The Brussels Son et Lumiere festival show – Grand Place

 

We just got back from a week away travelling the Low Countries by train.  Had a great time in Leiden, Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels.  How it is that people say Belgium is boring I do not know…. mad bars, fantastic beers,good food, a vibrant cultural scene coupled with pleasant people and wonderful architecture are all good in my book.  Is it the lower change of being glassed on a night out that renders it boring?

 

Anyway, a video from the heart of Brussels:

And a few photos:

Leiden, Netherlands

 

Antwerp

 

The Christmas Market and ice rink at St Catherine’s, Brussels, as seen from

the seasonal Ferris wheel.

More floods, and musings on 6 degrees

Terrible pictures coming out of Cumbria this past 24 hours. The photos of the bridges that got swept away are astonishing. Everyone is referring to this as a 'once in a thousand years' style flood. i.e. pretty unprecedented. Just two years after the last unprecedented floods. I remember then, that we were talking about whether those floods were caused by climate change. There was general agreement that you couldn't point at one event and reach a conclusion based upon it. But what you could do is look for an emerging pattern. I'm sure you can tell what I'm thinking. The evidence is stacking up.

Thing is, we've seen nothing yet. This week, some but not all the UK news papers carried this particular story. Most hid it away inside the paper if they carried it at all. Now, just because the latest study suggests that we may be heading for a 6 degree rise in global temperatures in the next 90 years doesn't mean its going to happen. This is still the worse case scenario. But IT IS POSSIBLE if we stay on the current course. And given that the consequences are SO profound if it does happen (think along the lines of massive sea rise, most of the planet becoming truly unhabitable, massive wars as we scramble for resources and land, and ultimately, the collapse of civilisation.... all possible within a generation), well, shouldn't we be doing everything possible to stop it? Shouldn't it FEEL like more of a priority on every level of society, rather than a political game to quibble over? Shouldn't it demand of us personal sacrifice?

Are Pandas Worth It?

Much loved TV Wildlife presenter and smiths fan Chris Packham has caused a bit of a fuss by arguing that we shoudl give up the conservation fight to save the panda. See: http://www.wildlifeextra.com//go/news/packham-panda342.html#cr

Now. I think that pandas may indeed by outdated, unsuited to the modern world and a bit pointless. But then again, so are, for example, churches, antique works of art and most things preserved as 'sacred' by the heritage industries. Look at the Cutty Sark for example. When that burnt to a crisp, was there a debate (outside this forum that is) about whether to 'rebuild', even though pretty much all of the original ship timber was unsalvagable, rendering whatever eventually becomes known as 'Cutty Sark' in future about as authentic as The Sugababes. No there wasn't. So the decision was immediately made that the ship should be 'rebuilt' (for which, read ' a new one should be built that we can hang the preserved decorations from the old one on) for the nation. So I say this: If the cutty sark and Mona Lisa are worth preserving because of what they represent or because of their timeless beauty, then so is the panda.

beigels

One of life's greatest little pleasures, and therefore potentially one of life's great disappointments, is the beigel.

I adore a perfect, chewy-fleshed beigel. A real pleasure. Therefore I cannot bloody stand it when you buy something that pretends to be a beigel and it isn't... its just a bread roll with a hole in! Completely different mouthfeel and taste.

My other half will tell you of many times I have sulked for a good half hour or so after being landed with such a pathetic lie of a foodstuff. A chief culprit is Bagel Factory, which has outlets in railway stations and stuff. AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE. Their pathetic little offerings are not fit to lick the boots of proper beigels....the sort you might find at, say the Brick Lane beigel shop, or the Finsbury Park Beigelarium. These places serve the food of gods in comparison.

Renewing the UK Constitution, reconnecting Parliament to the people

It is usually the case that the average person in the UK is quite happy to be disconnected from Parliamentary politics; we vote every four or five years, we go home and forget about it. We are happy to be governed, and this fits with our national 'royal subject rather than citizen' mindset. What these past couple of weeks have proven to me is that this is no longer sustainable. Parliament needs to be renewed, and reconnected with the people.

