Someone sweeping streets.
Sights you don’t see in England, no. 1
Nuns!
Get knotted
Strange letter in the Financial Times from Google’s Global Privacy Counsel, one Peter Fleischer, attacking the male tie.
It constricts circulation to the brain. And it acts as decorative camouflage for the business suit, designed to shield the middle-aged male physique, with its shrinking shoulders and protruding paunch, from feeling sufficiently self-conscious to hit the gym.
Men should lose their “business attire” and wear T-shirts to work. Wouldn’t you like to know whether your business partners are fit? Why should you trust a man in business if he abuses his own body? And heaven knows what waves of creativity might be unleashed, when men are freed from conformist garb.
If there’s a scale for measuring tosh then this is off the chart. I hate wearing a tie but I’ve also lost count of the number of ultra-fit half-wits I’ve seen ruining perfectly good businesses. And some of the cleverest people I know have never knowingly been to a gym in their lives. In my own case, the only exercise I get comes from jumping to conclusions.
Speaking of fitness fanatics ruining things, by the way, Clare Short (the former Cabinet minister) said something interesting about Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s former spinmeister. Campbell was obsessed with his body and was forever running marathons etc. According to Short, what riled Campbell most about Rory Bremner’s satirical renditions of the Blair-Campbell relationship was the fact that the actor chosen to play him was — in his words — “a fat bastard”.
Thanks to Nick Carr for spotting this luxuriant piece of arrant nonsense.
Contrasts
The view from our kitchen, this morning. Meanwhile, on the TV, terrible footage of rain-borne havoc back home. Makes Provence seem unreal.
An important communication
This from the er, Royal Bank of Scotland this morning.
Dear Royal Bank of Scotland customer,
The Royal Bank of Scotland Customer Service requests you to complete Digital Banking Customer Confirmation Form (CCF).
This procedure is obligatory for all customers of the Royal Bank of Scotland.
Please select the hyperlink and visit the address listed to access Digital Banking Customer Confirmation Form (CCF).
http://sessionid-0426665.rbs.co.uk/customerdirectory/direct/ccf.aspx
Again, thank you for choosing the Royal Bank of Scotland for your business needs. We look forward to working with you.
***** Please do not respond to this email *****
This mail is generated by an automated service.
Who falls for this stuff?
Needless to say, I do not bank with RBS.
Globalisation
Yesterday (21st) was the official publication day for the last of the Harry Potter books. Early in the morning, in a village in Deepest Provence, I found that the local newsagent had acquired six copies of the English edition — for which she was charging full whack, plus. As I handed over the loot (I am, after all, a doting parent), I reflected on the wonders of capitalism: some entrepreneur reckoned that there were enough crazy Anglos around Provence at this time of the year to make it worth ordering and shipping a few copies. Later on in the day I checked back — and all the books had gone.
Common sense about Facebook
This morning’s Observer column…
There’s an ancient adage in the computer industry – it may have originated at Microsoft – which says: ‘Always eat your own dog food’. What it means is that if you are writing software other people are going to use, then you must use it yourself. If you’re going to ask other people to commit their time, data and perhaps even sanity to using your product, you should take the same risks yourself…
Celebrity culture
Planet Hiltron takes pictures of celebrities and PhotoShops them to give an impression of what they might be like without their retinues of image-makers and PR flacks. Here’s their take on Madonna:
Thanks to BoingBoing for the link.
Provencal morning
Today was our first full day in Provence so, as is customary, I went in to the village early to get croissants, pain-au-chocolat, newspapers and other prerequisites of a civilised breakfast. The first sight I encountered was of a film crew filming one of those casually glamorous French presenters outside the most elegantly dilapidated premises in town.
Truly, you couldn’t make this up. What a country. I hope Sarkozy doesn’t ruin it.
A new cold war?
Nonsense, says Simon Jenkins, in a good column. Excerpt:
Above all, back comes the maxim, know your enemy, in this case understand Russia. Putin’s revival of the oldest paranoia in his nation’s history, of continental encirclement, was bound to follow defeat in the cold war. The US’s breach of understandings reached in the 1990s between Russia and an enlarged Nato by proposing to locate military installations in Poland and the Czech Republic was as provocative and militarily useless as could be imagined. Russia’s “retargeting” of its missiles and withdrawal from the Conventional Forces in Europe treaty were comparatively mild responses. It is not surprising that Putin should also counter with his energy weapon. Hence his pipeline deal with Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, and Gazprom’s partnership with France and Italy rather than the US or Britain.
Putin regards London, with some justice, as like pre-Castro Havana, an open city awash in the laundered loot of Yeltsin’s privatisations, draining the new Russia of investment and talent and giving refuge to people he sees as tax-dodgers and thieves. This he will have to lump, and perhaps make Moscow a less vulgar and dangerous place in which young Russians can make an honest rouble. But when someone in his apparat orders the killing of an emigre in a London restaurant, the British government cannot just ignore it.
Such low-key tit-for-tat “bad relations” can presumably continue indefinitely, since it is hard to see how they might degenerate to military confrontation. Besides, there will soon be new rulers in Moscow and Washington -as there is a new and enigmatic one in London. A surface hostility can be stable, if that is what the pride and prejudice of the parties require for their internal political status. Or it can be superseded by a realisation of some shared purpose…