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Where's Blair

Tony Blair - do you remember him? What happened to him? Where is he? Rumour was that he is middle-East envoy - but peace has not broken out. Nor, as a friend pointed out, has another war. That's a good thing, then.

He must be missing his UK taxpayer-funded spin doctors - maybe they did not want to go out into the desert with him.

I see his colleague, Putin, who will also be at a bit of a loose end once his presidency ends (and hat off to his respect for democracy that he is not, like the tinpot dictators all around him, getting his constitution changed so he can be president for life - yet), has already thought of another job. Apparently he is going to stand for the Russian parliament at the December 2007 election. His president job ends in March 2008. Interesting.

Proud to be British

The scandal around the 1 billion pounds paid by BAE to the Saudis to help the former sell planes to the latter is spreading and spreading. It would seem that the UK Ministry of Defence actually countersigned the bribe payments.

Call me simple, but what has a government to do with a commercial, and as far as I can remember, a private company and its business? And under what power did the MoD countersign these payments? And exactly out of whose coffers therefore did they come? The Government's or BAE's? Does the Government have the right to countersign the cheques of BAE? Whose else's cheques can it countersign?

Apparently Blair has said he'll take the blame for it. That's all right then. He's going in a fortnight anyway, so he is now free to take the blame on anything - what does it matter to him? Is he likely to land in prison?

For some reason the US Department of Justice is thinking of opening an investigation - it's amazing how far US legal powers stretch. But of course the British legal powers were kyboshed by the Attorney General in the interests of national security. There goes someone else who has covered himself in glory. Will all those people who did these things, and who have a knighthood or whatever, be forced to give them back, like the late Anthony Blunt?

I remember that Labour first got in because people were sick and tired of the sleaze associated with the previous Tory government (in 1997). Nothing has changed, has it - though I wonder if I would not have trusted John Major a smidgeon more than Blair who I have always found totally insincere and untrustworthy, and even more so after working in his government for a while. What can we Brits do with our government?

Scotland's election

We had of course big hopes of the 'perrish cooncil' as T Blair (?) once described the Scottish parliament. But after the wonderful team that originally lead the parliament (Dewar and Galbraith, though Dewar was, shortly before his death described as 'Donald Dither', but a few months later found himself sanctified - having had to die for the privilege), it has been very much the B-team, with anyone who wants any real power going down to the London parly. The level of debate in Holyrood has often given a very poor reflection of the Scottish education system, and there was that education minister who famously stated that she wanted to have nothing to do with schools, and the culture minister whose most common saying was 'where's the fitba' in that'? (You know who you are and at least one of you has just been re-elected).

But all that pales into insignifance when you consider the total balls-up of the most current Scottish election. To be fair, not all was the government's fault (I'm sorry, the Executive's, we are not allowed to call it 'the government'; Mr Blair said so), but really:

• the boat carrying the voting urns back from the Isle of Arran broke down and the urns had to be rescued
• the helicopters due to pick up the urns from the Outer Hebrides were grounded at Inverness airport due to fog
• a man went into a polling station in Edinburgh (sedate Embra!), and proceeded to smash voting urns with a golf club, and tear up completed ballot papers. Whereupon red-eyed polling officials were spotted trying to rejoin bits of paper, trying to match the handwriting on the different parts. The HAND WRITING on ballot papers?
• because two elections with different voting systems took place on the same day, people got confused and mixed up their ticks, oh no, their crosses, and their numbers (or however the other voting system works - I did not get my ballot papers this year) - there are rumours of 100,000 spoiled papers (total population, including non-voters, 5.1 million)
  
• a new electronic system was used to count the votes, where the voting papers were fed through some machine. It had great difficulties in dealing with ticks where there should have been crosses. Thus it was that the results for many Edinburgh constituencies, which did not have to get their ballot papers to cross water, were not ready until late today.

Wunderbar, as my boss, Mrs MrCreadie, used to say. Total Quality Management.

As for the result? The SNP has a seat more than the Labour Party, but both need a coalition partner to get the majority, for which they need 65 seats. Neither SNP or Labour would want to work with the Conservatives in Scotland (sometimes one feels sorry for them!). Neither have enough even with the Liberal Party, and I assume a tripartite coalition with the Liberals and the Conservatives will not go. So they need to work closely with the 2 Greens and Margo MacDonald, an ex SNP member (was she kicked out or did she resign from the party?) - gee, the power these three will have! Ms MacDonald is not known for being a follower...

I see the Scottish Socialist Party seems to be out of the parliament altogether; maybe they were unable to deliver on their promises, and perhaps also a bit colourful for their possibly very conservative (small c) followers. George Foulkes, the longtime Westminster MP for Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley, has got in on the Lothians list, having retired from Westminster at the last election. I wonder if he still lives in Ayr? He was of course one of the directors of Hearts Football Club in Edinburgh, until he resigned in protest against the management practice of its 'Lithuanian' owner, Mr Romanov (he may have a Lithuanian passport, but is an ethnic Russian and may have Russian ways of doing business - it often causes problems, in Lithuania, too).

Philistines ... or putting the boot in

It all started in March when Tony Blair reminisced about the 'golden age of the arts' in a speech in the Tate Modern, in which he 'opined that arts and culture were absolutely at the heart of what the new modern Britain was all about, actually' according to the deliciously funny article in the Guardian. He suggests that the last 10 years have been a golden age for the arts, what with all the funding that the labour government has thrown at the arts (much of which may have been lottery funded - mainly by poorer people).

