Come on you blues

Last weekend Erika and I went for a romantic weekend to Sighisoara, possibly the most romantic city in Romania. (Erika is my wife, by the way, not somebody I was sneaking away with for some kind of illicit rumpy-pumpy, just in case you were about to shop me). We had noticed, quite by chance, on the kind of news ticker thing on Realitatea TV that there was something called the Sighisoara Blues Festival on and so we went to the Internet and looked it up and thought, "Hmm, that might be worth going to" and so put the wheels in motion to do so. My in-laws agreed for the first time ever to take the kids for a night, we reserved tickets for the Saturday night bit of the festival and booked a hotel in the citadel (the old, really romantic bit of the city. Not far from where Vlad the impaler was born, though he moved out when he was young citing the cloyingly nice nature of the place and went to live in the duller and more conducive to large acts of mass murder south of the country.)

I won't bore you with the whole dropping the kids off stuff, or the drive to Sighisoara, but let's just cut to the concert. It was in one of those old communist theatres untouched since it used to host weekly shows of the Young Pioneers doing a synchronised flag waving competition. We were up in the balcony, and the evening kicked off with a "surprise" - a band of kids from Romania. This, I have to say, didn't strike me as a good surprise at first glance, but in fact these kids were amazing. And when I say kids, I use the word advisedly. the guitarist and bass player were 14 and the drummer was....8. Yes, 8. They were incredibly proficient, and what a set of balls, to get up in front of a packed crowd and play so well. I found a clip of the 8 year old on you tube doing his drum solo. It's a drum solo, so you know, not that interesting, but still - he's 8. This is a packed theatre with perhaps 300 people in it? Maybe more?. 8. I may not have stressed this enough. He's 8.



Anyway, when they went off to rapturous applause after a few songs, our next band was the Ana Popovic Group. Ana P (as I like to call her) is a Serbian woman who seems to be based in the US. She and her band were technically proficient, but ultimately not really anything terribly exciting. As the hour wore on, past my normal father-of-young-children bed time, I began looking at my watch and wondering when they'd finish, and whether I'd be able to stay awake to the next band. It's not that Ms P was bad, just that she was just nothing very special. Anyway, here's a clip of her that night:



In the interval, and now that in think about it, quite amazingly coincidentally, we bump into a newly svelte-looking Romerican (and his Julierican - you may have to think about that one). This is miraculous because, to be honest I don't really know that many people in Romania - outside of Harghita County and Targu Mures, I'm guessing it's no more than 50. And I don't know anyone in Sighisoara. Plus Romania is quite a big place, and it's got over 20 million people in it. So to be having a beer in the interval at a smallish concert in a smallish town and suddenly bump into someone you know is fairly remarkable.

So, I'm tired, and wondering when I'll get to bed, and thinking about how old I've become, when on stage at about midnight steps Lucky Peterson, a man about whom I know basically nothing. And he blows the entire place away. He is absolutely incredible. He plays blues, jazz, soul, whatever he feels like. One of these people who just seems to be able to sense what the crowd will be into and to take it in that direction. Absolutely totally and utterly superb. He didn't finish until after 2 and I wished he'd stayed on longer. There are two youtube clips of him here, but they don't really capture how god he was - they are both at the end when he'd invited loads of people on stage as he was the festival's closing act, but really he was better when it was just him and his rhythm section. Still, Lucky Peterson - if he's ever playing a concert near you, go. Just go. (The whole concert will be on TVR Cultural at some point for those living in Romania, but I don't know when as the TVR website is not terribly helpful).

Fat Tuesday

This is what my Yahoo mail account lists today as in the little "important dates" thingy at the bottom of the screen. But it's not called Fat Tuesday is it? I know that's the direct translation of Mardi Gras, but that's not a term that is used in English (other than by Yahoo Mail, obviously). Now I do realise that Shrove Tuesday is a specifically British English term and so I don't expect Yahoo to go with that, but why Fat Tuesday. Nobody calls it that, ever. What's wrong with Mardi Gras? Or Carnival? Or Carnaval? Or, here, at least, Farsang.

Anyway, happy Farsang, one and all. And for those of you who will be giving chocolate up for the next 6 weeks in some kind of half-hearted attempt to emulate Jesus staggering around the wasteland for 40 days, good luck.

Blame

The big story in the Romanian media at the moment is about the murder of one of the country's top handball players in a disco in Vezprem, Hungary. He (Marian Cozma) played for the Romanian national team, and played for the local team in Vezprem along with a few other foreign stars. They were out celebrating a teammates new baby at the weekend, and then fight broke out and Cozma got stabbed in the chest and died (and two others - a Serb and Croatian, were badly hurt).

