Principles of defiance

Good to see that just as the Prime Minister foresaw a couple of weeks ago, the terror attacks would not compromise our values. Unless of course you mean values about justice where new anti-terror legislation can be rushed through parliament. Or more manifestly where the police can justify shooting a man on the ground point blank in the head on the basis that he came out of a flat that was under investigation and disregarded warnings that no one else heard.
Let's not try to justify actions on the basis of being scared: if you want to live in a sane society you cannot base its rules on fear that someone might break them. Take a step back and legislate in a moment of calm and clarity or we too will have a Patriot Act. And if you really want to show this famous defiance you vaunt so much, don't change your principles in the face of terror.

Farewell Paddy

If you were expecting some fond farewells to Ted Heath, given this blog's rather pro-European stance, then forget it. More concerning to me is that I will miss Patrick Vieira's rangy styles next season and his general taking the piss out of opposition midfields. I hope I won't miss him too much in that Arsène will find a suitable replacement, and hope that I will miss him completely if Juventus come to Highbury and he inflicts the same to us. It's so confusing! At least after the European game we'll be guaranteed to be playing at home while Man U and Chelsea play away. Or not, as Arseblog demonstrates that Mourinho and Ferguson are arithmetical tits.

Delays on the underground

Police are finally beginning to release names of those who died in last Thursday's attacks. There have been lots of reasons cited for the delay in reporting who has died: a complex judicial system, the difficult conditions investigators are working in, a necessity to get the details absolutely right, the condition of the remains. All of these are, I'm sure, valid. But it is also worth remembering that Madrid suffered from many of these conditions too and had identified almost everyone within three days. So why is it taking so long here?
I would suggest that this is because for every DNA check, there's a police and security service background check to go alongside. This takes some time. Any person on each underground train and particularly on the bus could potentially have been implicated in the attack. My colleague who was on an underground train passing the one that exploded near Liverpool Street was interviewed by police after having stood in the carriage for an hour waiting to be rescued, then being led back up the tunnel. And can you imagine the police turning around to the relatives of the deceased and telling them that they just want to make sure the person who's missing isn't a terrorist?
Similarly, if we look at the delays between the bombs going off at 8:51 and rescue teams arriving on the scene around 9:20, this can be explained by police uncertainties. Emergency services could certainly have reached the scene in a third of the time. But if a bomb goes off, particularly in a confined space, who is to say that there aren't further devices targetting the rescue teams? This has certainly been a system used across the world by many organisations. Or worse still, that the bomb is a "dirty" device, including anthrax or something similar to spread longer term damage and impede access. But could the police tell the public that if they are victims of a terrorist attack they'll need to wait half an hour before anyone comes to rescue them while they check out the safety of the emergency scene? That people will die who could have been saved while all due diligence is performed?
Amid the unspeakable acts, there remain resolutions that are unspoken.

Management posturing

I've been contemplating visting some chiropractic quack recently as I'm sure my posture at work isn't what it should be: huddling over a laptop then leaning right to gaze at my burgeoning screen of resource planning can't be good for the spinal column. Then I realised that these exertions on my suppleness were not the cause of my woes, but that these are endemic to my position:

The day after

It's beginning to sink in now. Although London is looking largely back to normal -- helped in no small measure by the fact that we're all used to the transport system being up the spout -- there is an underlying sense of pain: for those whose loved ones have not yet been found, who have woken up in hospital minus limbs, who have been eye witnesses to the trauma.
I work right in thick of it, midway between the bus explosion, Kings Cross and Liverpool Street. As I came into work yesterday there were already problems on the underground caused by the first explosion, though I didn't know what it was yet. As I came up Blackfriars Road, I was overtaken by dozens of police vans going up to Kings Cross. Then news of more bombs at Edgware Road and in Bloomsbury and the continual wail of sirens. I didn't go out; I wanted to avoid getting in the way of the emergency services.
Then we get all that bollocks about our values not being compromised by terrorism. Which values are those then? Economic liberalism, failing to reach agreement on climate change, ducking the issues on Africa... The carnage here is sickening, but is made no better by pontification about how we'll beat terror. There have been no demands to cave in to. There have been no values attacked. It is mindless brutality with any possible reasoning masked by anonymity. It doesn't take a hero to make a stand against that.
Focus instead on those who have been traumatised by crawling over bodies in the dark, by not being able to save everyone, by seeing carnage in front of them. And remember that they're not just here, but in Sarajevo, Fallujah, Bulawayo. The perpetrators of all these outrages need to be brought to justice and in the meantime, we need to care for those who have suffered, not pretend that we're making a stand when we're just carrying on what we'd be doing anyway.

