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Who Cares?

3 Nov

There are places in the world that matter, and places that don’t. There are people who matter, and people who don’t. That, at least, is the attitude of our media. I was reminded of this by Hurricane Sandy, which devastated large parts of the Caribbean, then hit New York and other parts of the USA. While the hurricane was sweeping through the (poor, black) islands, the BBC and most other news outlets just talked at great length about what was likely to happen when it hit the States, and then about what did happen, and then about the clear-up. This is because Americans (rich, culturally similar to us) matter, whereas Caribbeans do not. The 69 dead in the Caribbean managed a princely one sentence out of a thousand-word BBC web article on the effects of Hurricane Sandy.

Of course, there was some coverage. There is a blog post on the Guardian site all about this skewing of the media, and another BBC web article about the effect on Haiti, where 54 people were killed out a population of 10 million (compared to 90 out of the USA population of 300 million).

This isn’t an isolated incident. In one of those strange co-incidences that life seems made up of, there were a number of bus crashes over the space of a few months, most of them involving students or young people. The one in Surrey in September, returning from Bestival, you’ve probably heard of. Three people were killed, others received horrific injuries. The ones in Iran (26 dead) and India (11 dead, not students) in October, you may or may not have done, but I can pretty much guarantee that you heard not a peep about the terrible crash in Albania in May. Thirteen students were killed and another twenty badly injured when a bus plunged over a cliff. One girl was left in a coma and had to be told, upon recovery, that her fiancé had died in the crash.

I know about it because I get an Albanian newsfeed through Facebook, and have a lot of Albanian friends and family, too. Over the years I have been annoyed, although I’m no longer surprised, whenever there have been wildfires or floods or droughts or violence around the elections in Albania, and there has been not even a one-sentence mention of it on the TV news. Albania is a place that does not matter, as far as our media (and, I suppose, most people) are concerned. The country would have to sink into the sea like Atlantis or (more realistically) help or threaten one of our allies or enemies before it would warrant a mention. (Although I should say that, once again, there is a BBC web article. Some Albanian news is there if you go looking for it, but if you’re looking for it then you probably know about it already.)

Now I understand why the Bestival crash received more attention. It’s natural to be interested in things that happen in your own country to your own people, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s also understandable that we get more news about our allies or, in the case of Iran, or enemies, since these things have a more direct effect on us. Human nature means that we’re probably more interested in the two Brits who died in an (hypothetical) air crash than the 70 non-Brits.

The amount that news is skewed towards us and our allies is out of proportion, though. OK, Albania is a special interest of mine, but how can it possibly be right that the 6 o’ clock news can fail to mention the trail of death and devastation Sandy left in Haiti, Cuba, Jamaica, the Bahamas etc., but can give 5-10 minutes (of a half-hour programme) to speculation about how the hurricane will affect the election of the leader of a foreign country? Of course, the main TV news is not the only information out there. I should probably listen more to the world news programmes, and it’s a failing on my part if I’m not interested enough to do so. But I just wanted to express my conviction that the dichotomy in the mainstream media between the “matters” and the “don’t matters” is unfair, morally pernicious, and makes things worse for the suffering areas of the world that we should care about more.

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Are you Average?

19 Sep

While doing the washing up this morning I became aware of the warm, damp, clammy sensation that tells me that another rubber glove has sprung a leak. It was the right-hand glove, of course; it’s always the right glove. (I’m right-handed.) This time it was sort of my own fault since I had bought a very cheap variety. It lasted about three days and then split between the thumb and index finger because it was cheap and nasty, and if it had come in a pack of 50 instead of a pack of two you would have assumed it was disposable. It is now.

Usually, however, it’s at the tips of the fingers that rubber gloves break, because that’s where there’s a loose bit, and it is about this that I wish to moan: why do rubber gloves only come in medium?

