The Prize for “Understatement of the Century” has just been awarded to the following statement, even though the century has barely begun. The Awarding Committee decided that no other comment could ever possibly be made that could come close to beating this one from the leader of North Korea.
Kim Jong II
That being said, there was one other entry that had the judges briefly interested: “Gordon Brown is the worst Prime Minister in British History”, but in the end the NK leader won out, since the committee felt that Ethelred the Unready was worse, even if he was usually more ready than Gordon Brown.
Last month Mr Kim said: “We have already reached the status of a strong country in the military field, let alone politics and ideology, but there are still quite a number of things lacking in people’s lives.“
The ways we remember those close to us that have died.
I saw our neighbour at school today, and was surprised the she was wearing an old faded jacket which was torn at the back, and the feathers from the lining were coming out.
One of the other Mums was also a little surprised perhaps because the lady is the wife of a Barrister.
Yes she said “It used to belong to my cousin that died. Every time a feather falls out I think of him!”
I thought that was lovely, but we all laughed when the other parent quickly retorted.
“You must think of him a lot” – as another feather fell out.
Well done, Sarko. If France and the US, those progenitors of freedom and democracy, cannot get on then what hope is there for us?
The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, praised the “essential role” of the US, moving to defuse tension between the US and other countries in the confusing scramble to co-ordinate the enormous relief effort. Sarkozy said France was “fully satisfied” by the co-operation between the US and France, and acknowledged the “exceptional mobilisation of the United States on Haiti’s behalf.”
Harriet Harman in the Commons last month: 'The retirement age is arbitary,' she told the Daily Mail today; 'it bears no relation to people's ability.' Photograph: PA
And in this vein of bonhomie credit also goes to Harriet Harman, British “Equality Minister”. Even if I think she is generally potty she was right on the nail this time in saying that older people should work on if they wished and could be an invaluable part of the workforce.
Too right … there is too much ageism, especially in France, where your chances of getting a job after 50 are pretty remote (except for politicians of course).
Some of the greatest thinkers and artists have been over 70, even centuries ago. We should always judge people by what they DO, not who they ARE, how PRETTY they are or how OLD they are ….
Our American friends may not all be aware that momentous events are taking place in London. Momentous for us, I mean ….. nothing much of what happens over here is momentous for you of course, though interesting perhaps!
We have an enquiry going on into the 2nd Gulf War , an enquiry which Premier Gordon Brown set up in an untypical
Sir John Chilcott
and in fact reckless fit of statesmanship but which looks is as if it might be the final nail in his coffin. For a whole series of witnesses are parading in front of Lord Chilcot to give their five penn’worth about the reasons for the invasion.
Now the British public is a magnificent beast, but not particularly famed for long-term memory and just when Iraq was beginning to fade a bit from the radar here it is all surging up again and reminding us what a divisive business it was and how the then government – so it is said – blatantly lied about the reasons for sending our young men to die.
Well, that it all very interesting but here is not the place to go into this enquiry in depth. I did wonder, though, how George Bush seems to have escaped any threat of an enquiry!! You folks sure do things differently over there!
No, what particularly interests me is all the talk about the “legality” of the war, but nobody has explained to me how it can be illegal to attack a mass-murdering gangster, which is all SH was. The “law” only works if ALL are involved. If someone murders our fellow-humans and sets himself up as leader then he or she can’t have recourse to “the law”, can they? You cannot hide behind legality when you murder all your opponents and hundreds of thousands of others, can you?
Now we Anglo-Saxons – and even the French – profess to believe in “democracy”, even if this sometimes throws up complete idiots as leaders (but I won’t mention any names ….) Yet we trade with despots, we take them seriously, we even kow-tow to them on occasion.
But they are just gangsters, aren’t they? Where is their legitimacy? Nobody voted them in, did they? In Sadaam Hussein’s case, there was a party conference at which his rivals were pulled out of the audience and taken away to be summarily shot. Yet this mass-murderer was supposed to be given the respect of a “leader”? We even had a British MP going out to Iraq to shake him by the hand! It is of course surreal.
The UN Charter – which all members sign up to – has clauses on human rights, freedom of speech, of assembly and all that stuff, yet a large proportion of members are dictatorships! What a humungous LIE to base the government of the world on! Yet the UN is the body that is supposed to make “international law”!! You couldn’t make it up.
