Okay, what's going to keep us up so high?

Fourth Estate, Fifth Column

I hold no brief for the hapless Gordon Brown, but who does Adam Boulton think he is, telling HM the Queen's first minister "You're staying here"?:



And then there's this interview (clip 3) with the equally ill-starr'd Defence Minister Bob Ainsworth: "Can I just read to you some of the phrases that have been used to describe you? Bungling Bob, Mr Ainsworthless. Are you not in danger of becoming the story, when the story should be Afghanistan?"

As if this aggressive, grandstanding style - which led to former-Newsnight-bruiser-now-quiz-show-host Jeremy Paxman being sidelined soon after Labour got in - is ever likely to get a useful and unintentionally revealing answer.

Time some of these journos learned (a) some manners and (b) how to do the job effectively. Give me the oily David Frost any day; much more dangerous.

The Third Age

As we face the cheery news of further-deferred State retirement benefits, the item below is doing the rounds on the Net. I'm almost looking forward to going back to work tomorrow.

A few years ago my wife and I moved into a retirement development on Florida's Southeast coast. We are living in the Delray/Boca/Boynton Golf, Spa, Bath and Tennis Club on Lake Fake-a-hachee. There are 3000 lakes in Florida; only three are real. Most lake names end in hachee something. Our biggest retirement concern was time management. What were we going to do all day?

Let me assure you, passing the time is not a problem. Your days will be eaten up by simple, daily activities. Just getting out of your car takes 15 minutes. Trying to find where you parked takes 20minutes. It takes 1/2 hour on the check-out line in Wal-Mart and 1 hour to return the item the next day.

Let me take you through a typical day. We get up at 5:00 AM, have a quick breakfast and join the early morning Walk and Talk Club. There are about 30 of us and rain or shine we walk around the streets, all talking at once. Every development has some late risers who stay in bed until 6 AM.

After a nimble walk avoiding irate drivers out to make us road kill, we go back home, shower and change for the next activity.

My wife goes directly to the pool for her under-water Pilates class, followed by gasping for breath and CPR. I put on my 'Ask me about my Grandchildren' T-shirt, my plaid mid-calf shorts, my black socks and sandals and go to the club house lobby for a nice nap.

Before you know it, it's time for lunch. We go to Costco to partake of the many tasty samples dispensed by ladies in white hair nets. All free!

After a filling lunch, if we don't have any doctor appointments, we might go to the flea market to see if any new white belts have come in or to buy a Rolex watch for $20.00.

We're usually back home by 2 PM to get ready for dinner. People start lining up for the early bird about 3 PM, but we get there by 3:45 because we're late eaters. The dinners are very popular because of the large portions they serve. You can take home enough food for the next day's lunch and dinner, including extra bread, crackers, packets of mustard, relish, ketchup and Sweet-and-Low along with mints.

At 5:30 we're home ready to watch the 6 o'clock news. By 6:30 we're fast asleep. Then we get up and make 5 or 6 trips to the bathroom during the night and it's time to get up and start a new day all overagain.

Doctor-related activities eat up most of your retirement time. Calling for test results also help the days fly by. It takes at least half an hour just getting through the doctor's phone menu. Then there's the hold time until you're connected to the right party. Sometimes they forget you're holding, and the whole office goes off to lunch.

Should you find you still have time on your hands, volunteering provides a rewarding opportunity to help the less fortunate. Florida has the largest concentration of seniors under five feet and they need our help. I myself am a volunteer for 'The Vertically Challenged Over 80.' I coach their basketball team, The Arthritic Avengers. The hoop is only 4 1/2 feet from the floor. You should see the look of confidence on their faces when they make a slam dunk.

Food shopping is a problem for short seniors or 'bottom feeders' as we call them because they can't reach the items on the upper shelves. There are many foods they've never tasted. After shopping,most seniors can't remember where they parked their cars and wander the parking lot for hours while their food defrosts.

Lastly, it's important to choose a development with an impressive name. Italian names are very popular in Florida . They convey world traveler, uppity sophistication and wealth. Where would you rather live... Murray 's Condos or the Lakes Of Venice ? There's no difference. They're both owned by Murray who happens to be a cheap bastard.

I hope this material has been of help to you future retirees. If I can be of any further assistance, please look me up when you're in Florida .. I live in The Leaning Condos of Pisa in Boynton Beach ...

The Internet and collapsing real estate values

Web Ad Sales In Britain Overtake TV

Watch for the coming crash in commercial real estate, as increasingly, intangibles, non-perishables and some perishables get sold by Net and delivered from centralised locations.

