The Reign of Terror

Ahhh the bankers of the City, London. Like the English aristocrats of their forefathers they watch in bewilderment, when the French propose to change the status qou. They shiver in fear and ask themselves what the frogs are up to now.
If it comes from the country of Robespierre it must be gory, barbaric and headless...

Sarkozy stated on Monday "That the appointment of the Frenchman Michel Barnier as the EU's new internal markets commissioner would rein in the "free-wheeling Anglo-Saxon model" of banking. Tuesday morning the bankers were livid. How could he say such a thing? London was regulating. The EU had overstepped its mandate.
It has gotten so bad that Gordon Brown has forced Sarkozy to cancel a visit to the city as Brown refused to meet him.
The reign of terror has truly begun...The French are taking over. The conservatives are pointing to the statement as a testament of Gordons week position in Europe.

One banker on Radio 4 BBC stated that the City of London was no business of Europe as financial markets were shaped by their local culture and should therefore be protected from a super national state. Its the first time that I hear an English banker fight for the sanctity of his culture, normally only too happy to sell to the highest bidder, be they Saudi, Russian or heaven help us French...In the words of Russell Crowe in Master and Commander do you want to see the Guillotine in Piccadilly square! NO!
Then on Thursday Royal Bank of Scotland bosses said they would quit if they were not allowed to pay bonuses to their bankers… No one has yet to make the connection…

Yes we have to be carefull about the EU, but are they joking. Local culture, maybe, global recession yes please… Why would you want to regulate, I mean look at the UK its going great…oh we have the worst deficit of the G20…hmmm I wonder why that might be?
I don’t agree with P. Sarko that the French are the guardians of economic policy, but rethinking how things are done in the City is something that I can certainly subscribe to.
Have we forgotten where we were a year ago or are we going to do something to prevent it happening again (yeah right).

On Maximilien the brits were right, but I am not so sure that they have gotten it right on P. Sarko

The Fall of the English Empire

On the same weekend that we have had the celebrations for the 65th anniversary for the D Day landing and the European parliamentary elections.
Approaching this weekend the English media has been reporting about the events leading to D Day and the army campaign that followed until the final capitulation of the Nazi forces in Berlin. Parallel to this BBC had a short report about the rise of the extreme right, especially in eastern Europe and Germany. There was however no reports about the rise of extreme right views in the UK. It seems that the media and the established political parties have judged the silent treatment as the best prevention against among others the British National Party.
This treatment seems to failed dramatically with the resent election of 2 BNP representatives to the European Parliament. The BNP is a party that does not allow other ethnicities then Caucasian whites as members and that regards mixed ethnic relationships reason for exclusion of their party.
I can’t help but think that we are missing the historical perspective. Which is sad, especially on the anniversary of “the beginning to end” of a regime that was built on the book Mein Kampf. A book that the founder of the BNP John Tyndall referred to as “his bible”.
The UK today has many things in common with 1930’s Germany.
We have a population that has lost all belief in its parliamentary system. The recent Expenses Scandal was in my view the straw (a log is maybe more appropriate) that broke the back. The voters in the UK a disenfranchised with their politicians. The first past the post system in the UK causes the smaller parties in the UK not to be represented in the parliament and the only three voices we hear are Labour, The Tories and the Liberal democrats. The people elected seem to be from an upper class an very much out of touch with the general population.
Secondly there is a Labour government who had promised so much and delivered so little. I think its safe to say that when Tony Blair was elected people expected that things would change. That this was new Labour and new politics. That the NHS should become one of the best in the world and that the education system was going to recover from years of Tory government. This was hoped would raise the living standards of the average UK resident. In this the labour government seems to have failed. And with the credit crunch this has only become only more evident.
The voters that wanted change and expected it from Labour have been disappointed and their disappointment has turned them against Europe and worse turned some of them to vote for parties that are un-repentantly racists. As in Germany the hardest hit by the crisis start looking elsewhere for their solutions.
So how does Gordon get out of this?
As I wrote the now former minister for Europe Caroline Flint, as I see it there is only one solution.
Gordon needs to make reforming the English electoral system a priority. In this way he will be taking the first steps in creating a clear and visible change, one that a large part of the population has been wanting for a while and that would give a voice to those who haven’t been heard for a long time.
But wont this give BNP the same kind of speaking space that Hitler got from the Reichstag? Probably yes. But facisme and bigotry is not silenced by silence. Facisme and bigotry are conquered by the very fundamentals of our democracy, namely dialogue and well formed arguments.
I fear that a failure to address these issues will cause that a country that once prided itself of its freedoms to be known in the future for being represented by the BNP.

Revival for newspapers?

Just a short input today.
What do you think about banning paper advertising, the kind that would get in your mailbox and that you basicly throw out immediately? What if free news papers had to pay a fee for littering?
The obvious winners in this would be news papers that you have to pay for, which today are in a sorry state. Newspapers are the foundation of journalisme and yes they may have to move into a more digitised era, but I still enjoy picking up a low tech newspaper once and a while reading it on the plane or on the go, run into subjects that I would never otherwise have heard about and make nice paper hats.

The other winner would be the ressources saved on these wasteful pamflets that fill up our mailboxes.

Would the ban on pamphlets screw small businesses or would it help make local news media grow. (Imagine your own little neighborhood paper or website)

What do you think?

So what happens to you when you are dead...

It seems that these last weeks have been about religion belief and god. I talked to a couple of colleagues at work about this. One a believer, the other an ex-believer now militant atheist. Along this I read the excellent book by Gitta Sereny "Into That Darkness, From Mercy Killings to Mass Murder", about the governor of Treblinka extermination camp Franz Strandl. In this book Sereny also highlights some of the Vatican questionable actions.
As most of you will know I am most definitely an atheist, but that doesn’t mean that I don't try to understand religions or peoples need for answers or meaning in life.
On of the questions that I ask my self is what do you say to a person who has just lost a loved one? How do you justify it? How do you make them feel better? A lot of religions create a (I think false, but that’s my opinion) security for people, by stating that people are going to a better place and that you will see them again.
But what does one say from an atheist point of view, how do you create comfort without relying on better places, harps and so on?

I would love to hear your opinion. Here is mine:
The person that has just left you lives on in you and other people. Their influences, their actions, their words remain in the mind of the people that met with them.
Personally I try to listen to the learning and experiences of the people who are around me, both those who are alive and those who sadly has passed away. The one at the foremost of my mind when it comes to people who have since passed on is my maternal grandfather who died when I was 10.
His humble upbringing on a farm in Alsace, his experiences in the second WW, and his fight from under educated young man to sales director of the company he worked with most of his life, his generosity when it came to his grandchildren, his rather stubborn view on my mother’s upbringing. All this are both lessons that I should remember where I came from, that my family have been refugees (although for a short time), that there a good and bad ways to treat your children and etc.
In short that just the influence of him, of course one can argue that I pick and choose. But the fact remains that he inspires me and other people that he met. That some of the lessons he taught me, are in re-interpreted in my actions and therefore transmitted to others. He lives on in my actions.
So if you have recently lost someone, please take comfort in the fact that for some people the person you have just lost, meant something to them, taught them something. Even young children who tragically lose their life before it has even begun. Realise that, that child even in its short life time, probably inspired others to cherish their children even more, then before they passed on.
So what this mean to me? Well it means that I try to help the people that I come in contact with. That I make sure to smile as much as I can, all because I know that all that will remain of me when I go one day, is the memories of those moments.

P.S. Thank you Paolo Conte who always inspires and supplies the perfect music to write the above...