Thursday, May 15, 2008
Bad egg
Yesterday's Guardian had a reasonably sensible peice about how poverty and inequality ought to move up the agenda while promoting the culture and diversity of ethnic minorities (a new acronym for which being BME. B for black rather than brown) should move down. But I resent remarks about 'UK was steeped in a racist colonial history that ascribed zero value to Asian or African cultures'. While our record was not too good by today's standards, it remains true that many of these racist colonisers were very cultured people who did a great deal to find out and write about the cultures of these colonies. I dare say most of what we know about the culture of those colonies up to the end of the colonial era is a result of their efforts. Maybe I should find out what the Barrow Cadbury Trust gets up to - the author of the offending peice being its CEO. He ought to know that while whites bashing whites (verbally or in writing that is) is OK and blacks bashing blacks is OK, whites bashing blacks or blacks bashing whites is generally thought to be impolite, politically incorrect or racist.
The same issue also tells me that Dunwoody junior is contesting her late mother's parliamentary seat. Which gave Cameron the opportunity to remark that while he was content to have a hereditary monarchy, he thought that we had got beyond that as far as the governing classes were concerned. Now while he may not be the best person to cast stones of this sort, I do not care for political families. There ought to be a self-denying ordinance which says that if one's parent was a political big-cheese, one goes in for something else. Something of the same sort happened here when an outgoing councillor put up his son for his seat. I think he got trounced. Quite right too.
Last week's TLS had a slightly depressing peice about how the Jews have largely been written out of (for want of a better word) what used to be part of Galicia and is now the southwestern part of the Ukraine. The reviewer offers the excuse that the Ukraine is such a new and uncertain entity as a country that they do not have the energy to accommodate diversity - even in the record. Peering at my fine Polish atlas - produced for Permagon in 1968 by the Polish Army Topographical Service and which has rather better coverage of central Europe than one would expect from, say, the Britannica Atlas - I find that Galicia - which included Cracow - was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire prior to the first war and was shared out between Poland and USSR (as it was about to become) afterwards. Also that Germany has lost maybe a quarter of what it had at the start of the same first war. An area perhaps equal to half that of England. But as the two-time losers they had to buckle down and get over it - we hear nothing much about it now.
A possibly Polish trait is the inclusion of coats of arms and flags on the lead page for each country.
The same issue also tells me that Dunwoody junior is contesting her late mother's parliamentary seat. Which gave Cameron the opportunity to remark that while he was content to have a hereditary monarchy, he thought that we had got beyond that as far as the governing classes were concerned. Now while he may not be the best person to cast stones of this sort, I do not care for political families. There ought to be a self-denying ordinance which says that if one's parent was a political big-cheese, one goes in for something else. Something of the same sort happened here when an outgoing councillor put up his son for his seat. I think he got trounced. Quite right too.
Last week's TLS had a slightly depressing peice about how the Jews have largely been written out of (for want of a better word) what used to be part of Galicia and is now the southwestern part of the Ukraine. The reviewer offers the excuse that the Ukraine is such a new and uncertain entity as a country that they do not have the energy to accommodate diversity - even in the record. Peering at my fine Polish atlas - produced for Permagon in 1968 by the Polish Army Topographical Service and which has rather better coverage of central Europe than one would expect from, say, the Britannica Atlas - I find that Galicia - which included Cracow - was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire prior to the first war and was shared out between Poland and USSR (as it was about to become) afterwards. Also that Germany has lost maybe a quarter of what it had at the start of the same first war. An area perhaps equal to half that of England. But as the two-time losers they had to buckle down and get over it - we hear nothing much about it now.
A possibly Polish trait is the inclusion of coats of arms and flags on the lead page for each country.
# posted by Jim @ 3:19 AM 
