Easy Riders

Why have these two never been seen together?

As the LA Times says of one of them, he "... is both a charmer and a cliche. Passionate about truth [...] and a mendacious hypocrite in real life."

The other is a world-class performer.

Europe is paralyzed by personal debt

Inspect data here.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Europe is paralyzed by personal debt

Inspect data here.

I burned my mother-in-law's teeth

We were in Ireland, up in the Galtee Mountains near Clonmel, where my wife's mother grew up. The holiday cottage had its own water supply, whose peat stain got through the filter on our water jug, and in the old fireplace we burned peat brickettes bought from the local garage. I love an open fire, and my motto for anything finished with is "it'll burn".

Peace, sunshine, fresh air. We should have bought a place there before the market went crazy.

I say fresh air, but the farmowner's dog (we called him Fogarty) could be detected going past a high window, by his crusted-cowshit smell. A genial animal, he would roll over when he saw us, displaying the impressive collection of scars on his belly and genitalia earned by jumping over barbed wire fences. Only the threat of sprayed hosewater would send him off on his way.

Morning. Breakfast over, the peat log dying to embers, my wife and her mother getting ready for the car ride into town to get their hair done. I tidied up and grabbed a crumpled paper tissue off the table and flung it on the fire. There's a delicious pause before paper darkens, then blooms into flame.

Only this time it was a blue flame. Wrapped in the tissue was a dental plate for the two false teeth my mother-in-law put on for show, though they weren't very good for the business of eating, which is why she had them out more often than in.

The flame brightened and elongated. It was far too late to save them.

She told the hairdresser, who collapsed, barking with laughter, then staggered across the passageway to the next shop: "Hey Jim, here's a feller burned the Mammy's teeth!"

I felt... accepted.

She passed away some years ago, but my wife says she's forgiven me by now.

George Orwell and sham security

UPDATE (15 September 2012): the camera has now been removed - I don't know why, or for how long.

"In general you could not assume that you were much safer in the country than in London. There were no telescreens, of course, but there was always the danger of concealed microphones by which your voice might be picked up and recognized..."

 

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

 

Left: suburban Birmingham (UK), 9 September 2012

 

This camera was installed recently - and quietly - near to where I live.

 

Like so many things these days, it has its own little slogan: Making Birmingham Safer.

 

Not true. Last Sunday afternoon, the burglar alarm went off on a house across the road. I called the police, who told me they wouldn't come out unless I saw something suspicious; it could, after all, explained the policewoman on the other end of the line, have been triggered by a cat jumping onto a windowsill or something.

 

The response was much as I had expected, but I'd made the call to placate a couple of little girls who'd noticed the noise while trampolining in their garden next door.

 

When there's a real burglary, all you get is a crime number so you can claim on your insurance. And maybe a crime prevention pack from Victim Support officers who want to come in and eat your biscuits (I told them what I wanted was the burglars' heads cut off with a blunt knife, but their reaction suggested that my wish was inappropriate).

 

On the Monday, I returned from work to find a note through the door. It was from the police, asking for witnesses to an attempted robbery on our street on Sunday evening (c. 10:30).

 

No connection? Or would B not have happened if Birmingham's finest troubled themselves to deal in person with A, and show a regular physical presence in our area?

 

What use are cameras? Until burglars and muggers go around with numbers on their chests there'll be no flash-flash-you're-caught, like speeding motorists.

 

I suppose the police could upgrade to automatic face recognition software - but with all its Big Brother potential, that's a cure worse than the disease. Besides, criminals would find ways round: Andy McNab's novels explain how you go into a charity shop, buy a change of gear and put a peaked cap on your head and hey presto, cyber-following is foiled.

 

So what is all this? False reassurance, or an excuse to tighten the snooper's noose round the citizenry in general?

 

Or is it simply easier and safer for the cops to shuffle papers and handle calls from ninny householders who imagine we're still in an age when collars were felt, naughty kids' ears clipped and the bobby would tell you the time? Clock on, clock off and roll on retirement?

Ripped off by pump prices

Americans complain about the high cost of fuel, but compared to us Brits they're sitting pretty. Below (left) is a snapshot of a widget found on Max Keiser's site, where you can check regularly and grind your teeth.

To convert from (US dollars per US gallon) to the current British equivalent (i.e. French Revolutionary decimal pence per French Revolutionary litre), simply divide by 6.

Or 6.058595, if you want to be more exact. Here's a sample based on the latest prices and exchange rates - Brits are paying almost exactly double:













INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Ripped off by pump prices

Americans complain about the high cost of fuel, but compared to us Brits they're sitting pretty. On the right I've installed a new widget (found on Max Keiser's site) so you can check regularly and grind your teeth.

To convert from (US dollars per US gallon) to the current British equivalent (i.e. French Revolutionary decimal pence per French Revolutionary litre), simply divide by 6.

