Alan’s blog

I usually only read the newspaper when travelling and either do the ‘free mineral water with newspaper’ deal (usually the Telegraph, maybe the only way they can sell newspapers), or whatever they have in the hotel or plane.

The front-page news today is the Israeli attack on the Gaza aid convoy, which needs no further comment.

of MPs

However, I also got yesterday’s Independent when I arrived at the Holiday Inn near midnight.  One of the main stories then was still the ‘outing’ and resignation of David Laws.  The key issue here (at least in principle) was not that nature of his personal relationships, but that he had not disclosed that the flat on which he was claiming rent belonged to his partner.

I was glad to see Mark Pack’s commentary in today’s Independent take a robust view of this, noting that while Laws may have broken rules (still to be determined), there had been no financial gain involved, and indeed the arrangement had saved the taxpayer money.  Pack’s contempt of the Telegraph was perhaps not unexpected in a column in a rival newspaper, but echoed my own feelings.

I was happily abroad during the height of the MPs expense ’scandal’ last year, but was appalled at the coverage, not least because my travels take me to countries in Europe which would give anything to have the high standards of public office we take for granted in the UK.  In the end a handful of MPs may (still sub judice) have abused the system, but the vast majority were simply trying to do their job.

A short while ago I happened on the web on a page detailing the expenses of a Cardiff (now ex) MP Julie Morgan, when MPs expenses came under the spotlight, she rechecked her previous claims and indeed, with more careful checking, it turned out that the claims she had made on her mortgage did not match the actual expenditure.  Over the five years of the last parliament she had accidentally over-claimed in two years to the total of £800 … but in the other three years had under-claimed to the tune of £1900.  The rules meant she could not retrospectively be paid for the under-claimed years, but did pay back the £800 for the over-claims.  Despite being £1100 out of pocket, one of the lowest claiming MPs and indeed paying significant amount of her own salary to help maintain her constituency office, on the books she will part of the statistics of the large number of MPs who repaid expenses and so appear to have been doing wrong.  Crazy!

and of Marbles

Back to today’s newspaper and deeper into the Independent a very old story that is entering a new phase: the fight for the return of treasures from around the world displayed in British Museums.  The most well know is of course the Elgin Marbles (maybe Germany may claim them as security for Greece’s Euro-bailout), but others include African treasures taken during punitive raids by British soldiers in the 19th Century.

The issues seem clear-cut for a Liberal-minded Independent reader, but maybe things are more complicated; certainly some of the items, including the bronze ‘Birmingham Buddha’ would not have survived to the present day if they had not been removed – if only the Victorian adventurers had also removed some of the giant Buddha statues destroyed by the Taliban in the 1990s.

I wonder how far repatriation should go, what is the statute of limitations for national treasure?  Maybe as the Birmingham Buddha travels back to India, several hundred shiploads of railtrack and steam trains will be repatriated to the UK, offloaded at Felixstowe docks and moved overland to form a mountainous sculpture of piled steel in the centre of Birmingham.

Having just been in Italy, I am sure there are many Italian artefacts in British museums, but then in Rome there are a number of Egyptian obelisk’s removed by the Romans 2000 years ago.  However, I would be surprised if, in turn, the Egyptians had not taken artefacts from other parts of the ancient world.  For that matter, what about the work done by the Israelites in Egypt before the Exodus?  If not for the fear it might be taken seriously I might suggest Israel could claim this.

In fact, these treasures are often more symbolic of the greater rape of natural resources and human labour that still continues today in many parts of the world today.  Indeed being brought up in the shadow of the South Wales coal valleys, I am well aware that the benefits of natural resources rarely go to the countries where they are found nor the labourers who mine them.

One of the key arguments against repatriation of ancient artefacts is that the curatorial standards are higher where they are presently.  Indeed the pillage of Iraqi sites after the fall of Saddam could be seen as overwhelming evidence that institutions such as the British Museum do the whole world a service.  Repatriation of artefacts to less secure countries would put at risk our shared global heritage; after all who knows what civilisation the UK and US will decide to decimate next.

Cymru am Byth!

… well Queen Mary, University of London anyway. Giving a talk on “The New Media of Digital Light”¹. While there I was given interesting tours of various research groups in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at QML including music that plays along with the drums, maps for the blind, and red dots on the heads of crowds at Covent Garden.

On the tube I noticed that if you are standing and look at the reflections in the curved tube train windows, all the seated passengers become Siamese twins joined at the head. Also looking down standing people tend to stand with their toes pointing outwards, whereas for seated people only the men do that. I feel there must be a social psychology paper in that, but it has probably already been written.

At the hotel neo-classical statues line the way down to an underground car park, and while seated at a WiFi sweet spot, was overhearing a dissident group planning a protest.

A typical day out in London.