I have to confess that one of my first reactions on hearing this tragic story (when all I knew was that a famous Romanian handball star had been killed in Hungary), was to fear that he had been murdered by some crazy Hungarian nationalist intent on somehow getting his own back for Trianon or some such. Not that the manner or motive for the killing would matter to Cozma or his family or friends, but that if it were a hate crime, then it could turn into something more widespread and have long term political ramifications. As far as we know this wasn't the case and the team just got attacked for being in the wrong place at the wrong time while what amounted to a local gang/mafia type grudge was being played out.

However, the case is not without its ramifications and ethnic overtones. The men accused of killing Cozma are, you see, Rroma. So large swathes of the Hungarian press and its right-wing politicians have seized on this as clear evidence that this is an ethnic problem, and that "Gypsies" in general are to blame. A newspaper writer, for example, described gypsies as "not human beings, but animals". (In another recent case, a police chief was sacked for making racist remarks about Rroma, and then reinstated after public protest)

You can read a fairly comprehensive and thorough account of the whole tragic event here .

Some other articles in English: Bloomberg ; Politics.hu

As the economic crisis really begins to bite here, it seems that the Rroma will again start being blamed for all of societies ills. It's already pretty much government policy in Italy, and the opposition in Hungary are fairly clearly playing the anti-Rroma race card too.

It's Global Warming Gone Mad

Being English I have to constantly keep in check my instinctive desire/need to write and talk about the weather. I do manage it for the most part, but occasionally I have been known to slip into it (f'rinstance when I talk to my parents on the phone). It's not that talking about the weather is a bad thing exactly, just that it sort of implies you can't think of anything else to talk about (which, obviously is often the case, at least for me). Also, living in the Coldest Place in Romania (TM), in which winters are brutal and vicious affairs, having previously lived in Vermont, USA in which winters are etc and so on, there is always the tendency to look down upon other people's weathers as being sort of a bit weak and pathetic (which I'm quite sure is more than a little irritating, at least judging by the "why don't you just shut up" reactions I get).

Anyway, because I have nothing else to talk about, and because I am not currently in a position of being able to poo-poo the mild and temperate weather of the rest of Europe, I feel it is time to comment on this so-called winter. For while the UK shivers and grumbles contentedly under severe snowstorms and people stocking up for the ice-age in Tescos, Csikszereda (and the rest of Romania, but it feels more noticeable here) is sitting around twiddling its thumbs in what appears to be spring. Which began about three weeks ago. There was a cold period at the beginning of the year when it was down to the standard -20 ish, but since mid January it hasn't dropped below zero. This weekend we picked snowdrops, for god's sake. Snowdrops in early February.

Every year, on February 2nd, as everyone who has seen the Bill Murray film will know, a groundhog (which appears to be some kind of large rodent, not dissimilar to a wombat) is dragged out of hibernation in the town of Punxutawney, Pennsylvania and asked to predict when winter will end. He's not terribly specific and just limits to his predictions to either "6 more weeks of winter" or "less than 6 more weeks of winter", which always baffled me when I lived in Vermont since the winter finishing in mid-march would actually be reasonably early, but there you go. I have no idea what he said this year, or indeed why I started this paragraph at all, but that's blogging while doing a number of other things at the same time for you. By the time you come to finish a thought, it started so long ago that you have no idea what it was you wanted to say, but being too lazy to delete the whole thing (I mean and waste all those words), you just plough on regardless.

So, the weather, then. It's errm a... thing, isn't it?

(If anyone happens upon this post while searching for the best blog post of 2009, I'm hereby nominating it as my candidate. )

More tolerance news from Italy

Piergiorgio Stiffoni (no sniggering at the back, that really is his name, apparently) who is a Senator from the ever-delightful Northern League party in Italy (and hence part of that country's racist government) on the subject of Romanians: "If an extraterrestrial came down to earth and asked me what Romanians specialised in, I would say "rape""

(That's my translation of Se un extraterrestre scendesse sulla terra - dice Stiffoni - e mi chiedesse qual e' la specializzazione dei rumeni, gli risponderei 'lo stupro', which since I don't speak Italian is quite possibly slightly wrong, but not by much I think)

If an extraterrestrial came to earth and asked me what members of the Northern League specialised in, I would respond "being disgusting bigoted xenophobic scumbags", and then I'd ask if I could borrow his ray-gun.

Romania to have violent street protests

"In a few months there will be people in the streets, that much is certain," said Luca Niculescu, a media executive in Bucharest. "Every day we hear about another factory shutting or moving overseas. There is a new government that has not shown itself too effective. We have got used to very high growth rates. It's an explosive cocktail."