So while the case for the invasion of Iraq is extremely complex and controversial, I for one will certainly dismiss any claptrap about it being “illegal”. How can it be illegal to bring down a man responsible for the deaths of over ONE MILLION of our fellow-humans, including the use of gas to destroy a whole village of 5,000 in Kurdistan?
It is often said that “the law is an ass”. Well, in this case I cannot but agree.
What’s more common in business could/ought to apply to us.
I was very pleased to call by and have a chat with a very good friend and his wife recently because they are facing financial difficulties.
Slightly unusual in that he is a qualified Doctor and has a share in the practice and his wife is a music teacher. Why should they have problems?
They bought their house three years ago and, like so many others, took out a large mortgage. Probably not the best deal available at the time but it allowed them to secure the house they wanted. Since they purchased the property, house prices have fallen so they have fallen straight into negative equity!
The house needed some work and they also carried out a loft conversion. To make this possible they arranged another loan, not at a very good rate, but at least they are working on the property, and the bits they have done look great.
Working hours and the need to keep up to date with patient notes and write appraisals means that there is almost no time for relaxation; to fall into bed at night is a welcome relief! But what of the financial situation?
To keep the show on the road there has been no time to review the arrangement of ‘bricks’ on which the financial blocks are built. Now they facing a large tax bill, so another large loan is being proposed, just to keep the tax man quiet and keep the show on the road.
How many of us find ourselves in a similar situation? Yet industry has a business practice that can help us. Analyse, diagnose, correct – sort of based on the mantra that ‘You can’t manage what you can’t measure‘.
Review our situation and diagnose the problems.
Look at our options.
Decide what to do.
Action our decision
And lastly REVIEW progress.
How often are we likely to review our situation like this at home or even make basic changes. Well perhaps we need to review more often than we think. Make it a regular weekly practice.
Look at being tax efficient, and in the case I am describing this was the major problem, so the cycle of worry is now being broken, and a new firm financial arrangement of blocks being put in place rather than the little boxes, which were piled high, and about to fall down.
Yes it takes time. No we don’t want to face it, but hey its like banging your head against a wall.
“Gordon Brown was ‘marginalised’ by Tony Blair in the build-up to the Iraq war”, former International Development Secretary Clare Short has said.
“The then chancellor neither opposed nor supported the invasion but was ‘preoccupied’ by other concerns,” she told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.
Frankly, it is surreally ludicrous. Is she really saying that while the country was preparing to go to war in extraordinarily-controversial circumstances, with hundreds of thousands marching in protest and all the rest, that
Clare Short
Brown had “other concerns”? And during the whole process these “other concerns” prevented him from AT ANY TIME having an input or indeed an opinion?
Is this some sort of attempt to disassociate him from responsibility? Whatever one thinks about the rights or wrongs of the invasion it was in the end a COLLECTIVE DECISION. Blair could NOT have done it without the support of the British Cabinet, especially Brown and Straw. If they had felt strongly enough about it, they could have resigned, or more likely have told Blair they WOULD resign if he pressed on, and thereby thwarted him. Now, it isn’t easy to resign, or even threaten to – your bluff could always be called and your career go down the spout – but if you can’t do it when it is a matter of your country going to war when the hell CAN you do it?
Gordon Brown
As for “neither supported nor opposed” the invasion, what a PATHETIC verdict on someone who went on (without an election) to “lead” the country.
“Well, I’m neither supporting nor opposing it since that way I can take either position later depending on how it pans out.”
I can’t recall having seen a more pathetic, fumbling, cowardly shambles. You may love or – more likely – hate Tony Blair, but as with Margaret Thatcher, you certainly knew where he stood.
President Obama’s proposal to freeze parts of federal government spending over the next three years is a lot like a smoker buying a truckload of cigarettes one year before promising to “freeze spending” on cigarettes the next. He can keep smoking for years to come without spending another dime.
Federal government spending has increased so much over the last year — by some estimates at a rate of 34% — that in December of 2009 the debt limit had to be raised to $12.4 trillion to help absorb a record-shattering $1.4 trillion deficit.
The promise to freeze spending is actually a guarantee that spending will remain at record high levels for the next three years. It effectively prevents a reduction in federal spending.
I worked for 10 years at ISUGA, a school in Quimper, France dedicated to multi-cultural understanding and international co-operation in business. This was an extremely rich experience at a school where the majority of the foreign students were Chinese.