I understand, of course, that not all products can be produced in a variety of shapes and sizes to suit every customer. It wouldn’t make economic sense. So, you would think medium was a fairly sensible size to bring rubber gloves out in, if limited to one size. Not so. “Medium” seems to refer to the size that fits the average human hand – not the average female human hand. Call me sexist, but in my experience women do the vast majority of work that calls for rubber gloves, from washing dishes to scrubbing floors to cleaning toilets. So why bring the gloves out only in a size that is too large for most women? I do not have petite little mitts, but I am left with quarter of an inch of useless rubber at the end, preventing me from picking small things up and getting itself caught when I try to clean things. And then breaking, so I have to buy more medium-sized rubber gloves.

Now, it is not strictly true that rubber gloves only come in medium. I have also seen them in large. Large! Why large? A size that doesn’t fit most women complemented by a size that fits no women. I have no objection to men wearing rubber gloves (especially if it means they’re doing the housework) but why can’t rubber gloves come in small and medium, or small and large if need be? Why can’t I have a pair of rubber gloves that fits me, and therefore won’t break at the fingertips after a few days or, at most, weeks of wear?

Admittedly there must be places that you can get small rubber gloves. I haven’t explored all avenues. But frankly I don’t want to go to specialist shops or pay postage just so I can do the washing up in comfort. As I see it, barring specialists, I have three alternatives. The first is to buy those latex, single-use gloves that come in a variety of sizes, making life easier but costing more money and helping to destroy the environment. The second is to grow very long finger nails. This would mean that my fingers would reach to the end of the medium-sized gloves, although I don’t really think that having long, sharp tips to my fingers would help with the problem of rubber gloves splitting. Thirdly, I can just buy another pair of medium gloves that don’t fit and will soon break, while muttering under my breath, and relieve my feelings by writing a blog post about it.

Can you guess which I will choose?

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The Price of Everything

1 Aug

Last week I visited Chatsworth, a well-known stately home in Derbyshire. Unfortunately I wasn’t an invited guest (despite having once been present at the Duke of Devonshire’s birthday party, but that’s another story) so I had to pay to get in. There was no indication of the price on the information leaflets, nor on the various notices we passed as we queued. That should have been a clue. Once you were at the entrance and it would be embarrassing to turn back, it was revealed that the price was £15, or £16.50 if you wanted to Gift Aid it. (I’ve never heard of Gift Aid making anything more expensive before.) That made £30 for Burri and me.

Bear in mind, this was not London, this was the north of England. The entry price also didn’t include anything like a guide book. No, that was £5 extra. You could save money by viewing just the gardens, not the house. That would be £11, please. There were wee buggies to help the elderly and disabled around the gardens. They were extra, too. A stately house would be wasted on children, so they could go to the farmyard and adventure playground – £5. Of course, you can’t leave small children unsupervised so a responsible adult could enter to watch – another £5.

It’s not that Chatsworth isn’t worth seeing. The paintings, statues and other works of art are stunning, especially the painted ceilings. The gardens are magnificent, especially the staircase fountain that stretches the whole length of a hill and which you can walk up and down in your bare feet on a hot day – and this was a scorcher. My problem was with the way the air of money-grabbing seemed to permeate your whole visit, leaving a bad taste in your mouth and to some extent spoiling your pleasure.

By contrast, when I left the north of England to return to my well-watered homeland, I was able to spend a pleasant fifteen minutes, not waiting on a dingy platform or drinking an overpriced coffee (not that I’m knocking all overpriced coffee – I do love my Costa), but playing a bit of table tennis. Sturdy, weatherproof tables had been set up outside Sheffield station. The bats were scruffy, some of the balls were dented and the tables may well disappear after the Olympics, but it was an unexpected treat. And it was free. We were perfectly prepared to pay for the table, indeed we expected to, but there was no need.

The effect on people was noticable. Strangers smiled at each other, and tossed back stray balls. British people laughed and even exerted themselves in public. It was an uplifting episode. Chatsworth no doubt could not afford to support itself if visits were free, but if they care at all about leaving visitors with a positive impression of the place, they should probably try being a little less mercenary. And maybe introduce free ping pong tables.