Or 6.058595, if you want to be more exact. Here's a sample based on the latest prices and exchange rates - Brits are paying almost exactly double:

Food prices, speculation and eco-folly

Max Keiser is a joy, just a joy. In this latest broadcast he lays about him gleefeully, smacking "nay-sayers should commit suicide" Bertie Ahern and faux-libertarian followers of the Mises and Adam Smith Insitutes, and describing Rupert Murdoch as a failed, lifelong anti-competitive, octogenarian porn merchant who should just get out of the Internet's way.

But since I've been touching on food and land recently, I find Keiser's interview with Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam particularly intriguing. The prof published a report in May that finds corn prices in Mexico are three times higher than they would otherwise be, thanks to (a) the diversion of corn into ethanol production and (b) commodity speculation (legalised in 2000).

Here's the graph:

"Fig.1 Corn price (blue line) and curves showing the causes of price increases according to our quantitative model (red dashed line). The green dashed dotted line is the supply and demand equilibrium impacted by the demand shock due to increasing corn to ethanol conversion. The quantitatively modeled speculation contribution to prices is the difference between the total and the supply and demand curve. The corn price without ethanol shock or speculation would be essentially constant (black dotted)."

Similarly, financial greed converts into distress and hunger for the poor. And as Max and his colleague note, the investment "terrorists" think it's funny.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Food prices, speculation and eco-folly

Max Keiser is a joy, just a joy. In this latest broadcast he lays about him gleefeully, smacking "nay-sayers should commit suicide" Bertie Ahern and faux-libertarian followers of the Mises and Adam Smith Insitutes, and describing Rupert Murdoch as a failed, lifelong anti-competitive, octogenarian porn merchant who should just get out of the Internet's way.

But since I've been touching on food and land recently, I find Keiser's interview with Professor Yaneer Bar-Yam particularly intriguing. The prof published a report in May that finds corn prices in Mexico are three times higher than they would otherwise be, thanks to (a) the diversion of corn into ethanol production and (b) commodity speculation (legalised in 2000).

Here's the graph:

"Fig.1 Corn price (blue line) and curves showing the causes of price increases according to our quantitative model (red dashed line). The green dashed dotted line is the supply and demand equilibrium impacted by the demand shock due to increasing corn to ethanol conversion. The quantitatively modeled speculation contribution to prices is the difference between the total and the supply and demand curve. The corn price without ethanol shock or speculation would be essentially constant (black dotted)."

Similarly, financial greed converts into distress and hunger for the poor. And as Max and his colleague note, the investment "terrorists" think it's funny.

Mountain high

From the ever-wonderful Dark Roasted Blend, a series of photos from the Himalayas (example above). Truly vertiginous, and reminds me of a series I watched about truckers who work in Alaska going for a busman's holiday along some of the world's other deadly routes. Plus Welsh comedian Rhod Gilbert and Greg Davies going through Nepal and literally up to the gates of China.

One of the things that make these areas so dangerous is that they are ever-decaying. In his 1958 travel book, A Short Walk In The Hindu Kush, Eric Newby describes a constant clattering of pebbles and rocks from the high places above.

But The Himalayas are still rising as the Indian subcontinent continues to crash into the Eurasian landmass, and the snowfields that created in Tibet gave rise to the great rivers that flow through and feed South-East Asia: the Indus, Sutlej, Ganges and Brahmaputra. I've often wanted to do the a sort of pilgrimage to that area, which in fact is an ancient site of worship centring on Mount Kailash.

The Himalayan range is young in geological terms, beginning about 65 million years ago - coincidentally around the time the dinosaurs died out. If only we could live long enough, and perceive slowly enough, to see the wandering of the continents about the globe:

 

And what of the future?:

 



Mountains are life-givers: without them, much less chance of rain and the fresh water that sustains us.

There is debate about how high a mountain can possibly be. The tallest from root to tip is Mauna Kea in Hawaii, but 60% of that is below the waves. The highest in the Solar System is on Mars and is some 72,000 feet - but that is in Mars' much lower gravity. This commentator says the theoretical limit on Earth is 90,000 feet, or about four times the height of Everest - but I think from what he says that you would have to include the depth of the tectonic plate on which the mountain stands.

Nevertheless, if the Tower of Babel had been completed and constructed as strongly as a mountain, it should easily have got among and even above high-level clouds. Breughel was right:

If the Babylonians had had the EU's translation facilities of Brussels or Strasbourg, they could have finished the building. Who knows what it would have looked like?

However, they tried to make it of brick, which in even the modern version of the material apparently can't make a wall higher than some 840 feet.

Mudbrick structures in Shibam, Yemen go up to nearly 100 feet; the Burj Khalifa in Dubai tops out at 2,717 feet; but the theoretical maximum is 10 - 100 kilometres.

