Arab World in Revolt?

It could be the start of something much bigger. Tunisia went up in flames first, Libya, the next door neighbour is probably coming to a slow boil and could erupt if Gadafi slips, Egypt has erupted, the Palestinians blame Israel for their woes, but can't get their own act together and the Iranian Regime is said to be fomenting rebellion in Yehmen, Oman, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and aiming at Saudi Arabia ...

While it is commonly believed in the West that all these places are filled with fanatical Muslims, the truth is probably a little different. Almost all of them are governed by one form of Autocracy or another. In nearly every case, corruption is rampant, and the Mullahs and fanatics exploit the frustrations, hopes and ambitions of those who aren't benefitting from the gravy train. So these eruptions of civil unrest may be the first glimmer of an indication of something bigger in prospect, a collapse of the current "Arab Hegemony" of the Muslim world.

I suspect it will happen in two parts, first, the current crop of autocrats will be swept aside and replaced by a new crop of Theocratic Dictators like Iran's. Eventually the religious restrictions on freedom of expression, choice and belief will come under attack as it has in the West - and then Islam will find itself being rolled aside and perhaps even rejected by its natural followers. But before then, we are in for a very explosive, dangerous and bitter transition.

And sadly, faiths of all sorts will be blamed...

The trouble with Microsoft ...

There can be no doubt that Microsoft Word, Excel, Powerpoint and so on are the dominant tools in the world of commerce and government at present. They're everywhere and anything sent electronically probably has to have some of their code in it somewhere. But I wonder how many people have the same sort of trouble I'm currently encountering with it.

I use a Mac. In order to make the things I do available for those unfortunates who don't or who are stuck, thanks to employer choices or government policy, with the PC and all its Microsoft problems, I have Office for Mac installed and I have to say that 99% of the time it runs just fine. In fact, on my machines, it runs 100% of the time exactly as I want it to. The problem is there is a difference in the coding between Word 2008 for a Mac and Word 2007 on a PC. As long as you are working Mac to Mac it doesn't matter, but the moment you open a Word 2008 document from a Mac on a PC with any version of Word after 2003, the formatting starts to do some odd things. In fact, I've noticed that this happens on PCs as well when you open an older version of a Word File in a new version.

What it does, is randomly removes the little gaps in lines of words. So, randomly it will close the gap after a fullstop and the start of the next sentence, or simply remove the gap between two words. As long as you are aware of this, it needn't be a problem, but it rapidly becomes one when you send a Word Document to a publisher or to someone not using the same version of Word as yourself.

Why am I bothered by this? Simple, I recently submitted a manuscript to a publisher. Two days ago I got the Galley back. On every page of the 300+ pages there are at least four of these little spaces missing and which will now have to be inserted by the publisher at no little expenditure of time and effort. Effort on my part to find all of them and time on theirs to fix it. Why has this happened? Refer to the beginning of this and you will guess that their Word 2007 and my Office for Mac Word 2008 are not playing from the same song sheet.

They simply copy and paste my document into their Page Maker for Word 2007. In the process the Word "Different Versions Don't Talk the Same Language" Gremlin strikes. Yesterday I rang the Publisher and didn't get a lot of help. The only suggestion was try saving it in an older version - I did that on a previous occasion and guess what? It doesn't make any difference, in fact, it seems to make it worse. I can turn it into a PDF without this happening and that works at their end as well - but then they can't edit it or turn it into Page Maker...

So now it's back to marking up and editing. I just hope I find all the Gremlins...

Salvage underway

The Mammoet Salvage team have got themselves started and judging by the photos appearing in the local press, this is going to be one fascinating job. The first stage is to alleviate the risk of a spill of the 2,400 tons of concentrated Sulphuric Acid by getting it out of the tanks. This has to be done one tank at a time and each tank must then have the remnant neutralised and then ballasted before the next one can be drained.

For those who don't know, shoving water into a tank full of concentrated Sulphuric Acid is one of the messiest ways to create an explosion. The water and the acid react, generating steam and the result is a steam burst, the water gets so hot, so fast, it converts to steam - and the steam bursts the tank. The passenger rail services along the edge of the river to St Goarhausen and the neighbouring towns has been suspended while this operation is in progress and so has road traffic - the road runs between the river and the rail line.

Once the barge can safely be lifted, it will be brought into the small harbour right next to it and then righted and refloated properly. After that it will be towed away to be either scrapped or repaired. Apparently no decision has yet been made on it and it seems very likely that at some point the body of one or both the missing crewmen will be found inside it.

Democracy

This post was prompted by an item on the Blog "Witterings from Witney" entitled "Voting Systems." As far as I can see, Democracy works fine, as long as you don't allow politicians to become a "class" on their own. Then you don't have Democracy, you have what Plato called an Oligarchy. Add in a permanent "government" of bureaucrats who are never challenged, never dismissed and form the single biggest employment and political bloc in the electorate and you no longer have a democracy but something between an Oligarchy and the dreaded "Authoritarian" level Plato abhorred. I actually posted most of this as a 'comment' to the post linked above, but then felt it needed to be expressed here as well.

In my view we actually need to rethink what "Democracy" actually means. For far to long we have suffered a rule by a ruling elite who only consult us for forms sake. Perhaps it is time to introduce a wieghted ballot and certainly one where each voter has to express a preference for the "manifesto" their party of choice wishes to impose. The final straw for me was the last government's continual parroting of "we don't need a referendum, it was in our manifesto." A document unread by 95% of their own voters and probably even fewer outside of it. Considering they were elected by less than 30% of the total electorate they could hardly claim to be representing a "majority."