-From this article in the Observer a couple of weeks ago

Blimey. Jason Burke is an excellent journalist who until recently was the most informed man on Al Qaeda, Afghanistan, etc etc. I have no idea why he's been redeployed to Europe, especially when it seems that this article is just a bunch of vague possibilities strung together and presented as some kind of prescient "be very afraid" type article.

A correspondence

In case you need any background to the following exchange of emails:
Disasters Emergency Committee Gaza aid appeal video
BBC refuses to air humanitarian appeal to save lives in Gaza
Martin Bell (former BBC journalist)

January 26th: Me to the BBC

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to strongly protest about the BBC's decisions not to show the humanitarian appeal for Gaza. Over the course of the last few years the BBC has, fairly clearly, taken on a less and less objective stance on the Israel Palestine issue, to the point now where it just seems to be a mouthpiece for Israeli government pronouncements. However, the decision not to show a humanitarian appeal is taking this to a new and despicable level. A friend of mine works for a charity and has over the years been involved very heavily in working with relief moneys collected through the DEC. I hope you don't mind me quoting his email to me on this subject:

"I have worked with a large and a small charity either in the field or at HQ ensuring that DEC money is spent properly and accounted for. There was never any question of taking sides by supporting the people affected. Obviously not in the Indian Ocean Tsunami or Pakistan earthquake (natural disasters), but also in Kosovo and more importantly with Hutu refugees from Rwanda.

After the Rwandan Genocide, the perpetrators, along with millions of other Hutus with various degrees of complicity fled to Eastern Zaire (now Congo) and Tanzania. They arrived in countires unable to support them and very, very quickly cholera broke out: the monthly mortaility rate reach 30 per thousand. Now these people were the 'baddies' the people who between them had the blood of 600,000 Tutsis and moderates on their hands. It was not an easy moral decision at first sight, but the agencies decided that stopping people from dying was a humanitarian imperative. And the BBC was there, supporting us with Kate Adie being rushed around to film it."

The obvious question is - what has changed? Why are the people of Gaza undeserving cases when previously the logic was that dying people were dying people and needed help?

I am disgusted by this whole episode and extremely unhappy at (a) the BBC's lack of compassion, and (b) its increasing pro-occupation political bias.

I hope that something can be done to make the BBC actually take some notice of the disgust that myself and many thousands of others feel about this horrific anti-humanitarian decision

Yours Faithfully
Andy H

January 28th: The BBC to me

Thank you for your e-mail.

We note your disappointment at our decision not to broadcast an appeal by the Disasters Emergency Committee to raise funds for Gaza.

We decided not to broadcast the DEC's public appeal because we wished to avoid any risk of compromising public confidence in the BBC's impartiality in the context of covering a continuing news story where issues of responsibility for civilian suffering and distress are intrinsic to the story and remain highly contentious. We also could not be confident that the aid resulting from audience donations could reach those it was intended for at a time of a fragile ceasefire and sporadic border access. We will of course continue to report the humanitarian story in Gaza.

The BBC's director-general Mark Thompson has therefore explained the decision in more detail in a number of television and radio broadcasts and online at our Editors' blog. Please follow the link to read his explanation in full:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2009/01/bbc_and_the_gaza_appeal.html

Please be assured that we have registered your comments on our audience log. This is the internal report of audience feedback which we compile daily for all programme makers and commissioning executives within the BBC, and also their senior management. It ensures that your points, and all other comments we receive, are circulated and considered across the BBC.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to contact us.

Regards

January 30th: Me to them

I recently made a complaint about the BBC's decision to refuse to show the humanitarian appeal regarding Gaza. It was a long and considered complaint and referenced a number of other times when the BBC has (correctly) formed the opinion that humanitarian concerns should be above political ones. In response I received a standard letter summarising Mark Thompson's comments and basically ignoring all my questions and points.

I realise that the BBC employees charged with dealing with these complaints are overworked and overstretched, and it is of course not their fault that the easiest way of responding is just to cut and paste the standard non-answer. But if you offer the option of receiving a response it at least ought to reference the complaint in question.

I am still awaiting a response as to why the humanitarian appeals after Rwanda and Kosovo were broadcast, despite political concerns, whereas this was one was not.

(I would also like to know why the editorial policy of the BBC these days on the Israel/Palestine issue is to merely parrot the Israeli government line at all times, but I don't expect I'll ever get an answer to that questions)

Yours Sincerely
Andy H

Jan 30th(within about 25 minutes): Them to me

Thank you for your further email about the BBC's decision concerning the DEC Gaza Appeal.

The Director-General has explained the BBC's position and is the BBC's Editor-in-Chief so this cannot be considered at a higher level by the BBC's Executive. We cannot therefore add more to our previous response but if you wish to take the matter further you can contact the BBC Trust about the decision. For details of how to do this please see the information on the BBC Trust's website at:

www.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/appeals/dec_gaza_appeal.html

Thank you again for your email.

