Tuesday, June 02, 2009
Grumps
Managed to forget to pay the congestion charge for a day last week and despite knowing the rules, this has made me rather cross. I don't like being heavily penalised for being forgetful in this way. Just as bad as banks making penal charges when you go overdrawn in the wrong way. Not a proper way to raise revenue. Then I go into the penalty charge part of the congestion charge website and find it all very heavy handed. I can't just pay online and have done with it. They have to go through the whole rigmarole of sending me a penalty notice which is festooned with dire warnings about what will happen if I fail to cough up. One more reason to unhappy with the present style of government.
Chanced to buy a copy of NYRB with another long article about torture, as practised by the US. Item 1, it is clear that a lot of this has been going on. Item 2, it seems that thousands of people were arrested in an attempt to find the Mr Bigs. Nearly all of these people were either not guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time or not very guilty. They were not Mr Bigs and did not know anything of use about Mr Bigs. But it seems that release was not an option, that lots of them were held for a long time in rather unpleasant conditions and that some of them were bashed around. Item 3, the whole business has done the US a great deal of damage in large chunks of the world, particularly the Muslim chunks of the world. Damage which some believe to be wholly disproportionate to any good that may have come of it. Item 4, the pro-torture camp claim that it is a necessary evil. Yes there is collateral damage but yes too, we have averted another catastrophe as a result of information so gained. The NYRB proposal is that there should be some high powered commission with access to the relevant information (which the rest of us certainly do not have) to investigate and to make a public report about these private matters. Seems fair enough, but I don't suppose it will happen.
On a more cheerful note, pleased to find in the TLS a mention of a pub in north Dublin which I had visited, known as the Gravediggers. The writer of the book noticed celebrates the unceremonious beauty of the place (?), in the context of a book long moan about the demise of the traditional Irish boozer. Now while it was an interesting place, it was rather an odd place, not a traditional Irish boozer at all. Some of the customers had black berets and some appeared to be off duty prison officers from the Mountjoy. I did not seem to be terribly welcome and only managed to find a footing by chancing across someone from Boston or somewhere, there to check up on his roots. As a result of which I found that the place was unusual in that it had been passed from father to son. The manager of the time was, amongst other things, a long distance runner and had interesting yarns about running from Dublin to Belfast overnight during the troubles. He also had rules about no singing in the pub so when he was visited by some travelling opera troupe they had to resort to chanting rather than singing, this keeping everyone happy. I also seem to remember that the taxi driver who took me there was not too sure that the visit was a good idea. I had to be firm to get there. Found another interesting place on the way back to civilisation with much craic and a lock-in. Sadly, bit too far gone to take advantage of same. There was also the question of the very important meeting the following morning.
And last night, acquired a LibDem flyer for the upcoming elections, promoting amongst other things the LibDem MEPs. Ironic, given the LibDem name for effective grass roots activism, that they should be promoting the Euro gravy train on day 24 of the DT expenses saga. The Euro gravy train being streets ahead of anything that the Westminster gang get up to. Still, all is not lost as there was also a peice about the missing lollipop person of Fransican Road. Proper grass roots stuff.
Chanced to buy a copy of NYRB with another long article about torture, as practised by the US. Item 1, it is clear that a lot of this has been going on. Item 2, it seems that thousands of people were arrested in an attempt to find the Mr Bigs. Nearly all of these people were either not guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time or not very guilty. They were not Mr Bigs and did not know anything of use about Mr Bigs. But it seems that release was not an option, that lots of them were held for a long time in rather unpleasant conditions and that some of them were bashed around. Item 3, the whole business has done the US a great deal of damage in large chunks of the world, particularly the Muslim chunks of the world. Damage which some believe to be wholly disproportionate to any good that may have come of it. Item 4, the pro-torture camp claim that it is a necessary evil. Yes there is collateral damage but yes too, we have averted another catastrophe as a result of information so gained. The NYRB proposal is that there should be some high powered commission with access to the relevant information (which the rest of us certainly do not have) to investigate and to make a public report about these private matters. Seems fair enough, but I don't suppose it will happen.
On a more cheerful note, pleased to find in the TLS a mention of a pub in north Dublin which I had visited, known as the Gravediggers. The writer of the book noticed celebrates the unceremonious beauty of the place (?), in the context of a book long moan about the demise of the traditional Irish boozer. Now while it was an interesting place, it was rather an odd place, not a traditional Irish boozer at all. Some of the customers had black berets and some appeared to be off duty prison officers from the Mountjoy. I did not seem to be terribly welcome and only managed to find a footing by chancing across someone from Boston or somewhere, there to check up on his roots. As a result of which I found that the place was unusual in that it had been passed from father to son. The manager of the time was, amongst other things, a long distance runner and had interesting yarns about running from Dublin to Belfast overnight during the troubles. He also had rules about no singing in the pub so when he was visited by some travelling opera troupe they had to resort to chanting rather than singing, this keeping everyone happy. I also seem to remember that the taxi driver who took me there was not too sure that the visit was a good idea. I had to be firm to get there. Found another interesting place on the way back to civilisation with much craic and a lock-in. Sadly, bit too far gone to take advantage of same. There was also the question of the very important meeting the following morning.
And last night, acquired a LibDem flyer for the upcoming elections, promoting amongst other things the LibDem MEPs. Ironic, given the LibDem name for effective grass roots activism, that they should be promoting the Euro gravy train on day 24 of the DT expenses saga. The Euro gravy train being streets ahead of anything that the Westminster gang get up to. Still, all is not lost as there was also a peice about the missing lollipop person of Fransican Road. Proper grass roots stuff.
# posted by Jim @ 12:50 AM 
