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This post originally appeared on my Tumblr.

Last week, I finished a walk I started two years ago. The story of that walk is on my YouTube channel. I’d had to turn back, because I ran out of water, just above this:

Katholiko monastery dates back as a place of worship to the eleventh century. It was abandoned because of pirate raids.

This photo is taken from opposite where I walked down. I came in through the arch towards the right of the picture. To the right of that is an entrance to a cave that contains a chapel. Moving leftwards, there are a couple of ruined buildings – the one further back has grass, sadly rather brown when I was there, growing on its roof. Then, at the left edge, is a bridge to nowhere, of which more later.

Alice and I were on holiday in Crete again recently and I was able to walk from Gouverneto monastery to the ruined (but not entirely abandoned) Katholiko monastery. This time I wore stouter shoes and took rather more water.

This photo is a reverse shot of the first, taken from before you walk through the arches.

Here is a shot from a different angle; the grass-covered building is in the centre of the image and just to the right are the entrance arches. A little further to the right is the entrance to the cave chapel. The whole place has a Indiana Jones feel to it.

From more or less the same spot, this shows the bridge I mentioned. I don’t really understand why the bridge is as it is; it has rooms of some sort, but it doesn’t go anywhere other than a cliff face on the other side. The construction is pretty solid and must have taken a lot of work to get all the stone down there. There is a riverbed under the bridge, dry when I was there, but the size of the bridge is disproportionate to what water might flow down there. My only guess is that it was built as a platform to allow outdoor services or gatherings, but I may be way, way off.

I hope that it and the next photo give some idea of its geographic location, on the side of quite a steep valley.

These are the stairs down from the path from Gouverneto. I presume that building materials would have had to have been carried down here from there; it took me about half an hour, as I recall. I walked down and then back up; I would not have liked to have carried a building’s worth of stone down.

A shot of the complex from a bit further back.

This link will take you to Google Maps and will hopefully give you a useful view of the lie of the land. It’s in the Google Earth 3D mode, with the path at left and snaking in to the bottom of the monastery.

I was really pleased to make it to Katholiko. I’d like to go back, and go all the way down to the sea, but it’ll have to be at a time other than high summer. I’m not very fit, it was somewhere above thirty degrees celsius, and it was humid. It took me a while to get back up to Gouverneto, and I had to stop three or four times on the way. The further up I went, the easier it became. I think that might have something to do with the humidity, as I was struggling to catch my breath when I took my first stop on the way back up. Going back out of summer would also hopefully mean more greenery around the monastery.

The pictures are all stitched together using the excellent piece of free software, Hugin. There are some more photos from this trip to Crete on this album on my Flickr (and have a look around for more photos in general!)

EDM1255 (2004)

That this House is appalled, but barely surprised, at the revelations in M15 files regarding the bizarre and inhumane proposals to use pigeons as flying bombs; recognises the important and live-saving role of carrier pigeons in two world wars and wonders at the lack of gratitude towards these gentle creatures; and believes that humans represent the most obscene, perverted, cruel, uncivilised and lethal species ever to inhabit the planet and looks forward to the day when the inevitable asteroid slams into the earth and wipes them out thus giving nature the opportunity to start again.

xD.

“CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE IN THE PRESS, AND EVERY LIBERAL SPEAKER IS DUMB.”

Last night I watched Julien Temple’s excellent Requiem for Detroit? on BBC2. It is, after a fashion, a beautiful film: a harsh beauty, but a beauty nonetheless.

The skill is in the storytelling, so I recommend watching it, but the story itself is simple. Overdependence on the motor industry set the stage for economic disaster if anything happened to the car industry; white flight to the suburbs, possible because many people could afford cars, hollowed out the city centre and the loss of a tax base turned it into a ghetto; the oil shock of the 70’s accelerated everything; racial tensions worsened as people moved from the South in search of jobs. The motor industry and the city recovered as oil prices fell, but the motor industry relied on SUVs and Detroit on the motor industry. The recent economic turmoil has dealt a hammer-blow to the city.

Barking is not a direct match for Detroit, but the closure of Dagenham Ford was a similar economic disaster. This was similarly coupled with bad social planning – specifically, right-to-buy (or, rather, the effects when the tenants who became owners moved out) – and now we have a situation in which the BNP can do well.

Perhaps some of the northern cities of England would be a better match, but Barking seems to be the focus, given that Nick Griffin is standing there and the BNP hope to take the council at the next election.

xD.