Other people are more sceptical - the Guardian suggests that he might have mentioned arts and culture once or twice in the last ten years, and of course he had Noel Gallagher of Oasis round for tea. Not forgetting his much loved Fender guitar which he donated to the Royal Scottish Museum. And I believe he attended the reopening of the Royal Opera House where I believe he had to sit through a Wagner Opera. One of his culture ministers, Chris Smith, was however seen attending the Edinburgh festival, and the late Donald Dewar, Scotland's first First Minister, also attended performances very regularly, without any bodyguards. And of course there was the moment when Sam Galbraith, leaving his post as culture minister of Scotland, quickly bunged Scottish Opera another few million to keep them going. But the latter two were in Scotland (arts are devolved), and neither are in politics any longer.

Since this talk, the great and the good have railed against Blair and his government, with the word count of 'philistines' very high indeed. Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, the Queen's Master of Music, describes the current government as 'utterly philistine'; John Tusa, chief executive of the Barbican is 'sick to death of meddling philistines' in the Treasury, who need an economic case made for every penny invested into arts funding. Let's not say that the government is not sensitive to public opinion; after a TV series on a new choir in a difficult school showed the impact on this on the children generally, the government decided to invest 10 million GBP into music education. That's singing. There's no talk of instrumental teaching.

Compare this to the famous 'sistema' in Venezuela which is funded by the Health and Social Security Ministry and which enables thousands of children to play in orchestras, including the very highest quality orchestra. Consider the state of North Rhine Westphalia in Germany which has introduced a pilot scheme of 'An instrument for every child' in the Ruhr area in anticipation of it being the European Capital of Culture in 2010. Consider the opera performances and concertsspecially for children in Lithuania and other Eastern European countries which are usually packed out, and come and see the number of young people attending opera and ballet performances, and particularly those of modern music! Consider the excellent children's and youth work carried out by orchestras in the UK and Germany, but are children supported by the state in learning instruments, or broadly in learning anything about music, including reading music? The costs of supporting a musical child in the UK are considerable, especially if the child turns out to be gifted - so children from poor families have no chance to benefit from the many useful aspects of a musical training, including concentration, discipline, teamwork and so on. But it's not only poor families who deprive their children - a few months ago I met a highly educated British academic whose children have no access to music because he and his wife did not and they are worried about not being able to support them in their endeavours. I found this astonishing - a bit of a feeble excuse, if you ask me! Even if I had had a child who wanted to, say, play football, or learn to fence, I would have made an effort to find out about these things....
What chance does the arts world in Britain have under this government?

Sinking fast

The British papers this week have been full of bad news for T Blair. Apart from him being interviewed by the police over the honours for cash affair, yesterday's news that a corruption inquiry by the Serious Fraud Office has been stopped due to 'National Interest'. The alleged corruption had to do with BAE (formerly known as British Aerospace which famously left Prestwick, Scotland, for Toulouse) perhaps encouraging, in some way, Arab countries to buy their military equipment. It would seem that the inquiry was just about to reach the crux of the matter.

The national interest apparently relates to the fact that Saudi Arabia is considering placing an order for some more military jets or something, and if the investigation continues, this 70 million GBP contract might be lost.
This suggests two things:
1. Corruption is in the national interest
2. The tendering/contracting process on the current order is also not white as the driven snow.

Makes you glad to be represented by such a sleaze-free government, does it not? Both stories are very closely linked to T Blair - I wonder how long he can hang on. But would he want to go due to corruption? Then again, could he be impeached? Remember that Clinton was impeached for only getting a ....(word omitted to spare the sensitive) - see this wonderful you tube video.

In Kyiv (Kiev, Ukrainian spelling) for a couple of weeks. Have a nice flat this time (most times really), very near the town centre. Nearish the supermarket (about 1 km) and yet far enough to get exercise going there and back, especially when weighed down with heavy shopping. The Bessarabian market (old style) is next to it, and very nice, too. Beautiful displays of fruit and vegetables, lots of caviar for the foreigners and so on. Today prices seemed to be reasonably normal, given also the quality of the food. Maybe marginally higher than in Vilnius, but I have seen the quality of tomatoes in Vilnius recently.

In the flat the TV has the same programmes as in Lithuania - maybe a few fewer, but seeing I am going to Rwanda next month, it won't do me any harm to watch arte (www.arte-tv.de) in French instead of in German.

Met my friend Helene yesterday which was nice; earlier in the year we bumped into each other in the concert hall here (we know each other from Lithuania). All good fun. Helene is working on energy, I am on social stuff.

News today is that in the UK 7 junior ministers have resigned after signing a letter asking Blair to resign. He is not, so far, and spluttering about this letter saying that it is disloyal and discourteous. Mr Blair, you always talk about listening - we have always known that you don't listen (see Iraq), and it seems you will never learn to listen either. (Wasting my breath here).

This week my office is very close to the Yakitoria in Kiev (www.yakitoria.com.ua). It's a chain of Japanese restaurants which exists both in Moscow and in Kiev. The Yakitoria introduced me to sushi and I have never looked back. I nearly always eat the same meals, a mixture of different types of sushi and nigri and all those things. So far in 3 days I have had four portions of sushi, including one humungous one on my first day. I introduced my co-worker to the yakitoria, and she loves it, too. One of the soups there has a total of 11 calories. Unfortunately next week I have to work in another location, but I'll probably live. There is another type of sushi restaurant not far from my flat; two different ones in fact. Once I tried sushi from the supermarket in Vilnius, and it was fairly disgusting. I don't like to make it with raw fish at home, but smoked fish is fine, as well as shrimps and all that sort of thing.

Yesterday I tried to email a posting to the blog, but it does not seem to have arrived. Since I have also been experimenting with email programmes on my scandisk cruzer (a memory stick with 2 GB of memory, and an ability to run its own programmes) and failed on that one, it's lost. The world will probably continue to turn.