It's even been suggested (see "technobot" comment #7 here) that a structure made out of diamond could stand 6-12,000 km high (they could get the material from this diamond star, I guess). Though there remains the question of economic rationale - whay you'd need to compress that much rentable space onto that base, and who could afford it (bearing in mind that land costs would be dwarfed by the expense of materials and labour).

And would any of them have the beauty of the real thing in Nature?

Mexico and drugs liberalization: a dark side?

Drug-takers and principled libertarians have welcomed the news that Mexico is to decriminalise drugs and close down the country's equivalent of the FBI. But behind it there may be more than the desire to reduce the horrifying death toll from gang wars.

There are disquieting rumours about newly-elected President Enrique Peña Nieto's personal life. His alleged gay lover, Agustín Humberto Estrada Negrete, claimed that Peña Nieto murdered his wife Monica Pretelini; her two bodyguards were subsequently killed while escorting the family, who were left unhurt; Negrete claims later to have been threatened, near-fatally assaulted and then fled to San Diego in California, from where he has continued to denounce his alleged former bedmate, as recently as last April.

There are also allegations of Peña Nieto's dealings with organised crime syndicates. It is even claimed that the latter helped fund his election campaign.

The winding-up of Mexico's "FBI" may not be merely a consequence of the drugs decision. Established in 2001, the Agencia Federal de Investigación (AFI) was tasked to fight not only organised crime but corruption. Reorganised in 2009 and renamed the Policía Federal Ministerial (PFM), it is said to have been penetrated by the gangs. But this is a danger for all intelligence organisations and not in itself sufficient reason for dispensing with them.

Is the President closing the PFM because it will no longer be needed, or because its own security is irredeemably compromised, or because if left in place it could eventually mount a full investigation into his own alleged activities?

As to the drug cabals, it remains to be seen whether legalisation stops the violence or instead steps it up as crime syndicates vie for control of the hugely lucrative industry prior to reincarnation as legitimate businesses.

Not so green: "eco" factors behind landgrabbing and food shortages

After Ethiopia (see yesterday's post), here's Friends of the Earth International on Uganda, and how land-grabbing and speculation is driven in part by high-minded attempts to find alternatives to oil, to get carbon credits and to "conserve"the environment. What a mess.

(Highlights in the excerpted text are mine.)

1.2 The demand for land

A number of different factors lie behind this phenomena. Many cash rich and land poor governments are trying to secure food supplies by buying land overseas for domestic supplies. Land and resource rich but cash poor governments are seeking foreign direct investment in land and agriculture. While many of the governments involved are seeking to expand their domestic production of food crops and crops for fuel, agribusiness is seeking to expand its operations and boost profits, growing more, more cheaply; growing new crops for new markets, particularly for agrofuels – as well as gaining access to new markets in rapidly developing economies. Investors and speculators are looking for good investment returns.

Governments and private companies are both keen to gain access to fertile land at a low cost. Rapid increases in the food prices in recent years left many governments aware of their vulnerability to the market and eager to boost domestic food supplies. Countries such as China, India and Egypt want to ensure they have access to rice and grain. Other countries such as Saudi Arabia have recognised that the changing climate and limited water supplies mean that some crops can no longer be grown at home. Instead they are looking to outsource production to areas where fertile land and water are in greater supply.

Land grabbing for food has been recorded across Africa, notably in the Sudan and Uganda; in Pakistan, in Cambodia; in Russia, the Ukraine and Georgia; and in parts of South America, including Paraguay and Brazil. Some of these are countries which struggle to feed their own populations – but which have enough fertile land to attract foreign investors.

The growing demand for vegetable oils in particular, driven by increased human consumption and the promotion of agrofuels, particularly in Europe, has led to expansion of industrial monocultures. The growing market for palm oil has seen companies buying up land in tropical areas of Africa and Asia to establish plantations. Similarly, soy has expanded in South America, and land has been grabbed for jatropha in India, Indonesia and a number of African countries.

High levels of demand for land have pushed up prices, bringing in investors and speculators. With long term forecasts predicting increasing water shortages and other climatic changes to agriculture, few expect the price of land to fall. As a result, the big investment banks have moved into farming, buying up agricultural land, livestock farms and processing plants.

Another driver of land grabbing is particular types of environmental conservation projects such as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing countries (REDD) projects that generate carbon credits from plantations. The appropriation of land and resources for environmental ends has been termed as ‘green grabbing’ (Vidal, 2008). In many cases communities that have managed and conserved forests for many generations are locked out of their communal forest lands due to conservation needs. As plantations are accepted as forests in international definitions, forested land is replaced by tree plantations aimed at generating carbon credits for companies (FOEI, 2008).

John Company colonizes Ethiopia

Two recent themes on this blog have been (a) agricultural investment and (b) companies that are as powerful (and possibly as wicked) as governments.