The campus at ISUGA, Quimper, France
It is also, incidentally, the place where I had to good fortune to meet Jon Lavin and Paul Handover, fellow authors on Learning from Dogs.
I like to think that I have always been sensitive to the cultural differences between different nationalities. Having lived abroad for long periods in both France and Germany, the idea of living in a sort of English enclave somewhere, jealously guarding such cultural practices as endless burgers and fish and chips, is totally anathema to me.
I am human first and English second and if I live in Germany, France or anywhere else I want to live like the natives as far as possible …
This also means making an effort to understand and accept their “culture”. Now this normally poses no problem, but with my Asian friends there is one aspect of their culture that I could not accept. And of course, if one DOES put one’s humanity first, then there is always the risk that the culture of one’s hosts – in some respect – may have to take second place. The “culture ” of Germany in the 1930s was fascist, and I certainly could not have lived with that.
No, what causes me problems with Asians (and particularly Chinese) is this question of “FACE”. One is supposed – and one learns this on “cultural-understanding” courses for businessmen (which of course I organised at my school!!) – to so arrange things that EVEN IF the Asian negotiating counterpart is a complete fool and/or makes the most idiotic errors one must ALWAYS find a way to avoid humiliating them in any way.
Well, “humiliating” is too strong a word in fact … one is supposed to arrange things that they never seem to be in an “inferior” position in any way.
My problem with this is that it is in fact the antithesis of everything this site stands for, which is integrity, truth and honesty. Now if a negotiating partner does in fact make some sort of mistake then to pretend otherwise just to preserve their “face” is dishonest, isn’t it? And what are we in fact preserving? An IMAGE and not the reality.
Claudia S
It is, in fact, totally AGAINST the Human Spirit. We are all fallible. I know of no perfect men or women (though Claudia Schiffer comes close 😉 ). It is simply DISHONEST to deny this to preserve “FACE”.
The current British government could have done with learning this lesson. For YEARS there was never ANY acceptance that, yes – perhaps – they might have got some things wrong. Funnily enough, this is coming now in short bursts, but not enough to be convincing – shame!
“FACE” is of course a FACADE. I no longer am interest in facades, but the truth. But the worse aspect of this Asian FACE thing is that it is so totally accepted by them (and by us, but that’s our fault) as being “normal” and acceptable. No, it is NOT acceptable.
The stimulus for this post came from the recent execution of a British drug-smuggler in China. Now it is quite clear from what has been revealed that this guy was A) not fully compos mentis and B) was set up as a mule by a handler. He was caught, tried, sentenced to death and executed by the Chinese. No, I have no sympathy for drug-smugglers, but Mr “Big” he was not.
What muddied the waters even more was that the British Prime Minister made a special plea for clemency, which might very well in normal cases have been granted. But these were not normal circumstances. Just before this incident the British had severely criticized the Chinese for their stance on Global Warming at the Copenhagen Conference. Now, ANY criticism of the CPP (Chinese Communist Party) is likely to be taken as a “loss of face”. One suspects – but there is no way to know – that the Chinese refusal to listen to Prime Minister Brown’s very strong plea for clemency was the CPP’s way of putting the British government in its place and restoring its “face”.
The point is, BEING WRONG is HUMAN. Pretending to be RIGHT all the time is NOT HUMAN. It is IMPOSSIBLE. We should accept this and learn humility. Sadly, the words “humility” and “Chinese Communist Party” are unlikely bedfellows.
By Chris Snuggs
[When Chris wrote this Post, he was unaware of one that I had written that was published on the 28th. Interesting parallels! Ed.]
I’m not quite sure how I feel about this yet. The Fed recently announced that it has appointed a long-time staffer with the New York Fed to head a newly created branch to oversee the the parts of its balance sheet acquired in efforts to bail out firms like AIG.
These massive asset purchases, orchestrated by Timothy Geithner, the current Treasury Secretary and former New York Fed official, ballooned the Fed’s balance sheet from $800 billion in primarily government bonds to $2.3 trillion in toxic assets.
Now the New York Fed is overseeing the assets brought into the Fed by the Treasury Secretary as he moved from the New York Fed to the Treasury. All while the Treasury functions are supposed to be isolated from the Federal Reserve’s role in its implementation of monetary policy.
Learning from Dogs 