Democracy as it was understood until the Politically Correct and the terminally incompetent entrenched themselves in Parliament and the Civil Service, was about the Rule of the Majority for the benefit of all, including the minority members of our society. They have turned that on its head so we are now ruled by Minority Interests and any suggestion that the Majority should be heard is immediately labelled as "oppression" or "Institutional ****-ism (of your choice)."

So, for my money, here are my suggestions -

1. Scrap First Past the Post and replace it with a double transferable vote. First Vote for a LOCAL candidate of choice, Second vote for a Party of Choice.

2. Include a Yes/No list of Manifesto "Desires" for each candidate and Party. Failure to indicate a preference for any item on these lists to be an automatic registration of NO to the unregistered item.

3. Limit the term of office for both elected Members and Senior Civil Servants to a maximum of three terms (3) without exception and the term to be fixed at 5 years each. (Senior Civil Servant - all posts above Grade 7. Fixed Term contracts of maximum of 12 years and NO knighthoods, peerages or any other accolade unless there has been demonstrably outstanding performance while in office.)

4. Abolish the Whips. Every vote in the House to be secret and FREE.

5. Give us an elected Upper House, subject to the same rule of a maximum of Three Terms.

6. Give the Upper House the power to veto bad legislation and to oversee the promulgation of Regulations by "Ministers" - in reality the Mandarin using the Minister as a smokescreen...

7. Revise the Constituencies. 10,000 in Scotland = 1 MP in Westminster; 100,000 in England = 1 MP. While this is not uniform it illustrates the problem. Some Welsh and Scottish cnstiuencies return MPs on a disproportionately small electorate, yet have the same influence as the larger majority in England who are ignored. (Think Jack Straw = There's no such thing as an "English" identity...)

8. If Scotland can have a "Parliament" and Wales an "Assembly" both funded by English tax, why can't the English have their own Parliament? Why should Scottish and Welsh MPs have a say in the running of England?

The EU could be good for a Britain now reduced to a twentieth rank player by years of socialist handouts, Union destruction of commerce and industry and our economic base (Our shipping, the life blood of the nation, is now all foreign crewed, owned and flagged thanks to the RMT!) if we could just make up our minds about whether we want to be part of a major power or continue to pretend we can be a major power when the reality is that the Civil Service has reduced us to the status of a "developing nation" with its strangling bureaucracy and creative use of gilded directives. Much of the "Over Regulation" the Media in the UK blame on Brussels is actually the result of the creative 're-interpretation' by the UK Civil Service to fir their agenda - which is frequently in opposition to what the relevant Minister thinks his/her Department is doing.

The truth is that Whitehall is autonomous. It is run by Civil Servants for the benefit of Civil Servants. Departments are often attempting to duplicate efforts and services already provided by another department and frequently contradict one another. No rationalisation is ever possible because the size of the Permanent Under Secretary's pay and perks depends on how large a Fiefdom he/she can hold onto. The bigger you can make your Deaprtment, the greater your status and prestige in this elite within a ruling elite. At times deliberate sabotage of another Department is resorted to in order to maintain the status quo for your own. Anyone who thinks the Civil Service is about actually serving the nation, or indeed, the electorate and their elected government, should be compelled to spend a year working in this environment. They'd soon learn the error of their ways...

Come to think of it, first step in restoring democracy - abolish the Civil Service!

Tanker Recovery

The sunken chemical tanker at St Goarshausen, the Loreley bend in the Rhine, is now under recovery. The three huge salvage cranes are now on site and being placed in position to do the lift. Approptiately they are named Atlas, Grizzly and Amsterdam, they are operated by the company Mammoet, a Dutch Salvage company that also recovered the remains of the Russian submarine Kursk. The local newspapers have videos on their websites and these can be found by following the links to the most recent.

An earlier video from the day of the accident can be found by following this link. The commentary is all in German, but the pictures speak for themselves.

The Loreley

The weather on Sunday at the Loreley matched the scene. The river is still running high and turbulent, the sky was leaden and misty, full of snow higher up, and the wind was biting cold - the kind that doesn't bother going round you.

As can be seen in these pictures, the sunken barge lies right at the foot of the Loreley Statue, it touched an outcrop of shingle bar, and veered out of control, rolling onto its side where it is now pinned by the force of the water. The three heavy cranes have now arrived and it is proposed to lift the wreck slowly and carefully over the next three weeks, currents and weather permitting. It appears that the tanks holding 2,400 tons of concentrated Sulphuric Acid are still intact and haven't leaked, so the object of the exercise is to recover the ship and cargo before they do.

There are still two men 'missing' following the accident, the river has not yet surrendered them, though they may be still trapped inside the hull. With the strength of the current it is hugely difficult and dangerous for divers to enter the wreck.

An idea of how powerful the currents are here can be seen in the first photograph where a tug is actually pulling a barge's bow around the turn. In the final picture the wake of this fully laden barge betrays the way the helmsman is having to work her head into the next bend and not be pushed into the rock embankment.

For those that don't know the legend, it was said that the Loreley, a beautiful, but malevolent, water spirit used to stand on the rocks beneath the headland and sing, distracting the sailors navigating the river and luring them to their doom on the rocks beneath the water here. The legend says that her 'charms' included a stunning figure which she used to full effect. Even the efforts in the 19th and 20th Centuries to make this rather dangerous set of bends safer for navigation haven't completely overcome the lady's legendary reputation.

The Haircut

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut. After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, 'I cannot accept money from you, I'm doing community service this week.' The florist was pleased and left the shop. When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a police officer comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you , I'm doing community service this week.' The cop was happy and left the shop. The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Then a Member of Parliament came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I can not accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The Member of Parliament was very happy and left the shop. The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen other Members of Parliament lined up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our country and the politicians who run it.