How about the "resettlement" of 1,500,000 Ethiopians to make way for corporate agri-grab?

That story ran in January, but there's lots more on this long-running issue - just Google up "land seizure ethiopia" or similar. And it's happening across Africa.

If you need a current hook to hang it off, here's a Norwegian story reproduced on farmlandgrab.org. Google Translate will give you enough to get the gist, e.g.:

Nykolonialisering in the form of landrov may have different face from country to country. The common denominator is that topsoil has been the hottest investment item, after the housing market broke down. Money pursuit of profit. Investors know that food and topsoil is scarce. It is important to position themselves. Liberti citing an unnamed manager of a South American investment fund. He goes straight to the point at a conference for investors, "We need to stop beating around the bush.

Agroindustrielle big companies take croplands, water and markets away from farmers. We can sell our products at lower prices and undercut peasant family farms. It must make decisions which are also of political nature.The world needs an effective agricultural producing on a large scale.

But it is not possible to promote this model without any loses. "Many believe that everything is taken political decisions. Bond activist Henry Saragih from Indonesia is The Guardian hailed as one of the fifty people who can save the world. He says landrov is part of a agroindustriell model that is being promoted by the World Bank, IMF, FAO and the EU:

"On the basis of vaguely worded principles of" responsible investment in agriculture "legitimize these institutions actually broader violations of farmers' rights."

"... the World Bank, IMF, FAO and the EU": as an idealistic teenager/tweenie, I liked the idea of supranational government. Now, I begin to think that it, and the money-forces to which it allies itself, pave the way for an evil worldwide oligarchy. Just wait till they have no further need for ourselves. Meanwhile, Ethiopians are being turfed off like the Chechens under Stalin.

Big Brother vs Big Company

Lovers of liberty are naturally and rightly suspicious of governments, which, as Charles Lamb said, "are as bad as they dare to be."

But corporations can be just as big and as hard to restrain, especially since they have the money to attract some of the best talent, and can shop around the globe for their preferred legal and tax jurisdictions.

Wikipedia lists 185 companies that have revenue in excess of $50 billion per annum. The CIA World Factbook lists 220 countries and dependant territories, together with their estimated GDP. Combining them into one list of major economic entities (ignoring the EU, which is not a country), we find:

1. Companies represent 40 out of the top 100 entities.
2. Only 23 countries are bigger than Exxon Mobil; and the latter's turnover is bigger than the combined GDP of the 100 smallest nations.
3. Even the smallest company listed here, Best Buy, has revenues higher than 183 nations.
4. BP has more employees than the populations of any one of the smallest 43 countries.
5. The combined revenues of the US housing quangos Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac total $264 billion, more than the GDP of Singapore.
6. The third biggest company, Walmart, is the 30th largest economic entity here and has more turnover than South Africa.
7. The 29 oil-and-gas companies on the list have a combined revenue exceeding $4.5 trillion - more than all but the three highest-GDP countries.
8. UK shoppers will be interested to see that supermarket chain Tesco ties at #100 in the list below - and its position may be strengthened if some of the banks, insurers and car companies suffer a reversal.

As multinational businesses have become larger (and often freer in their financial dealings) than many of the world's nations, our attention must turn to the growing power and potential dangers of corporate enterprises, as well as of the corrupt and tyrannical political regimes which sometimes work in partnership with them.



INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Big Brother vs Big Company

Lovers of liberty are naturally and rightly suspicious of governments, which, as Charles Lamb said, "are as bad as they dare to be."

But corporations can be just as big and as hard to restrain, especially since they have the money to attract some of the best talent, and can shop around the globe for their preferred legal and tax jurisdictions.

Wikipedia lists 185 companies that have revenue in excess of $50 billion per annum. The CIA World Factbook lists 220 countries and dependant territories, together with their estimated GDP. Combining them into one list of major economic entities (ignoring the EU, which is not a country), we find:

1. Companies represent 40 out of the top 100 entities.
2. Only 23 countries are bigger than Exxon Mobil; and the latter's turnover is bigger than the combined GDP of the 100 smallest nations.
3. Even the smallest company listed here, Best Buy, has revenues higher than 183 nations.
4. BP has more employees than the populations of any one of the smallest 43 countries.
5. The combined revenues of the US housing quangos Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac total $264 billion, more than the GDP of Singapore.
6. The third biggest company, Walmart, is the 30th largest economic entity here and has more turnover than South Africa.
7. The 29 oil-and-gas companies on the list have a combined revenue exceeding $4.5 trillion - more than all but the three highest-GDP countries.
8. UK shoppers will be interested to see that supermarket chain Tesco ties at #100 in the list below - and its position may be strengthened if some of the banks, insurers and car companies suffer a reversal.

