Mugabe

Readers might care to reflect on Kal’s cartoon in this week’s Economist: http://www.economist.com/daily/kallery/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10881977

 

I have posted this comment on that cartoon with which you may agree with none, some or all:

 

This anti Mugabe cartoon is very perceptive of course. However, how will the world's politicians and other international influential people be held to account when Mugabe wins the up and coming election?

Gordon Brown has made a bit of a stand against Mugabe but he stood alone; although Angela Merkel said some stern things at an EU summit in support of Brown's ideas. Since then?

I have just heard on BBC World news that Morgan Changerai has threatened to withdraw from next week's election if some changes are made to the way the votes are counted. Even he is prepared to throw in the towel and thus will also have blood on his hands.

I visited Zimbabwe late in the 1980s and in the early 1990s. I saw an old colonial State where things seemed to work and, unusually for the Region, where the major roads were brilliant!!

We have to ask how Mugabe has survived so long and with such deleterious effect. Yes he was a freedom fighter. Yes he is seen by some as a hero. But he is reigning over a murderous and financially ruinous regime. Mugabe blames Britain and the US and big business for his country's problems. But Mr Mugabe, you have been President FIVE times already, don't you have enough power to set at least most of your problems straight?

Don't forget the power of the hangers on: those people behind the throne and for whom life is probably exceptionally good.

 

DW

Luggage ... wet luggage?

The luggage eventually arrived then: late in the evening when I was out to dinner and far too late to use in my training sessions. I was a scruff for the two days then! I thought you'd like to know that the case was sopping wet when I got to it and there was water damage to:

• my suit ... it stinks now
• my spare jeans
• six shirts, casual and formal
• black formal socks
• white sports socks

Since it hasn't rained anywhere near Bangkok airport over the last few days I wonder where it got so wet? They also made a real mess of my Emirates Skywards Rewards luggage label: covered it with some hideous to remove sticky paper, I called them at BKK and they offered me GBP35 since I pointed out that they hadn't offered me any money to pay for my replacement shaving tackle, toothbrush and paste, deodorant and so on ... they wanted me to go to the airport and collect it. I told them I want to collect it when I leave the country ... GBP35 isn't enough either as I have had to have all of those items properly laundered. As a very frequent flyer you must appreciate that I tolerate a lot of hassle from a variety of arilines. Losing three sets of luggage since August is too much too:

• one case went for two months
• one case got to me after a week and just two hours before I left for the airport to go home
• this final case could well have been a farewell case except that I am staying on in Thailand for a few days extra

DW

Thongs but no thongs ... And it's a top tip

I am going to be ageist now.

Gentlemen, when you get to a certain age, the gluteus maximus muscles wither. That is not, repeat NOT, the time to start wearing a thong and parade around the swimming pool. Even if you are on holiday and nobody knows you!!!

That is also a top tip!

DW
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Luggage ... what luggage?

So you work for British Airways do you? I wonder how much pride you take in your work and your company?

Following my WEEK in The Sudan without business clothes and toiletries, here I am again waiting THREE days for my luggage to arrive. Again I have had to stand in front of people who really didn't pay to see me turn up in trainers, jeans and a casual shirt.

Clowns to the left of me,
jokers to the right,
here. I am,
stuck in the middle with you.

DW
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Short queues can be the longest

I joined a short queue to board the Manchester to Heathrow flight. Just two people in front of me as opposed to the five or six in each of the other two queues. Beggar me, though, but the scanner wouldn't read the home printed boarding pass of the boy at the front of my queue ... So what price the shortest queue now, eh? I am fated like that and I really am the world's worst queue chooser.

Luckily an opening arose in another queue and I took it. Somewhat immorally in a way as I sort of pushed in a bit. Just a bit; in the way that one can be a bit pregnant!!

On the plane prior to take off to Bangkok as I type this and looking forward to a fruitful few days' worth of work.

DW
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Drug Dealers

This is a simulcast on duncanwil and oxbow

 

Taxi drivers are interesting people: they know a lot about their community and must be a fantastic resource for a wide variety of people and not just taxi passengers either.

 

I heard from my latest taxi driver that in Halifax drug dealers, the ordinary every day young drug dealers are making £6,000  DAY from their evil activities. Now, let’s imagine that this figure is an exaggeration ... how much of an exaggeration, I wonder.

 

These people buy houses too to get their filthy money into legitimate cash streams. They don’t buy for cash since that would look suspicious and they don’t buy more than one house in their own name either. They buy a house for themselves and then another one for their ... father, mother, brother, sister, wife ... who knows. More than that, they put down as much as a 70% deposit and take a mortgage for the rest. These people are potentially buying a couple of houses a month.

 

This news, taking it at face value, rather points the mocking finger at Freakonomics doesn’t it? In the book, reviewed last year by yours truly, they ask the question why so many drug dealers in the US live with their mothers ... the answer is clear: either they don’t or if they do it’s because they are hiding their huge stashes of cash. Easy to pull the wool over some people’s eyes isn’t it?

 

What are the police reported to have responded when told about the activities of these leeches on society? Erm, that they are looking for Mr Big rather than these also rans. Really? £6,000 a day is £42,000 a week and that’s £2.19 million a year. No tax, no records, no bother if the police are after them. Moreover, that’s £2.19 million for EVERY drug dealer operating at the level the taxi driver was talking about.

 

This is obviously a BIG problem when multiplied out onto a national scale.

 

DW