so that it does begin to make the Palestinians look like a bunch of nasties who just get their kicks by firing antiquated rockets at their neighbours for no good reason. Of course it is uncomfortable if you live in one of those "Israeli" towns occasionally hit by a rocket to litttle effect - very rarely injurious to human beings, but how much more uncomfortable it would be to remember and really think about whose land it was that you are living on and why they are still angry enough to shoot rockets at you.

As for Hamas, do I condone their actions? I really don't know whether I can condemn them at this point in time because the 2.5 billion dollars of military aid that has inflated Israels sense of its right (Might is Right) and the total inability of the rest of the International community to influence either Israel or the US on the matter would not incline me to believe that I would get any kind of fair deal in any kind of Peace Deal. Until I had even a shred of belief in the fairness of any final peace solution, I would be very tempted to carry on sounding off about a different final solution however impossible that might seem meanwhile provoking my oppressors into showing themselves as the naked bullies that they are in the hope that someone will step in and call time on a shameful 60 years of abuse that has given us a new world of international hatred.

Happy New Year President Elect Obama?

posted by: Frewin at 15:41 | link | comments (11) |
terrorism, disproportionate force, stopping war, facing our faults, restoring balance, futility, them and us, Israel/Palestine

Moldova - What about the Food and Drink?

Those of you who have followed this blog for a long time (helloooo - is there anybody out there....)will know that I am a bit of afoodie so you may be surprised that I have not reported on Moldovan food after my recent excursion there -  fear not, I will not disappoint you!

First observation is that Moldova shows the influence of the Russian diet on the one hand and the Mediterranean on the other - one reflecting its geographical location in a southerly direction whilst the other is more to do with having been part of the USSR. This is most apparent if you go to a supermarket where roll-mop herrings and smoked fish products that would not be out of place in the Baltic countries bear equal shelf space with olives and similar Mediterranean staples. The open air markets seem to be more like farmers' markets in the UK with a rather limlited range of vegetables reflecting the season which at the time of our visit was grapes, plum tomatoes, celeriac,  peppers and of course beetroot.

Restaurants reflect a similar mixture of regions with Italian pasta dishes and some more Russian items but there are a few Moldovan items such as polenta with chicken on top or cheese. Likewise in the supermarkets you can find Khefir, a natural flavoured or fruity yoghourt drink which I used to make when we lived in Ireland. Also in the line of strange fermented but not very alcoholic drinks, I was delighted to sample Kvass. The recent history of Kvass gives the lie to anyone who imagines a soft drink can't be political because in a reaction against Cocoa-Cola - symbol of US culture, many people in the former USSR have turned back to traditional soft drinks such as Kvass. Cocoa-Cola's reaction? They have been buying into the Kvass brewing industry - of course! Kvass is a malty tasting drink which though fermented from rye bread, is minimally alcoholic due to lactic acid producing agents similar to Kombucha - so a slightly but pleasantly sour drink - at least to an Englihman familiar with Bitter (beer).

Here is a picture of the sweetcorn which having been dried, will go to be ground up into polenta  - this from Vera's mothers farm.

And here is her mother's cellar full of preserves...

Lastly, on our passsage home via Bucharest (Romania) we saw the most wonderful shop selling everything to do with tea from all over the world. I dont often covet small objects of desire but these (cast-iron?) Japanese tea pots do it for me. (As used by the beautiful registered companion in the sci-fi series "Firefly"!)

posted by: Frewin at 11:17 | link | comments (6) |
moldova, kefir kvass

Re-regulation

It will be agreat relief when the current world economic crisis is over not least because we won't have to listen to religious speakers of every denomination on the BBC's "Thought for the Day" giving mini sermons on Greed and Debt. They're right of course but it will be a relief nevertheless...

I am going to throw my penny worth into the debate but on a slightly different tack. When I was growing up in the 60's and 70's, the news was all about the "balance of payments", the "trade surplus", the "National Debt" and of course their inevitable corollary - "Public Spending Cuts"! We had in Britain, two clearly different political parties - Labour who were in favour of Nationalised Industry and the Conservatives who believed in Free Enterprise. Yet both parties managed the economy in terms of the above items and indices.

Of course it was under the Conservatives here and the Republicans in the US that Thatcherism and Reaganomics gave full reign to the market is King so deregulate everything and let the matket govern everything. So the deregulation of banking allowed banks to be free of the need to back up their lending with such things as gold and instead lend on the back of borrowing of their own. We have all heard a million analyses of how this led to the doors of "sub-prime" mortgagees whose debt was - it turned out - underpinning the whole credit system of the entire world. How crazy is that?

So what is needed is a new business model for banking that is not based on debt. Also that doesn't incentivize young hotheads to risk other peoples money with huge cash bonuses. What is needed is management! Because what we lost when we let the banks create the money supply based on credit based on credit based on credit, was management of money on all levels. Where previously, governments saw that their people were spending too much on gewgaws from Hong Kong, they adjusted the interest rates to discourage imports and encourage exports, they encouraged individual citizens to put aside savings and not live beyond their means. Offered the free-for-all of credit and consumerism, we the people have gone mad with greed and become thriftless - its probably not so much a moral issue as a deeply rooted human instinct - eat when you can as you never know where the next meal's coming from...

So world governments are apparently following the lead of Gordon Brown - a thrifty Scotsman - in solving the banking crisis by buying (unwilingly on both sides) a large share in the banks. Its not exactly the reversal of de-regulation and its not quite the Nationalisation of the banks either but it does bring governments back to the role they should never have given up, that of really managing the economy with prudent policies and steering us citizens away from frittering our money on nonsense. Perhaps to use public projects to create money instead of borrowing in a way that turned out, in the end, not to be endless...

posted by: Frewin at 11:15 | link | comments |
credit crunch

More of Moldova

So what was different about Moldova?

Well not the weather - not when we were there anyway! The first day we arrived in Chisinau, the capital, it rained about 10 inches in twelve hours! I know because there was a bowl outside the window which filled up twice. The main road into town was 3 inches deep at one intersection - not that it slowed the traffic significantly... after that it was grey and occasionally drizzly until our last day when it shone for the church wedding.

As a former Communist state, the inner city is ringed with tower blocks that are now beginning to show their age and or poor concrete fabrication. Vera is not alone in saying that things were better under communism and indeed you can see the lack of maintenance everywhere. Every block has generously appointed children's play areas and it must once have been beautiful. Vera says that they would have had work days at school when they all went out and cleared rubbish or planted bulbs but all that has gone by the board under capitalism. Wages and pensions for ordinary people are much less whilst food prices have gone up. As you travel through the country, there are closed down factories and co-operative farms and all the infrastructure is crumbling.

 

In the centre of Chisinau, all the big international stores have modest outlets Benneton etc. and presumably these serve those who have grabbed power and the purse strings but the ordinary people go to markets for food and other goods. In search of accesories for the wdding, Vera took us to the biggest open air market I have ever seen - a thousand stalls at least - all clothing related and partially sorted into specialist "streets". Here is the street of wedding dresses and below is a woman who just sells veils and tiaras to hold them on. Then there are whole stalls of artificial button-holes...

 

 

 

  

And finally I couldn't resist photographing this stall of wigs.

 

 

posted by: Frewin at 11:11 | link | comments |
moldova

Template by motime.com  |  header image credit: Markus Gann © www.begann.de