A reminder of Wales, Aberavon Road, near QML

1. work with Joe and Angie on Firefly technology [back]

It was my birthday last week.  First thanks to everyone who sent greetings through Facebook etc.  Got some new books to read as well as two new mugs: one that says “exterminate” and one that is becoming my wee dram beaker.

This evening going for a belated birthday dinner at Cèabhar (booked up until tonight!), a lovely restaurant overlooking the Atlantic sunset.

The books …

The Kerracher Man, Eric MacLeod — Just reading this now.  A family who go off to live in a remote scottish croft.

Pilgrims in the Mist: The Stories of Scotland’s Travelling People, Sheila Stewart — Tales once told beneath a bender.

Nella Last’s Peace: The Post-War Diaries Of Housewife 49 — This is the follow-on to Nella Last’s War, which was one of the books on my Rome bookshelf

Calum’s Road, Roger Hutchinson — A couple of years ago we spent Easter on Skye and visited the little island of Raasay.  At the north end a precipitous little road leads round headlands to a small beach.  We had heard that the road had be created over many years by the labours of a single man … Calum.

Welsh Pictures. Drawn with Pen and Pencil, Richard Lovett (editor), London: The Religious Tract Society, 1892 — A beautiful aniqurian book of images and text.

Today I got a mailed posting from Geoff Ellis who is visiting family in Mauritius (see copy at end of this entry)

Water politics is on the rise both because of climate change and competition for the use of rivers that cross borders. Recently I heard that the Dead Sea is drying up, although evidently the Aral Sea may be slowly recovering.

However, this also reminded me how as a child the Free Wales Army were my heroes. I was to small to understand much about it, but I do know they blew up water pipelines. Sadly (so I thought) they were eventually captured and put behind bars and the water pipelines were safe. Now I guess these were acts of sabotage rather than terrorism and in retrospect it sounds rather ridiculous … blowing up oil pipelines, yes, but water?

Being brought up with Cardiff they seemed sort of Welsh Robin Hood-like figures – very romantic.
It was only years later I understood the full story.

When I was nine years old my dad died and after that we lived on a state widows pension supplemented with students (and at one stage Irish navvies) staying half-board. Hard work – hot meals to prepare breakfast and evening, washing, not to mention cleaning the thick orange Cardiff clay from the carpets when the navvies were staying.

Once a year we got the bill for the water rates. There was also a once-a-year bill for the house rates (tax on land/housing), but as we were on low income we got 90% rebate for this, so it was not too bad. But when the water rates came, there was no rebate, and that stage not even monthly payments to spead the cost. Mum was good with money, budgeting carefully and saving for major bills, but still it was a big bill and hard to pay on one go … and for this water tax there was no relief or rebate, no matter your income, you had to pay in full.

It was then years later again and I was renting my own hose for the first time in Bedfordshire … England. When I got my first water rates it was for £60 (it was a few years ago!) and when I asked mum I found hers was for £300. The population in Wales is very spread out, so it is more expensive to transport the water, and hence, I guess, why it cost five times as much.

If Wales has a national resource (once the coal was plundered), it is water … it rains, and rains, and rains! When I was little my dad used to drive us up to visit Brecon, through the coal valleys north of Cardiff and up into the Brecon Beacons, with the vast reservoirs filling the valleys between the mountains. We picnicked beside the streams flowing down the mountains and wondered at the huge dams.

The water from these dams does not flow to Cardiff, the coal valleys or central Wales, but is piped to Birmingham … and as the water flows out, no money flows back. So English water is cheap, and the cost of Welsh water falls heavily on those who can afford it least.

The Free Wales Army deserve a play or a film, a slightly askance view … you cannot present blowing up water pipleines with a straight face, but with a hint of the issue beneath. For me as a child, the politics of water was a painful and serious business.
Geoff’s posting from Mauritius:

water trouble in paradise

L’Avenir, St. Pierre, Mauritius 31 Dec 2006

In this usually quite village of L’Avenir nestled amongst the mountains on the Mauritian plateau, New Years eve is a time for cleaning the house ready to welcome the New Year with fireworks. But this year is different. The road is ablaze at both ends of the village as some of the residents, frustrated by days of water cuts, have taken to Royal Road. They just haven’t run out of water, in the higher parts of the village for 5 days now, some have run out of clean clothes to wear. It is true that the reservoirs are lower this year due to less rainfall than usual over the winter months, but what makes the residents angry is the seemingly unjust way in which the limited water is supplied. In the neighbouring village of Beau Bois they have water and in the small town of St. Pierre a mile away I’ve seen people washing the pavements in front of their houses, no sign of water shortage there. And of course, the hotel swimming pools are full, the greens and fairways of the golf course are lush and I doubt if any ministers or government officials have been washing in a bucket! As one residents told me, making a civil disturbance in the only way to get the water turned back on, no one answers the water board office ‘hotline’ . Whether or not we will be able to wash in 2007 is somewhat in the hands of the gods.

Geoffrey Ellis (UK resident on holiday in L’Avenir with parents-in-law)

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