Something else free: Running for Cover by K C Murdarasi

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Nefarious: Merchant of Souls

7 Jul

Last night I saw the multi-award winning documentary Nefarious: Merchant of Souls. Hard-hitting doesn’t cover it. I thought I knew quite a lot about prostitution and people trafficking (I even touch on it in my novel Leda), but this was an eye-opener. The statistics were truly horrifying, although of course statistics can be endlessly debated. What really got to me, though, and to the rest of the audience, was the stories of real life victims of the sex trade, in their own words. That, and the footage of happy, smiling children in South East Asia at a rescue centre – this was them leaving the sex industry at the age of ten or twelve. It’s the kind of thing that makes you shake with rage.

At times during the film I felt really hopeless, the problem seems so huge. Fortunately, as the film makes clear, there is hope. People do escape. It is even possible to combat sex trafficking as a nation. If Sweden can do it, so can we – and in fact MSP Rhoda Grant is trying to. (This fact is not in the documentary, but was mentioned afterwards by representatives of Exodus Cry.)

Exodus Cry is the organisation behind Nefarious, and they are unashamedly a Christian organisation who are doing what they do (combatting slavery) because of their Christian beliefs. They get some stick for that from people who think that if you’re doing anything because you’re a Christian then you’re insincere or have an ulterior motive. I would say, instead, that if your Christian faith doesn’t move you to help others (to “love your neighbour”, as Jesus put it) then there’s something deeply wrong.

So if you do care about sex slavery, what can you do?

1) Try and see the film Nefarious, if you can. You can buy the DVD from their website or even arrange a showing near you.

2) Write to your MSP (if in Scotland) to support Rhoda Grant’s campaign, or to your MP/ local politician to ask them to support something similar in your country.

3) Pray. I know, lots of people reading this will not be Christians and will think that praying is about as much use as thinking happy thoughts about fairies and unicorns. However, I am still going to recommend it as a course of action because in my experience, and the experience of many people I know, it’s the most useful thing you can do, especially when faced with such an overwhelming problem.

“We don’t do half sizes”

9 Jun

Two pairs of shoes recently died, in that irritating way they do, so I had the chance to experience the joy that is British shoe sizing not once, but twice. I had been looking about vaguely for replacements, as I knew they were on their way out, but it wasn’t until things reached a drastic stage that I actually had to march myself into a shoe shop with instructions not to come out until I had some new footwear. (The problem, you see, was that both dead pairs were staples of my shoe wardrobe – my only pair of trainers / plimsoles, and black flats.)

The shop I went to was Deichmans, but the problem I experienced there was not confined to them. My grave crime, you see, is that my feet are size six and a half. Ah, the half! I didn’t choose my shoe size, nor did I ask Britain to size shoes in such a way that fractions are necessary, but still when I ask for a pair of shoes in my size I get that look, as if I’m a kid who thinks ‘seven and three quarters’ is a legitimate age, and the words “we don’t do half sizes”.

This used to annoy me even before I lived on the Continent. If there’s enough of a difference in size for some shops to do half sizes, why can’t I ask for my size without scorn? It’s not as if everything that’s half is a failure to reach a whole; ask a musician what would happen if we abolished semitones.

Since living in Europe, though, and encountering European sizes, I get even more annoyed by half-sizedness prejudice. I take a size 40, for goodness sake – isn’t that a round enough number for you?

Even that comforting knowledge didn’t help me in Deichmans, though. Admittedly, I sometimes take a 39, and I’ve seen both 39 and 40 marked as the equivalent of 6.5. However, in Deichmans British sizes seemed to bear no relation to European ones, and in fact British sizes didn’t seem to bear much relation to British sizes, leaving me trying on sizes more or less as random – which, coincidentally, is what I had to do in Albania at first.

The end result is that I’ve got one pair in a 37 and the other in a 35 (!) – but not a 35 and a half, of course. That would just be silly.

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Albanian Approbation

20 Apr

It is with some relief that I have received the first responses to Leda from Albania, one from an Albanian and one from an American living there. The American lady thought it captured life in Albania, while the Albanian lady mistakenly thought it was a true story, which certainly seems to confirm its realism. They also both liked the book.