As multinational businesses have become larger (and often freer in their financial dealings) than many of the world's nations, our attention must turn to the growing power and potential dangers of corporate enterprises, as well as of the corrupt and tyrannical political regimes which sometimes work in partnership with them.



Call to reverse farmland investment

A couple of months ago I said I had moral qualms about the trend towards agricultural investment.

Now there's an article from the same site (farmlandgrab.org), looking at proposals to regulate the process somehow.

The writer doesn't buy it:

... the rules are always about making the project work for the investor. Local communities, soils, watersheds, local labour markets and even the domestic food security situation in the host country are treated as risk factors that need to be mitigated. The objective is to manage costs, including those connected to reputational risks, to ensure an acceptable return. The rules for responsible farmland investment are thus for the investor, for whom taking care of the fallout for local people becomes another cost of doing business -- and one that companies can make profits from to boot.

... Other sectors where this has been tried out -- sustainable cotton, sustainable soy, responsible palm oil, timber, banking and whatnot -- have a profoundly blotted track record.

... What we need is not responsible farmland investment, but divestment. By this we mean that rather than trying to make this new trend of financialising farmland work, these deals need to be stopped and undone, with the lands restituted to the communities that lived from them. And instead of promoting the growth of industrial agriculture, we need to strengthen family- and community-based food sovereignty approaches, across the world. Initiatives are being taken in these directions, aiming to choke capital flows into firms with a history of land grabbing or into funds specifically set up to peddle rights to farmland, bolstered by advocacy and political pressure to support small-scale family-based farming systems and local markets. While it is a huge and uphill battle, it's clear that we need to stop the financing of land grabs, not make it responsible.

Again and again, I feel that Big Corporation is not an alternative to Big Brother. For example, it's not so very long since Monsanto was trying for a scheme that would have economically enslaved farmers across the world: the "terminator gene" project, finally halted (or is it finally?) in 1999.

Lovers of liberty need to look over their right shoulder as well as their left.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Call to reverse farmland investment

A couple of months ago I said I had moral qualms about the trend towards agricultural investment.

Now there's an article from the same site (farmlandgrab.org), looking at proposals to regulate the process somehow.

The writer doesn't buy it:

... the rules are always about making the project work for the investor. Local communities, soils, watersheds, local labour markets and even the domestic food security situation in the host country are treated as risk factors that need to be mitigated. The objective is to manage costs, including those connected to reputational risks, to ensure an acceptable return. The rules for responsible farmland investment are thus for the investor, for whom taking care of the fallout for local people becomes another cost of doing business -- and one that companies can make profits from to boot.

... Other sectors where this has been tried out -- sustainable cotton, sustainable soy, responsible palm oil, timber, banking and whatnot -- have a profoundly blotted track record.

... What we need is not responsible farmland investment, but divestment. By this we mean that rather than trying to make this new trend of financialising farmland work, these deals need to be stopped and undone, with the lands restituted to the communities that lived from them. And instead of promoting the growth of industrial agriculture, we need to strengthen family- and community-based food sovereignty approaches, across the world. Initiatives are being taken in these directions, aiming to choke capital flows into firms with a history of land grabbing or into funds specifically set up to peddle rights to farmland, bolstered by advocacy and political pressure to support small-scale family-based farming systems and local markets. While it is a huge and uphill battle, it's clear that we need to stop the financing of land grabs, not make it responsible.

Again and again, I feel that Big Corporation is not an alternative to Big Brother. For example, it's not so very long since Monsanto was trying for a scheme that would have economically enslaved farmers across the world: the "terminator gene" project, finally halted (or is it finally?) in 1999.

Lovers of liberty need to look over their right shoulder as well as their left.

INVESTMENT DISCLOSURE: Mostly in cash (and index-linked National Savings Certificates), but now planning to build up some reserves of physical gold via regular saving.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content.

Hair funnies (NSFW, also don't drink or operate machinery)

This one (for women) I first saw a long time ago, but the memory lingers on:

Waxing

All methods have tricked me with their promises of easy, painless removal - the Epilady, the standard razor, the scissors, the Nair, the EpilStop, and now ...The Wax.

My night began as any other normal weekday night. I came home from work, fixed dinner for my son and we played for a while. I then had the thought that would ring painfully in my mind for the next couple hours: maybe I should use that wax in my medicine cabinet. I set up my boy with a video and head to the site of my demise, um, I mean bathroom.

It was one of those cold wax kits. No melting a clump of hot wax, you just rub the clear strips in your hand, peel them apart, press it on your leg (or wherever) and ignore the frantically rising crescendo of string instruments in the background. No muss, no fuss. How hard can this be? I mean, I'm not the girly-est of girls but I'm mechanically inclined so maybe I can figure out how this works. You'd think. So I pull one of the thin strips out. It's two strips facing each other, stuck together. I'm supposed to rub it in my hand to warm and soften the wax (I'm guessing). I go one better: I pull out the hair dryer! And heat the SOB to ten thousand degrees. Cold wax, my ass. (Oh, how that phrase will come back to haunt me.)