BBC Complaints

I have, of course written to the BBC Trust. Don't expect much more from them, but you never know.

In case you haven't yet complained, and want to:
BBC Complaints
BBC Trust

The Year of The Ox

Today is the first day (or second, or third, I'm not entirely sure - whatever the facts, it's early on) of the year of the Ox. You probably know this already since for whatever reason the Chinese New Year is always presented as a piece of big news. I don't have a problem with that per se, but it seems like other New Years (and there are loads of them) don't get half the coverage. Anyway, that aside, I am very pleased that this is the Year of the Ox, for historical reasons.

There now follows a story from my past which may upset people for a number of reasons. Some may be offended by the schmaltzy dredging up of old reminiscences. Some may be shocked to learn that I am not, as everyone may suspect, entirely perfect and above the law. Others still may be perturbed to learn that, despite appearances to the contrary from my writing ability, I actually did go to University. Who knows? Anyway, without further ado, and with my fingers firmly crossed in the hope that the statute of limitations on some of the revelations contained herein has passed (and typing with your fingers crossed is quite challenging, let me tell you), here goes.

When I was a student (an undergraduate student, that is, since I've done more studenting since then), I occasionally indulged in a spot of smoking. And by smoking here, I don't mean an after-dinner Gitane or a post-coital Marlboro, but something a tad less legal. And by "occasionally" here, I actually mean something like almost incessantly. I hope you've got the picture.

Anyway in my third and final year, I lived on campus in a kind of shared kitchen arrangement with a number of other students, some of whom were first-years. Somehow, one of the friends of one of these first-years, learned that perhaps I might have once in a while on a special occasion have a small puff or two on a joint. Anyway, he wanted to know where he could source some of Morocco's finest export, and so he naturally ended up approaching me. However, much as it amuses me to imagine it these days, I may have intimidated him slightly (apart from being the old hand, I was obviously living a life of crime), and he approached me by shoving a letter under my door. Now here I must now explain that for reasons connected to my surname, for many years in my school and latterly university life I was known by the nickname "Hox". So, this note appears under my door addressed to "The Ox". Obviously this lad had decided that I was some big time gangster drug-dealer and had assumed that what he'd heard to be my name was actually a big-time-gangster-drug-dealer alias.

You might be surprised to learn that this event caused great hilarity among my circle and among a number of people I indeed became "The Ox". In fact my oldest friend still calls me The Ox.

So, anyway the upshot of all this, is that it being the year of "The Ox" is (or ought to be) very propitious for me. And I fully expect to be overwhelmed with good fortune and health happiness and whatever else Chinese people get in good years.

(Final note to the police: The events depicted here happened over 20 years ago. And, anyway, I could have made them up. So there.)

Best place in Romania and Hungary combined

I have decided to declare a unilateral ceasefire in my current angry rants on the state of the World's media and their signing up to the "Israel is just a poor victim" lobby. It doesn't mean that steam is not still coming out of my ears.

Instead, in a much much lighter note, I need to point out that Csikszereda is quite clearly and by a large margin, the most important and powerful town/city in both Romania and Hungary combined*.

I mean take a look at this table:

1. HC Csikszereda
   
2. SC Miercurea Ciuc
   
3. Ujpesti TE (Budapest)
   
4. Budapest NZ Stars
   
5. Dab Docler (Dunaujvaros)
   
6. Steaua Bucuresti
   
7. Ferencvarosi TC (Budapest)
   
8. Progym Gheorgheni
   
9. Miskolci JJSE
   
10. Alba Volan SC II (Szekesfehervar)

This is the final standings in the MOL Liga - the ice hockey league that covers both Hungary and Romania. The sharper eyed amongst you will have noticed that both the first and second clubs in this table are from the same town. This one. So, it is clear that we are obviously and without a shadow of a doubt the biggest, most important, incredibly top city in the two countries*. So inyourface Budapest and Bucharest (and Szeged and Cluj and Iasi and Debrecen and Constanta and Brasov and Miskolc and wherever else). We rule!*

(*In ice hockey)

Bushian Logic

Over the course of the last few days, I have received a lot of correspondence (here as comments, by email, and other places where I hang out on the net) which for the most part make the same odd logical leap (sometimes aggressively, sometimes nicely, sometimes filled with bile and invective), which I'm at a loss to really follow. that is that by criticising and expressing my anger at the Israeli bombardment/war on Gaza, I am therefore supporting Hamas. How does that work? Bush and his supporters used the same one when trying to justify their attack on Iraq. "if you don't support our invasion, you must think Saddam is great" Has this kind of "logic" gained common currency these days? What's all that about?