The dolorous stroke

Falling towers
Jerusalem Athens Alexandria
Vienna London
Unreal


Hitchens (1):

A great grey Tower of Babel reaches up into the sky over Europe, lopsided, full of cracks and likely to collapse in the fullness of time...

For Britain, Europe’s oldest continuously independent sovereign state, [...] it is the end of 1,000 years of history, as predicted by the Labour leader Hugh Gaitskell as long ago as 1962...

In the EU, Ireland – no longer a Tiger – takes its place alongside Slovenia and Lithuania as a quirky, minor possession on the damp and unvisited fringes of the Continent, with almost no voting power.

Shorn – as it is now – of its ability to get in the way, it may find that the flow of subsidies will become much thinner in years to come...

The ascent of the EU happened to coincide with several decades of unheard-of prosperity and growth. But the EU did not cause that prosperity...

It was based on American Marshall Aid and helped along by American and British willingness to spend heavily on defending Europe against the USSR, while most of the EU nations kept their military budgets small.

The EU also cannot guarantee that Europe’s prosperity will go on forever. With so many member nations, many of them devastated by decades of Marxist misrule, its capacity to hand out subsidies is running out.

The credit crisis has not finished yet, Western Europe is fast running out of its own energy supplies and the shift of economic power to the Far East is speeding up, not stopping.

The European nations have not worked out how to deal with the enormous Muslim minorities which they have encouraged to settle on their territory and which increasingly demand the right to live according to their traditions.

Nor can they stop the slide of the manufacturing industry towards the regions where labour is cheapest.

Germany, still in a sort of post-traumatic shock over the cost of absorbing the Communist East, may not forever be willing to share a currency – and so a joint bank account – with the poorer and less well-run nations of the Eurozone.

Hitchens (2):

... At the coming Election, refuse to vote for any of them, and do so in such numbers that they can no longer claim they have any mandate to rule, so that their zombie parties collapse in a heap of dust and worms, and we can start again.

The alternative is the accelerating death of our civilisation.

Hannan:

People often wonder why national leaders are so ready to hand their powers to Brussels. Each successive EU treaty has weakened national parliaments, yet each has been enthusiastically ratified by those same parliaments, often in overt defiance of public opinion.

What makes the politicians do it? [...] Perhaps – let’s be blunt – they are defying their electorates in the hope of getting lucrative positions in the EU when their terms expire.

I realise that this is a big claim. But, in ten years as an MEP, I’ve seen it happen time and again.

I’ve watched people arrive in Brussels as moderate Euro-sceptics, but change their views as their lips become clamped around the teat of the expenses. I’ve watched ‘No’ campaigners turn into Euro-enthusiasts after being given sinecures.

Now Tony Blair is plainly not in that category. He was a Euro-enthusiast to start with, albeit in a rather vague, pro-Italian-holidays kind of way. And he’s hardly poor...

No, the charge against him is not that he abandoned his beliefs, but that he abandoned Britain’s interests...

Could the issue of the [EU] budget have been linked in Blair’s mind, even subliminally, with that of the presidency?

... if Blair really did seek to buy the presidency with British taxpayers’ money, he was almost literally selling his country – and there is a very unpleasant word for people who do that.

For those who believe in history with a human face, perhaps this is a punishment, for believing we could create some small and imperfect version of an Earthly Paradise, where even the poorest man would have a voice in his government, and have hope to better his position in society; where the bully would be held back by fear of punishment, and the powerful restrained by the apprehension of condign retribution.

My wife says she feels aggression everywhere, people arguing with bus drivers that they shouldn't have to pay. I say the hungry sheep look up and are not fed; we are lost and leaderless ; those at the bottom of society live in fear of the future, despair, impotent rage, having nothing but meagre dole given them with grandstanding condemnation and impossible promises of opportunity.

Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help, said the Psalmist.

Le Prince d'Aquitaine à la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins

It always ends in a building project, whether the new EU Parliament or Ceauşescu's Casa Poporului...














But that two-handed engine at the door
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no more

It's not for us to take up arms. Worldly powers will rise and fall. Our defence, and the future, is the family. That is the nearest we can have to the Earthly Paradise.

The Other Side

I know that I have done my fair share of criticising the rich and influential on this forum. Why they think they should be in charge is exemplified in the website http://www.yousuckatcraigslist.com , to which I was directed by my lovely wife.

For those who don't know, Craig's List is a free website to exchange goods and services, among other things.

Polanski

Mark Steyn joins the discussion about Roman Polanski's arrest, adding some revolting and disturbing detail - Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage to his own 13-year-old cousin Myra, this isn't.

My question is, why have the authorities left it so long? There's some hidden agenda, surely. And surely, for justice to be seen to be done, there should not be hidden agendas.