How do you feel about the burka?

France is more than a little negative.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. I see the argument that some women are being forced to wear the burka, directly or indirectly, and that this is an affront to our sense of liberty and justice. I also see the argument that says this is an argument best won by the moderating influence of time. Moreover, I see the argument that says this is not the proper role of the government.

Part of me wants to say that the Fifth Republic is acting to prevent the repression of women by being forced to wear the burka. The rest of me, though, doesn’t. The rest of me says this isn’t about laicite or secularism, but about Islamophobia and nativism.

Even if I were to accept the premise on which this restriction of liberty is proposed, I would have to reject the proposal. Firstly, it strikes me that the risks involved in prohibiting the wearing of a garment are great. The potential to then say that all religious symbols are forbidden, and then symbols of political organisations that threaten the state, seems to me to be non-trivial given the effects. Secondly, it is monstrously illiberal. Thirdly, and most importantly if the aim is to foster integration, it simply cannot work. Promoting tolerance by stigmatising a group seems to be up on the list of oxymorons between ‘political agreement’ and ‘military intelligence’.

The premise simply does not hold up to even the briefest examination. Then there is the language used in the debate. Despite his recent, half-hearted backpedalling, President Sarkozy did much to foment this action by starting a debate about what it is to be French. This proposal was not done in concert with the Muslims communities of France; it was raised in a parliamentary committee, far from the banlieues. No account was made of individual choice, or whether there were ways to coax people out from behind the burka.

Let us recall Article X of the Déclaration des droits de l’homme et du citoyen – available on the French Justice Ministry’s website:

Nul ne doit être inquiété pour ses opinions, mêmes religieuses, pourvu que leur manifestation ne trouble pas l’order public établi par la loi
no-one should be troubled for their opinions, including religious opinions, so long as their promulgation does not cause a breach of the peace (my translation)

Certainly, some will have been honestly concerned about the oppression of women, although they seem not to have considered the possibility that one of the 1900 or so women who apparently where the burka might freely choose to do so. However, the hamfistedness of the proposal renders that moot. Moreover, its promulgation has been a means, albeit with the help, unsought or not, of Len Pen et al, of tarring all French Muslims as unFrench.

This is not about liberty. This is not about secularism. This is not about laicité.

This is about raising awareness of the other. This is about making life harder for the other. This is about stigmatising the other.

I’ve only been to Oslo once. It’s a lovely city; I arrived, though, on a winter’s Sunday afternoon. The cold and the habit of Osloers of spending the weekend outside the city meant that there were very few people out and about other than a slightly chilly Brit and a group of protesters outside the Storting. The feeling, watching the paucity of cars and pedestrians, was of a city that had lost a great deal of its population in a past cataclysm and that the remaining inhabitants were too few for the size of the city. As I said, Oslo is a lovely city and it’s easy to walk around, but it felt as if a hundred thousand Norwegians were missing. The following day, a Monday, saw the return of life to the city and made it feel altogether more human.

I’ve had a similar but less pleasant feeling at Westminster tube station. Westminster tube is, for my money, the least human station on the underground. The exposed steel and concrete, marked in places by damp and leaks, gives you the feeling, if you go down its great maw towards the Jubilee line platforms in the early morning, of the human race having become troglodytes after the surface was rendered uninhabitable. It feels like a post-apocalyptic industrial complex built for an army of workers that are turning to dust somewhere. Clearly, it is designed to handle a large throughput of passengers but its open galleries, sheer drops and inhumanly large scale mean that, except during the busiest periods, you feel as if you’re on a Ridley Scott movie set. It is a vertiginous, agoraphobia-inducing and ugly building that makes us feel like ants in a giant formicarium and not people.

I spent last night at Heathrow’s Terminal Five. Although it has avoided the total dehumanisation of Westminster tube in fulfilling its brief to be able to cope with future demand, at night it has a similar feel of emptiness and excessive scale. The massive struts that support the roof are held together by nuts and bolts that wouldn’t look out of place on an oil rig; the cavernous expanse under the roof does make you wonder how many planes would have to take off to empty it. It feels sterile.

I simply wonder if it is not possible to design public buildings that can cope with large numbers of people, both present and expected in the future, that don’t make us feel like an inconvenience to the grand design when relatively quiet.

xD.

Jonathan Djanogly, MP,
House of Commons,
London SW1A 0AA.