I lay the strip across my thigh. I hold the skin around it and pull. OK, so it wasn't the best feeling in the world, but it wasn't bad. I can do this! Hair removal no longer eludes me! I am She-Ra, fighter of all wayward body hair and smooth skin extraordinaire!

With my next wax strip, I move north. After checking on the boy and verifying that he was, in fact, becoming one with Bear and learning all about smells, I sneak into the bathroom for The Ultimate Hair Fighting Championship. I drop my panties and place one foot on the toilet. Using the same procedure, I then apply the wax strip! across the right side on my bikini line, covering the right half of my vagina and stretching up into the inside of the right ass cheek. (Yeah, it was a long strip.)

I inhale deeply. I brace myself. RRRIIIIPPP!!!!

I'm blind! Blind from the pain! ....... Vision returning.

Oh crap. I've managed to pull off half an inch of the strip.

Another deep breath. And RIIIP! Everything is swirly and tie-dyed? Do I hear crashing drums? OK, coming back to normal again. I want to see my trophy - my wax covered pelt that caused me so much agony. I want to revel in the glory that is my triumph over body hair. I hold the wax strip like an Olympic gold medallist.

But why is there no hair on it? Why is the wax mostly gone?

Where could the wax go, if not on the strip?

Slowly, I eased my head down, my foot still perched on the toilet. I see hair - the hair that should be on the strip. I touch. I feel. I am touching wax. I look to the ceiling! and silently shout "nooooooo!!"

And realize I have just begun living my own personal version of "The Tar Baby."

I peel my fingers off the softest, most sensitive part of my body that is now Covered in cold wax and matted hair, and make the next big mistake - up until this point, you'll remember, I've had my foot on the toilet. I know I need to move, to do something. So I put my foot down on the floor. And then I hear the slamming of the cell door. Vagina? Sealed shut. Ass? Sealed shut. A little voice in my head says "I hope you don't have to shit anytime soon. Your head just might pop off." I penguin walk around the bathroom trying desperately to figure out what I should do next.

Hot water! Hot water melts wax! I'll run the hottest water I can stand and get in - the wax should melt and I can gently wipe it away, right? Wrong.

I get in the tub - the water is slightly hotter than is used to torture prisoners of war or sterilize surgical equipment. And I sit.

Now the only thing worse than having your goodies glued together is having them glued together and then glued to the bottom of a tub. In scalding hot water. Which, by the way, does not melt the cold wax.

So now I'm stuck to the tub. I call my friend, C, because she once dropped out of beauty school So surely she has some secret knowledge or trick to get wax off skin. It's ever good to start a conversation with "So my ass and vagina are stuck to the tub."

She doesn't have a trick. She does her best to suppress laughter. She wants to know exactly where the wax is on the ass. "Are we talking cheek or hole, here?" she asks. She isn't even trying to hide the giggles now.

I give her the run-down of the entire night. She tells me to call the number on the side of the box, but to have a good cover story for where the wax actually is. "You know that if we were working the help line at XX Wax Co. and somebody called with their entire crack sealed shut we'd just put them on hold then record the conversation for everyone we know. You're going to end up on a radio show or the Internet if you tell them the truth.

While we go through various solutions, I have resorted to scraping the wax off with a razor. Boy, nothing feels better to the girly goodies than covering them in wax, sticking them to a tub

In the middle of the conversation (which has inexplicably turned to Other subjects!) I find the little, beautiful saving grace that is the lotion provided with this torturous box of wax, to remove the ‘excess’.

I rub some in and start screaming "It's working! It's working!" I get hearty congratulations from C and we hang up.

I successfully remove all the wax and notice, to my dismay, that the Hair is still there. So I shaved the damned stuff off.

Hell, I was numb by that point anyway. And then I put the box of wax back in my medicine cabinet! Never know when a mustache might start to come in.

Tonight, I attempt hair dying.

... but this one (for men - and hard-hearted women) has just recently started to do the rounds:

A review of Veet for Men

After having been told my danglies looked like an elderly Rastafarian I decided to take the plunge and buy some of this as previous shaving attempts had only been mildly successful and I nearly put my back out trying to reach the more difficult bits. Being a bit of a romantic I thought I would do the deed on the missus's birthday as a bit of a treat.  I ordered it well in advance and working in the North sea I considered myself a bit above some of the characters writing the previous reviews and wrote them off as soft office types...oh my fellow sufferers how wrong I was. I waited until the other half was tucked up in bed and after giving some vague hints about a special surprise I went down to the bathroom. Initially all went well and I applied the gel and stood waiting for something to happen.

I didn't have long to wait.