This offers Gordon Brown a unique opportunity to seize the moment and make his own political weather. He now has twelve months in which to complete the historic reform of the constitution that New Labour promised back in 1997.

1) He should dust down Roy Jenkin's report on electoral reform, which was received during Tony Blair's first term. Delivering fairer votes to the Commons will not only re-energise our politics and bring a huge gust of fresh air into Parliament. It also offers the best chance there is that a progressive government of the people will continue to thrive after the next election.

2) Mr Brown should complete the reform of the House of Lords. That means a fully elected reforming 2nd chamber.

3) There should be fixed term elections. The people no longer trust their politicians, and the right of the Prime Minister to fix the electoral cycle to his own party's advantage needs to be removed.

By enacting these three measures now, Mr Brown can 1) go down in history as a truly reforming Prime Minister, 2) reconnect Parliament with the people and 3) spike the Conservative guns. A Win Win situation, surely?

The 400 Blows

Last night we went to see the classic Truffaut film, The 400 Blows, at the British Film Institute.

This release has rightly been garlanded with 5 star reviews by the likes of Empire Magazine and Time Out. I cannot, however, imagine that such reviews were actually based upon a viewing of the new print currently running at BFI, as no mention is made of the terrible subtitling!

The programme notes available from BFI for this print state: "The subtitles on this new BFI release have been kept to a minimum. The subtitler has explained that this is for aesthetic as well as technical reasons and the audience is certainly not missing out on anything important to the story."As you know, subtitles are never a verbatim translation. However, what we are offered on this new print are little more than occasional fragments of dialogue. Huge tracts of dialogue have no translation at all. Character A may speak, unsubtitled, only to have the response by character B then translated. Perplexing!

The assertion by BFI that we are missing nothing important in the story is also quite wrong, as proven by the 1960 review from Sight and Sound that the programme notes also include.

And the reasons given for the brevity of the subtitles? Asthetic? Well how dare BFI inflict its own asthetic on this masterpiece. If Truffaut had wanted the subtitled dialogue to be little more than fragmented and disjointed cyphers, surely we would have had such a treatment before now?

Furthermore, there can be no technical reason for such a hatchetjob.... good subtitlers manage to condense dialogue so it doesn't fill the screen yet carries all the meaning and feeling of the original script. This print does neither.

It is a tragedy that this of all films should be lumbered with one of the poorest quality subtitled translations. As such, BFI have, unusually, truly dropped the ball, and done this classic a great disservice.

Hillsborough

The day Hillsborough happened I was Chair of the British Youth Council, and our twice yearly council meeting was taking place in Sorby Hall, Sheffield Uni. The organisation that I had 'graduated' from to become Chair of BYC was Knowsley Youth Council, and a couple of their delegation had, understandably, skipped the boring business of Council to go the match. During the afternoon break, our attention was drawn to a TV that was showing the breaking news, and It was really hard to know what to do. Continue with business, when some of our number are missing? It was tough, but that is what we decided. Some time later our two colleagues arrived back, devastated by what they had seen. They collected their belongings and headed home to Merseyside.

Obama

Guantanamo closed in a year
End to military trials
End to waterboarding and other forms of torture
Closure of overseas 'ghost prisons' and end to rendition
George Mitchell sent to the middle east.
End of the ban of funding for NGOs that provide information on abortion.

Not a bad first four days. And to think that some people think all politicians are cut from the same cloth. Give me a break.

Spotify

Just signed up to this.... and just how good is it? Very!


I think anyone can sign up now, without an invite, as it seems to be past its Beta stage.

Here's a little playlist from me for other spotifyers:

http://open.spotify.com/user/palefox/pl ... n3w5K7x23e

My God! It even has Luxembourg on it!

Hello 2009!

Yes, yes, I know its been a while.  But here I am again. What do you want, blood?

I've been prompted to update this by having just moved over to Flock as my browser of choice.  Everything is just right there, where you need it with Flock, and its integrated blogging tool clearly makes it easier to just click straight in from the browser and do it.  Yes, I know it wasn't that hard to start with, but this makes it easier, okay?!

Blogged with the Flock Browser