It’s reassuring because, for one reason and another, I wasn’t able to have the manuscript read before it went to press by anyone who knew Albania intimately. This left me with the lingering dread that, even though I wrote most of Leda while living in Albania, there would be something in the novel so outrageously wrong that Albanians would find it ridiculous – which would rather undermine a novel that purports to inform the reader about Albania. That dread is now put to rest.

An aside: If you think “approbation” in the title is an inappropriate word for a post about people approving of my book, you probably need to look up the definition. It’s a word that’s more misused than used correctly, to the extent that I think it is doomed to change its definition and mean exactly the same as “opprobrium” (with which it is confused). In that case, this post may have historical value; it may be the final place on the internet where it is used to mean approval rather than disapproval. You read it here last!

A note to the designers of mobile websites

31 Oct

I’ve just had a bad experience with two different mobile websites. Firstly Dominoes. After googling the address I naturally went for the mobile site, thinking it would be quicker. And perhaps it would – if I had lived in the USA. No indication that it was a US site until you were well into your order. So I gave up and got the laptop out.

Later, hubbie having annexed the laptop, I tried Boots Treat Street. All went well until I tried to sign in. You’d think that would be a pretty basic function on a site designed to collect points but no, that’s not one of the features of the mobile site.

Nothing daunted, I clicked on the link for the full site, entered my details and clicked submit – only to be taken straight back to the page telling me I couldn’t do that on the mobile site. A few moments’ experimentation showed me that I could dance this merry circle all night if I wanted to. I didn’t want to, so again I gave up.

These are not my only bad experiences if this type, so designers of mobile web sites, please note: I don’t want a mobile website because it looks pretty. I don’t want it because its cool and all the other sites have one. I don’t even care how quickly it loads if it doesn’t perform the basic function I went to it for. If the mobile version isn’t actually easier to use on a mobile than the normal site, I would prefer not to have one. Please bear this In mind in future!

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The Hidden Dangers of Freebies

24 Oct

This morning as I walked out of the station in the herd of other commuters, I spotted people huddling under a brightly coloured beach umbrella, handing something out to passers-by. This is not an unusual occurrence; at least once or twice a year there are people handing out freebies at rush hour. I’ve had chocolate bars, drinks, and even a Gillette razor. This time it was a bottle of Powerade Energy, berry flavour. I took one and made my cheery (yes, that’s sarcastic) Monday morning way to work. I had a quick squiz at the ingredients as I was opening it – natural flavours, caffeine, vitamins and serious-sounding minerals, no doubt designed to do you lots of good. Fair enough. It wasn’t until halfway through the morning, and halfway through the bottle, that I noticed all the health warnings: Not suitable for children. Not suitable for pregnant women. Not suitable for those sensitive to caffeine. Not intended to be consumed in high quantities. Ulp! The point of the drink is to provide energy for high-intensity activities – so of course a bunch of desk-bound commuters are the ideal candidates. The drink was quite nice, I have to say, and if it weren’t for the dire warnings, maybe I would have drunk it again. As it is, though, I’ll probably stick to something safer – like lighter fluid.

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Bring Back Rob McElwee!

11 Jul

I have started a petition to bring back Rob McElwee, the BBC weatherman.  His forecasts were a joy, full of idiosyncratic phrases and anthropomorphic weather systems.  He was cut by the BBC earlier this year, much to many people’s dismay.  I know I’m not alone in this – there’s even an appreciation page on Facebook, as well as a page calling for his reinstatement.

If you are a fan of intelligent TV, please sign my petition.  When I have enough signatures I’ll be contacting the BBC directly.

You can see an example of Rob’s presenting here: Rob McElwee forecast
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Consuldictation

22 Jan

Consuldictation (noun): A process whereby someone or some people (usually in management) dictate a change (usually negative) which is about to take place whether you like it or not, but present it as a “consultation” so that your frustrated opinions can be heard, though not acted upon. It seems to be happening a lot these days.

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