At first there was a gentle warmth which in a matter of seconds was replaced by an intense burning and a feeling I can only describe as like being given a barbed wire wedgie by two people intent on hitting the ceiling with my head. Religion hadn't featured much in my life until that night but I suddenly became willing to convert to any religion to stop the violent burning around the turd tunnel and what seemed like the destruction of the meat and two veg.

Struggling to not bite through my bottom lip I tried to wash the gel of in the sink and only succeeded in blocking the plughole with a mat of hair. Through the haze of tears I struggled out of the bathroom across the hall into the kitchen by this time walking was not really possible and I crawled the final yard to the fridge in the hope of some form of cold relief. I yanked the freezer drawer out and found a tub of ice cream, tore the lid of and positioned it under me. The relief was fantastic but only temporary as it melted fairly quickly and the fiery stabbing soon returned .

Due to the shape of the ice cream tub I hadn't managed to give the starfish any treatment and I groped around in the draw for something else as I was sure my vision was going to fail fairly soon.I grabbed a bag of what I later found out was frozen sprouts and tore it open trying to be quiet as I did so.I took a handful of them and tried in vain to clench some between the cheeks of my arse. This was not doing the trick as some of the gel had found it's way up the chutney channel and it felt like the space shuttle was running it's engines behind me.

This was probably and hopefully the only time in my life I was going to wish there was a gay snowman in the kitchen which should give you some idea of the depths I was willing to sink to in order to ease the pain. The only solution my pain crazed mind could come up with was to gently ease one of the sprouts where no veg had gone before.

Unfortunately, alerted by the strange grunts coming from the kitchen the other half chose that moment to come and investigate and was greeted by the sight of me, arse in the air, strawberry ice cream dripping from my bell end pushing a sprout up my arse while muttering..." Ooooh that feels good ". Understandably this was a shock to her and she let out a scream and as I hadn't heard her come in it caused an involuntary spasm of shock in myself which resulted in the sprout being ejected at quite some speed in her direction.

I can understand that having a sprout farted against your leg at 11 at night in the kitchen probably wasn't the special surprise she was expecting and having to explain to the kids the next day what the strange hollow in the ice cream was didn't improve my status...So to sum it up Veet removes hair, dignity and self respect.

UPDATE: the earliest online source I can find for the second piece is here.

Assange: more than 14 years to go to beat the record

How times change. The USA was once willing to provide political asylum in its Budapest embassy for 15 years:

The memorial plaque reads:

"The Government of the United States of America gave shelter to Cardinal Joseph Mindszenty in this building between November 4, 1956 - September 28, 1971"

"Az Amerikai Egyesült Államok kormánya ebben az épületben adott menedéket Mindszenty József bíborosnak 1956. november 4. – 1971. szeptember 28. között"

In my view, the Government of Great Britain has suffered enormous reputational damage for even considering breaching diplomatic protocol. Much of the rest of the world will tell itself that the mask slipped for a moment and showed the ugly face of our ruthless, law-despising power elite. Real tyrants like Putin will be able to say "tu quoque" when justifying their own short way with dissenters.

International cooperation sought over Julian Assange

Oz fags - buy them while you can

"Plain packaging" is a misnomer when it comes to the new Australian regs:



Although not (for many years now) a smoker, I am tempted to buy some of these, for they won't be around forever. They will be collector's items in future, and good (benson and) hedges against inflation.

Look after them well, and don't break the cellophane - condition is so important at auction.

Three levels of freedom

There are at least three different levels or arenas of the freedom debates. Much of the heat in a debate springs from the argument shifting midway from one area to another. Please accept this as a first poor attempt at mapping out the ground.

1. Collective freedom

Struggle between groups. Groups of people who have some common identity and feel oppressed or insufficiently involved in the power structures that govern them. E.g. national sovereignty vs the EU, the suffragette movement, the abolition of slavery. Sometimes, as in the last two examples, there is significant support from outsiders in their struggle.

This debate is generally about fairness.

Factual argument will be about how one group suffers more, or benefits less, than another, in terms of personal income and wealth, longevity, health etc.

Moral argument will be based on the sense of unearned privilege or luck of those outside the group.

The counter-argument to this is that the privileged pay for the difference by protecting and succouring others (e.g. treating servants kindly, providing for them in sickness or age, educating their children, giving to charity, leaving bequests in wills, administering justice in peacetime, leading in time of war). Another compensation is to accept additional restrictions on their personal conduct, or voluntarily to risk greater misfortune or suffer extraordinary pain (e.g. Aztec kings dragged ceremonial knotted ropes through holes in their tongues). In some cases, there is an appeal to (false?) identification: the privileged are allowing the less fortunate to live through them in imagination.

The counter-counter-argument is that the difference is never quite paid for in full.