The Calgon effect

Washing machines, we have been told, live longer with Calgon: it prevents limescale accumulating on filaments that heat water. Of course it's practically impossible to tell the impact that Calgon is having as the filament is hidden from view and you have no idea what would have happened if you'd never used the product. And so it is with cancer.
Cancer patients live longer with vitamin supplements. I've been taking A, C, E and selenium since I was able to eat again and I'm significantly ahead of the pancreatic tumour mortality index. Whether these antioxidant supplements have anything to do with this is anyone's guess, but I'm not prepared to take the risk of stopping. And when there is spread, interferon will be the new Calgon. It's frustrating knowing that there's limescale building in the machine, but short of pouring a vinegar of chemotherapy into the drum there's little else you can do.

Down and out in Paris and London

This blog been silent for a while now — a fortnight, I'm amazed you're still reading — partly because I've taken on more responsibilities following the latest corporate shrinkage and partly because I've been gawping boggle-eyed at the latest rounds of churlishness, hypocrisy, cynicism and no little irony surrounding the G8 summit, the EU and the Olympic bid; my perspective further astigmatied by the intersteces of my origins. (Now I really am amazed you're still reading.)
These bickering premiers — where do I begin — suddenly represent nothing that they ever cared about to preserve their legacy. Blair has done nothing to develop sport in the UK; if he wants to restore the East End so badly why not put all the costs for bidding and staging the Olympics into the area regardless and help address London's decrepit transport systems? Chirac, while never a sports fan, at least recognises its importance but for him to criticise the British bid for offering illegal incentives is a case of Parisian pot slagging London kettle. Indeed more seriously, the French are the main force behind the G8 ratifying Kyoto; yet while they will have fewer problems than most meeting targets given how little fossil fuel they are capable of producing, the country derives more than three quarters of its power from nuclear energy and is embarking on a project to build a fusion reactor on a geographical fault line.
On trade meanwhile, Blair accuses Chirac of ripping off Africa by maintaining subsidies for European farmers. This is at best an attempt to tackle an idiosyncracy, at worst a spiteful piece of political egotism. Two years ago when the Common Agricultural Policy was reviewed by the European Union, the British government maintained the status quo. To the extent that it even vetoed a motion to cap subsidies at a quarter of a million pounds. Last month Blair tried to appear a good European by redressing a rebate from the EU to the UK, but could only do so by appearing a tough guy at home and forcing the CAP to be cut. He failed, so now the subsidies for small farmers are nefarious to Africa and should be scrapped; even George W. seems to agree. Except — and leaving to one side the plethora of issues we've had in this country with high yield mass production farming — scrapping subsidies would have minimal beneficial impact on agricultural trade with Africa. The real issue with fair trade is the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) successively imposed in various forms over the past couple of decades by the world's wealthiest governments on everyone else. So, if you want to export tomatoes from a third world country to a wealthy nation, you'll get taxed somewhat. If you want to chop those tomatoes and export them you'll be taxed more. If you want to produce tomato ketchup for export you'll be taxed even more, so much that no distributor would take on your product. The rule is, the more value you can add, the more margin you might make, the more you will be taxed.
Then the media tells us there are no factories in Africa because there are no entrepreneurs. But the wealthy nations only want entrepreneurs who will sell them base produce and better margins. This is what they mean by opening up fair trade and relief of debt: economic liberalisation and exposure to systems where the raw assets of barely harnessed part of the world can swell the coffers of those who are already filthy rich. So all the removal of the CAP would do is to allow mass food producers to take over smaller holdings in Europe to sell to Tesco's to create more turkey twizzlers for our obese children; though admittedly they would feel morally beknighted as a consequence.
I find it staggering, to return to my cross-Channel theme, how one quintessential product of the labour movement can advocate such harmful capitalism while conversely the archetypal conservative economist defends protectionism to the detriment of investment and market exposure. Here we see Blair with his chicanery and charade of action for Africa when he consorts with pop stars on stage at party conference, while lurking outside the main hall is the tenebrous sponsorship of Nestlé, among the foulest perpertrators of fiscal brutality against the African continent. These men are asking themselves not what they can do for Africa, but what Africa can do for them. What legacy would it offer them if they could say they instigated a movement to make poverty history or to move away rom fossil fuels? I would begrudge them neither of these things if I saw any substance to their words. Let us see them offer aid against malaria if they can't stop children starving. Or increase duty on aeroplane fuel, one of the world's biggest pollutors.
Fundamentally, this is a battle for justice, that faculty which allows us to live as a society with mutual respect, guarantees and obligations. Until now, a continent lay folorn outside justice, stricken at its perimeter. The way inside is to accept that we live with these people. We share our earth, our air, our sun and our water with them.