Dear Mr Djanogly,

Re: Conduct of Mr Patrick Mercer

As you will be aware, there was a story in the press earlier this year about a hit-list of prominent British Jews, including Lord Sugar. The Sun has since admitted it was false, apologised and withdrawn the article. The inspiration for the article came from Mr Glen Jenvey, who Mr Mercer has described as ‘a man who needs to be listened to’.

A colleague of mine, Tim Ireland, discovered the story’s inaccuracy through his investigation in his own time. Since then, Mr Ireland has been branded a child molester and had his home address and ex-directory telephone number published on the internet.

I am writing to you because your colleague, Mr Mercer, has caused a number of the problems Mr Ireland faces through both his actions and inactions, including denying contacts with Mr Jenvey despite evidence in the public domain to the contrary. A summary of the events can be found on the Guardian’s website (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/sep/25/the-sun-ummah-unite-bardot) and on Mr Ireland’s own website (http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/09/patrick_mercer_boom.asp).

I should be very grateful if you could find the time to discuss this with Mr Mercer and if you could inform me of the results of that discussion.

Yours sincerely,

David Cole.

The London Evening Standard carries a headline that is worth repeating.

Ryanair makes £500m on extras

.

It is worth repeating because the model of budget airlines has been mooted by certain Tories involved in local government as an appropriate model.

I don’t know about you, but when I fly, I like to take a bag (up to £70 on Ryanair). I might want to check it in (up to £30). I might even want to pay online (unspecified surcharge).

One way that budget airlines make their money is by charging for things that you don’t absolutely need. It is possible to travel without luggage checked into the hold. The great bulk of people do want to have hold luggage.

Another way that budget airlines – particularly EasyJet – make money is by offering the best prices for people who pay early with consequently higher prices for those who pay closer to travelling.

Translate this to council-provided services. Do you really need your bins collected every week? Because it’ll cost you fifty quid. Do you really need a breakfast club at your school? Because it’ll cost you twenty quid. Do you really want to pay your council tax online? Because that’ll cost you a fiver.

Are you middle-class enough to be able to manage your finances that you can pay your council tax four months in advance? Have a discount. Otherwise…

I don’t mind state service providers paying more for better services. I have paid extra to have my passport turned around in a day (very good service, by the way) and I often send packages by registered post or special delivery.

I object to state service providers giving a service at the absolute bare minium and charging for the service that people reasonably need.

Ultimately, it it easy to decide to fly bmi instead of Ryanair. It’s rather harder to move from one local council to another. The effect of the equivalent of the £500m made by Ryanair on extras is to increase charges and decrease council tax. It is deeply regressive.

xD.

Posted by Wordmobi

Listening to the rather wonderful Fry’s English Delight reminded me of a post on the rather wonderful F Word Blog. A dimwit MEP by the name of Roger Helmer doesn’t believe that homophobia exists. Mr Helmer, whose blog has the strapline ‘Straight Talking’, says

In psychiatry, a phobia is defined as an irrational fear. I have yet to meet anyone who has an irrational fear of homosexuals, or of homosexuality. So to the extent that the word has any meaning at all, it describes something which simply does not exist.

This is the kind of English up with which I will not put. Firstly, the word phobia is used outside of the psychiatric context. A rabid dog is sometimes described as hydrophobic because of its fear of water – different to that described in the DSM – and a symptom of meningitis is often described as photophobia. Unless Mr Helmer is insisting that every tin can he buys is entirely Sn, he can sod right off.

Beyond that, the meanings of words change. Paedophilia comes from the Greek ????, child, and ?????, which best translates as ‘brotherly love’ (as in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love). It was originally coined to differentiate from pederasty which definitely meant sexual love. I could use Helmer’s logic to say that we don’t need to worry about paedophiles, but those damned paederotes. It would be as pointless as Helmer saying that he is not a homophobe but a antibivirist – words change their meaning.

xD.

The LSE SU is embarking on a fairly radical programme whereby it will share some staff with SUARTS, the SU for the University of the Arts, London. Details of the proposals can be found on the LSE SU website and a brief comment from me is at the end of this post.

LSE SU General Secretary Aled Dilwyn Fisher, who also contested the North-East constituency for the Green Party at last year’s GLA elections, kindly agreed to be interviewed. My questions are in bold.
Continue reading “Interview with Aled Dilwyn Fisher: the future of LSE Students’ Union” →