Contradiction: when a group wins, it sets terms for those who disagree. Freedom of speech is limited to protect minorities; Marxists impose equality of wealth by suppressing enterprise, at the same time allowing Party members material privileges to buy their loyalty. There is no freedom for all unless all think the same way.

In commercial terms, the underdog can eventually become the oppressive overdog. Thus a certain outstandingly successful supermarket grew by offering benefits to its customers, but latterly has (allegedly) attempted to buttress its position by exploiting its suppliers to the point of financial ruin, buying land around its stores to prevent competition from springing up, worsening the contracts of its lorry-drivers etc.

2. Individual freedom

The individual's desire for more leeway in their personal conduct (e.g. to smoke in pubs, engage in certain sexual practices, take currently illicit drugs, go everywhere in the nude).

This debate is generally about harmlessness, at least with respect to others.

Factual argument will centre on statistics relating to mortality, morbidity, economics, health and crime on others (neighbours, partners, children, the public at large) and the costs to society of treating or preventing these undesired side-effects, which shade off into claimed wider and longer-term consequences (e.g. health effects of secondary smoking).

Moral and political argument will be about whether society in general should be involved in mitigating harm to third parties (e.g. should social workers intervene in families of alcoholics, wife-beaters etc). Should society save the "victims", punish the "offenders" or leave altogether alone?

There will also be an appeal to social or religious norms; some will say that the individual must accept certain behavioural restrictions so that the uncodified patterns of behaviour and expectation that are felt to hold society together are not weakened. Thus some will argue that it is important to set a good personal example, or not to set a bad one (this has implications for professions such as teaching); similarly, certain behaviours are felt to have the potential to provoke socially disruptive reactions and measures are instituted to limit them (e.g. sumptuary laws, rules on what may be said about others in public - or even in private).

The individualist may dispute the fact as far as possible, and beyond that appeal to the principle that every other individual must take responsibility for their own responses. Norms will be represented as arbitrary and unnecessary for human happiness; it will be claimed that society will hold together without them.

To set oneself against others is to make oneself vulnerable, so the individualist will attempt to form (often uneasy) alliances, and raise the debate or struggle to the level of a collective-freedom issue. Thus with the groups effectively defined by their "oppressor" we will find some groups who are self-defined by some chosen issue.

But the fundamentalist individualist may not bother to ask society's permission at all. In the first place, getting rules changed is an uncertain and long-term project; secondly, to ask permission or to gather collective approval is (in principle) to cede one's personal power to others.

Contradiction: the individual may turn his dislike of others' power over him, into a mission to get power over others. At the extreme end we get Mao, Stalin etc. On a lesser scale, we get what is said to be the statistical over-representation of psychopaths in senior positions in politics and business.

3. Psychological (or spiritual) freedom

This is about conflict within the individual. Our desires are often contradictory; and sometimes there are demons hiding in one's background, waiting to finish business from long ago. Then there are patterns of expectation driving one to unsatisfactory aims, so that (e.g.) abused children often seek to start families of their own, long before they are capable of nurturing a child emotionally.

If you accept the insights of psychologists and prophets, failure to sort out the mess at this level sometimes results in drives and disasters at levels 2 and 3. Think of Citizen Kane and "Rosebud".

In this context it will be interesting to hear what Russell Brand has to say in his BBC Three TV documentary tomorrow. He is often seen as a poster-boy for indulgence, but actually is now an advocate for abstinence and for analysing one's reasons for wishing to indulge.

But this is about more than consumption-desires. Many of us (most? all?) are a mass of scores trying to be settled, patterns trying for completion, the expectations of family, friends or society, or unrealistic aspirations for ideal iconic life-moments that end forever with credits and closing music.

Contradiction: the fractured individual is afraid to be healed. Change is a kind of death. Creative people often fear that they could lose their motive force - e.g. Roald Dahl as reported by his daughter Tessa:

He hated the idea of therapy, analysis or psychiatry, as he said all his friends – Lillian Hellman, Dashiell Hammett and the rest – ‘could never write after they had had all their nooks and crannies flattened like pancakes’. He was convinced that drugs were the answer (they didn’t flatten you like a pancake?). I believe he did not want to face his inner demons. So he told Anna to medicate me instead.

As the prophet Mohammed said (and he is far from the only one to say something like it), "Holy is the warrior who is at war with himself", i.e. who is this "I" and why does it want this thing?

But if the "I" is enigmatic, self-contradictory, untrustworthy and potentially destructive to self and others, by what shall we regulate our lives?

So we could get to another contradiction: voluntary submission. "To enter in these bonds is to be free," said Donne, enjoying the contradiction. The doctor and sometime Spectator contributor "Theodore Dalrymple" has more than once had prisoners tell him they prefer being "inside", where they don't have to make decisions. Round and round we go, like the worm Ouroboros. But surely here is where we begin.

I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart.