The eve of All Saints and I'm stuck in Tehran. Never mind, I'm sure they will be celebrating it properly at the Abbey and certainly will be celebrating the glorious Requiem for all our friends and relatives now joined with the saints in heaven.
For us, the snow has capped the mountains to the north with a thick blanket and the lower slopes and the city is getting some rain. It is interesting to note that all the UK Instructors with me are wandering around in Shirt-sleeve Order still remarking on how pleasant it is to have a bit of rain and the cooler weather - it dropped to 16*C today - while our students are already putting on jumpers and jackets and turning up the heating.
Ah well, I guess its a case of what you're acclimatised to and our summers definitely aren't as warm as those in Tehran.
And now to bed, but first and little time out to think of All the Saints I knw, living and departed.
Saturday, 31 October 2009
Friday, 30 October 2009
Bazaar views
Sleeping on the job....
Mk 1 Computer in use.
Stunning vaults
Jewelry for sale
Porters waiting ...
Thursday, 29 October 2009
Principles come at a price
For some little time I have been pondering the gap between ideals, ideology, principles and the realities of the world. To listen to those in the UK currently holding influence, no price is too high if one's principles are at stake. The media too is very quick to defend "prinicples" yet show a remarkable inability to adhere to these same ideals when there is a good story to be got by devious practices. A recent BBC Hardtalk programme displayed this dichotomy quite nicely, when those who wanted the PanAm bomber to die in jail were accused of being "no better than the regime he served" and failing to apply "Christian principles". The latter was a bit rich coming from a presenter who doesn't hold to Christianity anyway. But the mantra that we must show "compassion" to murderers, criminals and those who cause untold heartbreak and heartache is always quickly trotted out to stifle any counter argument that "compassion" for the victims and for society at large requires that criminals and those who insist on breaking the law should be punished and kept where they cannot harm society or their victims is completely ignored.
All too often the brutal prison regimes and the blatantly unjust sentencing of past centuries is held up as the "alternative" to the soft and "forgiving" justice the liberal left wants imposed. But any visit to a country this same liberal left wants isolated and "punished" for its failure to recognise the "benefits" of following the left-socialist-secularist-humanist ideology and you soon realise that Britain in particular is busy isolating itself from the world in spectacular fashion - and at huge cost to its own economy and working classes.
I am currently in Iran, a country with huge problems and a legacy that will take several generations to resolve. The Shah's regime was brutal, oppressive and as corrupt as it could be. But the Shah was a "friend" to the West and a buffer againts the Soviet Union in the Cold War so we swallowed our principles and dealt with the devil. Then came the Revolution and I am sure that many who supported that hoped, not for thr Theocracy they now have, but for a freer, less corrupt and oppressive regime. Unfortunately, revolutions seldom produce that sort of outcome. Look about you - look at the French Revolution, look at the century that followed it and in particular look at the countries established by violence and revolution in the twentieth century. The ideologies and the realities are so far apart that it makes one want to weep.
I look around me in Iran, conscious of the public condemnation poured on this nation and this people by my own government and of the daily diet of negative imagery in our media both in the UK and in the US. Surprising as it may seem to most of those who stumble across this blog, Iran is an importer of petrolem and oil, their major export is natural gas and many of their vehicles have been converted to run on it. They want nuclear power because their natural energy needs can't be met by hydro-schemes, wind turbines or oil. Yes, the West is probably right to be afraid of the creation of nuclear weapons, but we could achieve a great deal more by being far less confrontational. After all, this nation was a huge empire before the Greeks invented democracy. This nation is as old, if not older than that in the Nile valley, it has seen conquests, it has seen nations rise and fall and it has survived. Around me as I write are the descendents of a civilisation that measures its existence in thousands, not hundreds of years. They do not share our driving ambition to amass wealth - at least not all of them - and they are devout in their observance of their faith which is a great deal more than can be said for the denizens of Whitehall and Westminster who pour scorn on this people and patronise them.
Our French, German, Italian and Central European partners in the EU are far more pragmatic about the differences between ideology and reality. While I see nothing with a "Made in Britain" label here, the markets are full of French, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese goods. The UK Government officially discourages trade with any regime (And the Iranians are just one of several) they disapprove of. The argument is that we in the UK have to show a lead in the application of our "principles". But there is a cost. And it is a huge cost in jobs, in incomes, and ultimately in lost business which will never return to the UK. Remarkable isn't it, that those who argue for these sanctions and defend these "principles" never have to pay the price. Their incomes come from those of us who have to actually get out there and do business, who have to struggle with the strictures and restrictions created by the politicians and bureaucrats whose "principles" we are bound by, and from trust funds, share holdings and other sources with money invested in companies and industries they have driven out of Britain at a huge cost in jobs lost. Nor are they helping the legitimate ambitions of those in places like Iran who aspire to improving their own nations image and political spectra.
They never feel the price of their "principles". They never face the threat of losing their jobs because their "rpinciples" have closed a company, or caused its Board to move it to a part of the world with less restrictions on trade. It is sad to reflect that none of the jobs sacrificed in the UK to these Ideologues "principles" will ever return or be replaced and the country now faces an ever declining spiral of shrinking job markets, reducing industrial output and GNP, with the wealth going ever upward into the hands of those who, as in Iran and those other countries we "don't do business with on principle" can afford to shift their capital offshore and into companies and countries less run by Ideology and more pragmatic and practical.
The Left/Liberal/Socialist Principles come at quite a price. Industrial decline (Lost markets), Commercial shrinkage (We may currently be the "Banking Centre" but for how long if the idiots in Westminster push the tax take up?), and resrictions on trade that mean even smaller businesses struggle to make ends meet or to address market needs. The rise in Joblessness over the past decade has been a severe indictment of the UK's insistence in politics and the media, to apply "principle" rather than dialogue - 2.5 million out of work and rising and it certainly isn't all down to the recession. Though a lot of THAT may well be down to "principle" applied to the exclusion of commone sense.
It is an enormous price - but it isn't being paid by those whose "principles" are so important that "any price is not too high" for it to be paid. As long as its by someone else.
All too often the brutal prison regimes and the blatantly unjust sentencing of past centuries is held up as the "alternative" to the soft and "forgiving" justice the liberal left wants imposed. But any visit to a country this same liberal left wants isolated and "punished" for its failure to recognise the "benefits" of following the left-socialist-secularist-humanist ideology and you soon realise that Britain in particular is busy isolating itself from the world in spectacular fashion - and at huge cost to its own economy and working classes.
I am currently in Iran, a country with huge problems and a legacy that will take several generations to resolve. The Shah's regime was brutal, oppressive and as corrupt as it could be. But the Shah was a "friend" to the West and a buffer againts the Soviet Union in the Cold War so we swallowed our principles and dealt with the devil. Then came the Revolution and I am sure that many who supported that hoped, not for thr Theocracy they now have, but for a freer, less corrupt and oppressive regime. Unfortunately, revolutions seldom produce that sort of outcome. Look about you - look at the French Revolution, look at the century that followed it and in particular look at the countries established by violence and revolution in the twentieth century. The ideologies and the realities are so far apart that it makes one want to weep.
I look around me in Iran, conscious of the public condemnation poured on this nation and this people by my own government and of the daily diet of negative imagery in our media both in the UK and in the US. Surprising as it may seem to most of those who stumble across this blog, Iran is an importer of petrolem and oil, their major export is natural gas and many of their vehicles have been converted to run on it. They want nuclear power because their natural energy needs can't be met by hydro-schemes, wind turbines or oil. Yes, the West is probably right to be afraid of the creation of nuclear weapons, but we could achieve a great deal more by being far less confrontational. After all, this nation was a huge empire before the Greeks invented democracy. This nation is as old, if not older than that in the Nile valley, it has seen conquests, it has seen nations rise and fall and it has survived. Around me as I write are the descendents of a civilisation that measures its existence in thousands, not hundreds of years. They do not share our driving ambition to amass wealth - at least not all of them - and they are devout in their observance of their faith which is a great deal more than can be said for the denizens of Whitehall and Westminster who pour scorn on this people and patronise them.
Our French, German, Italian and Central European partners in the EU are far more pragmatic about the differences between ideology and reality. While I see nothing with a "Made in Britain" label here, the markets are full of French, German, Italian, Korean, Japanese and Chinese goods. The UK Government officially discourages trade with any regime (And the Iranians are just one of several) they disapprove of. The argument is that we in the UK have to show a lead in the application of our "principles". But there is a cost. And it is a huge cost in jobs, in incomes, and ultimately in lost business which will never return to the UK. Remarkable isn't it, that those who argue for these sanctions and defend these "principles" never have to pay the price. Their incomes come from those of us who have to actually get out there and do business, who have to struggle with the strictures and restrictions created by the politicians and bureaucrats whose "principles" we are bound by, and from trust funds, share holdings and other sources with money invested in companies and industries they have driven out of Britain at a huge cost in jobs lost. Nor are they helping the legitimate ambitions of those in places like Iran who aspire to improving their own nations image and political spectra.
They never feel the price of their "principles". They never face the threat of losing their jobs because their "rpinciples" have closed a company, or caused its Board to move it to a part of the world with less restrictions on trade. It is sad to reflect that none of the jobs sacrificed in the UK to these Ideologues "principles" will ever return or be replaced and the country now faces an ever declining spiral of shrinking job markets, reducing industrial output and GNP, with the wealth going ever upward into the hands of those who, as in Iran and those other countries we "don't do business with on principle" can afford to shift their capital offshore and into companies and countries less run by Ideology and more pragmatic and practical.
The Left/Liberal/Socialist Principles come at quite a price. Industrial decline (Lost markets), Commercial shrinkage (We may currently be the "Banking Centre" but for how long if the idiots in Westminster push the tax take up?), and resrictions on trade that mean even smaller businesses struggle to make ends meet or to address market needs. The rise in Joblessness over the past decade has been a severe indictment of the UK's insistence in politics and the media, to apply "principle" rather than dialogue - 2.5 million out of work and rising and it certainly isn't all down to the recession. Though a lot of THAT may well be down to "principle" applied to the exclusion of commone sense.
It is an enormous price - but it isn't being paid by those whose "principles" are so important that "any price is not too high" for it to be paid. As long as its by someone else.
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
Another week down
It takes a while to settle into a week that starts on Saturday and ends on a Wednesday, but I guess we're into the rhythmn now. Weve even renamed Monday as Mittwoch much to the confusion of the students. It started to rain this afternoon, nothing dranatic, just a steady gentle rain that brought the scent of wet, warm earth into the air. It also seems to have brought every car, truck, van and LDV in Tehran onto the roads. Our drive home this evening started at 15.30 and we got home at 17.15. Our driver had to make several detours as well - the roads were completely choked in places.
The rain is steady and soft at present, though the run-off on some of the steeper roads is quite swift, the bulk of it seems to be settling and sinking into the parched ground around here. I expect we will see a sort of late flourish of green replacing the browns and yellows that contrast with the reddish browns, greys and off-white of the soils around us. The stark browns, greys and blue/grens of the mountains have softened as the rain washes them into brighter shades and I suspect that they will also give us some greens and perhaps flowers before the frosts and the snows return. At least, for the next two days, there is no need to face the traffic and I can relax and get some work done without stirring out of the immediate environs.
Ah well, the satellite TV has gone down as well, probably water in a joint somewhere. But that's a problem for tomorrow.
The rain is steady and soft at present, though the run-off on some of the steeper roads is quite swift, the bulk of it seems to be settling and sinking into the parched ground around here. I expect we will see a sort of late flourish of green replacing the browns and yellows that contrast with the reddish browns, greys and off-white of the soils around us. The stark browns, greys and blue/grens of the mountains have softened as the rain washes them into brighter shades and I suspect that they will also give us some greens and perhaps flowers before the frosts and the snows return. At least, for the next two days, there is no need to face the traffic and I can relax and get some work done without stirring out of the immediate environs.
Ah well, the satellite TV has gone down as well, probably water in a joint somewhere. But that's a problem for tomorrow.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
Cold snap
Its great to have Mausi back from her jaunt to Ankara, but I am still stuck in Tehran and the cold seems to be arriving rather suddenly. For the last few days there have been heavy clouds building to the north of the city, behind and above the mountains that form a crescent from east through north to west of this city of some 12 million people. The mountains serve to trap the daily smog raised by the horrendous traffic and to block the rain that would come from the north and west where the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea serve to provide water that can be turned into clouds.
Finally, today, the huge cumulus clouds spilled over the mountains and Tehran, at least the Northern and Eastern suburbs and the city centre, got a downpour. But, as the clouds swept away to the east, they revealed that the tallest of the mountains behind us now has a coating of snow. What is more, it has settled to quite a low level. OK, so there is another mountain and a deep valley between us and the snow, but guess which way the wind is blowing. Right. From the snow.
Well, I guess it was to be expected. Tehran is quite high above sea level and we have enjoyed a long warm autumn, but nw the country around us is ready for some rain and probably for some cold weather as well. The question on our mnds tonight is "Who turns on the heating round here?" It is a joint heating system for the whole apartment block and the controls may well be in the supervisors apartment. We just hope he feels the cold before we do!
Finally, today, the huge cumulus clouds spilled over the mountains and Tehran, at least the Northern and Eastern suburbs and the city centre, got a downpour. But, as the clouds swept away to the east, they revealed that the tallest of the mountains behind us now has a coating of snow. What is more, it has settled to quite a low level. OK, so there is another mountain and a deep valley between us and the snow, but guess which way the wind is blowing. Right. From the snow.
Well, I guess it was to be expected. Tehran is quite high above sea level and we have enjoyed a long warm autumn, but nw the country around us is ready for some rain and probably for some cold weather as well. The question on our mnds tonight is "Who turns on the heating round here?" It is a joint heating system for the whole apartment block and the controls may well be in the supervisors apartment. We just hope he feels the cold before we do!
Monday, 26 October 2009
Ankara
Mausi is back from her week in Ankara. It has been a most interesting week in many respects. Ankara is a HUGE city in the middle of the Anatolian part of Turkey. The current population is estimated to be about 3 million people. The first settlements in this place stem from Hittite times when Ankara was the crossing of several important caravan routes. Ankara is spreading out inside a giant bowl, probably a caldera. There is still a lake at the outskirts of the city that fills an old crater hole.
The Turks like to build their houses close to each other, very close indeed. The old one-family-houses - which can be seen in the photograph above - are now pulled down everywhere and replaced by modern high-rise buildings. Not always an improvement in Mausi's eyes. There are said to be some parks in the city but the ones Mausi has seen were very small indeed. The biggest green areas belong to the military who obviously has enough money and people to keep them beautifully.
The traffic is bad of course despite many newly built roads. But the number of cars is just mind boggling and traffic regulations obviously only apply somewhere else. Still the number of accidents seems to be surprisingly low. Maybe everyone expects some mad behaviour from their fellow drivers. Mausi was glad that most of the time she travelled in a big bus. She felt quite safe inside.
The Turks like to build their houses close to each other, very close indeed. The old one-family-houses - which can be seen in the photograph above - are now pulled down everywhere and replaced by modern high-rise buildings. Not always an improvement in Mausi's eyes. There are said to be some parks in the city but the ones Mausi has seen were very small indeed. The biggest green areas belong to the military who obviously has enough money and people to keep them beautifully.
The traffic is bad of course despite many newly built roads. But the number of cars is just mind boggling and traffic regulations obviously only apply somewhere else. Still the number of accidents seems to be surprisingly low. Maybe everyone expects some mad behaviour from their fellow drivers. Mausi was glad that most of the time she travelled in a big bus. She felt quite safe inside.
Sunday, 25 October 2009
Freedom of speech?
The Anti-Fascist League's (Communist in all but name) demonstration and stone throwing violence in their attempt to stop the appearance on a BBC Chat Show of the leader of the BNP says a great deal about what is currently wrong in Socialist Britain. This is a nation that still thinks it is the home of "freedom", of "fairness" and of "fredom of expression", but it is not. Today you can be hounded from your job for belonging to a "party" the current dictats of Whitehall/Westminster and their pressure groups disapprove of. You can be barred from the Bench, the Police Service or the Fire Service for being a Free Mason. Even being a teacher is difficult if you share certai views with any such organisation - but express extreme left wing views and espouse the ideals of the extreme left and you're fine.
Since Blair and the NuLabour shower took power the country has lurched so far to the left that anything which does not conform to the current "moral" thinking (Read Labour/Socialist/Communist Prejudice for Moralism) is immediately branded Neo-Fascist and the witch hunting begins. We are no longer alowed to bear weapons or to use them in our own defence. Why? Because the Labour voting criminal classes turned them on each other. The result, all weapons are now in crimnal hands and the incidence of their use has shot through the roof. Before the ban on owning a hand gun the incidence of their use in crime was low, now it is almost a given that a gun will be used by a criminal in a crime. He knows no one else has one. Ergo, he's safe, and God help the law-abiding.
The campaign against the BNP is the result of fear on the Left who see this shower of idiots as a threat to their Socialist Utopia. They lose sight of the fact that such parties are always a response to their own excesses. And in Blair's Cool Britannia we lost the right to say what we think - because it might have offended some minority group beloved of the left. The rise of the BNP is a direct response to the Left's attempts to curtail our freedoms and to impose their "targets" for redistributing jobs to those they see as "victims" of the selection processes previously employed. Now jobs are given not on ability or knowledge but on ability to sing the Labour Mantras, skin colour, gender and orientation. And its Labour's Laws that have done it. And they wonder why the BNP has managed to move from being a fringe party to having MEPs and a growing following among disaffected white working class males.....
What the demonstration showed very clearly was that we no longer live in a country which believes in hearing what all sides have to say. Blair and now Brown want to dictate what we may think, what we may say and even who we may vote for. And they call this democracy. From what little I saw of the show, the BNP Leader managed to make a complete ass of himself. Probably the best reason anyone could have for letting him speak on a public platform.
As for the Anti-Fascist League - they are the very reason many people now feel that our freedom of speech and expression is under threat. Abhorrent though the BNP's policies, utterances and beliefs are, they are gaining ground precisely because the Left are trying to restrict our ancient and treasured freedoms. The young working class men who now support the BNP are there because the Left offers them nothing except joblesness and exclusion so that the Left's "victims of oppression by white males" can be given everything on a platter.
For democracy to work, we have to allow both the extreme left and the extreme right to say their pieces. Only in that way can the majority see for themselves just how stupid these positions are.
Since Blair and the NuLabour shower took power the country has lurched so far to the left that anything which does not conform to the current "moral" thinking (Read Labour/Socialist/Communist Prejudice for Moralism) is immediately branded Neo-Fascist and the witch hunting begins. We are no longer alowed to bear weapons or to use them in our own defence. Why? Because the Labour voting criminal classes turned them on each other. The result, all weapons are now in crimnal hands and the incidence of their use has shot through the roof. Before the ban on owning a hand gun the incidence of their use in crime was low, now it is almost a given that a gun will be used by a criminal in a crime. He knows no one else has one. Ergo, he's safe, and God help the law-abiding.
The campaign against the BNP is the result of fear on the Left who see this shower of idiots as a threat to their Socialist Utopia. They lose sight of the fact that such parties are always a response to their own excesses. And in Blair's Cool Britannia we lost the right to say what we think - because it might have offended some minority group beloved of the left. The rise of the BNP is a direct response to the Left's attempts to curtail our freedoms and to impose their "targets" for redistributing jobs to those they see as "victims" of the selection processes previously employed. Now jobs are given not on ability or knowledge but on ability to sing the Labour Mantras, skin colour, gender and orientation. And its Labour's Laws that have done it. And they wonder why the BNP has managed to move from being a fringe party to having MEPs and a growing following among disaffected white working class males.....
What the demonstration showed very clearly was that we no longer live in a country which believes in hearing what all sides have to say. Blair and now Brown want to dictate what we may think, what we may say and even who we may vote for. And they call this democracy. From what little I saw of the show, the BNP Leader managed to make a complete ass of himself. Probably the best reason anyone could have for letting him speak on a public platform.
As for the Anti-Fascist League - they are the very reason many people now feel that our freedom of speech and expression is under threat. Abhorrent though the BNP's policies, utterances and beliefs are, they are gaining ground precisely because the Left are trying to restrict our ancient and treasured freedoms. The young working class men who now support the BNP are there because the Left offers them nothing except joblesness and exclusion so that the Left's "victims of oppression by white males" can be given everything on a platter.
For democracy to work, we have to allow both the extreme left and the extreme right to say their pieces. Only in that way can the majority see for themselves just how stupid these positions are.
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