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LIFE GOT COLD
I interviewed Girls Aloud late last year for a feature which was published today and I have to say, I rather liked them. Sexy, young, and effervescent, they've gone on to enjoy phenomenal success since their debut single and while they’re not likely to present a challenge to any of the more-established rock acts on the scene, they could well turn out to be the next Spice Girls. Had something of a spike in traffic to my blog last week after the US website Daily Kos quoted my story on Private Military Companies and their involvement in the Iraqi conflict. The link from Daily Kos was picked up across the web and within 24 hours, had been syndicated to over 100 other URLs all of which were sending their own traffic. Browsing my site meter at 18:00 on Friday showed nothing unusual, around 250 hits which is pretty average for that time of day. An hour later however, I did a double take when the figure hit 800 and by midnight, I was a little surprised to say the least when it was just shy of 2,000. Had 20six not crashed shortly thereafter, I dare say it would have been even higher. Still, puts things in perspective when Daily Kos is attracting 2.5million unique hits a month - that's some coverage! If you've any interest in US politics and the view from the street in the US on Bush's antics, it's well worth looking at.
I've done some housekeeping with my blog this morning, shifting all of my entries on Iraq to a new category of their own. If you're looking for them, they now reside here - everything from my first blog on arriving in baghdad to the retrospectives and specific features relating to what's going on out there. Had a quiet weekend, although I shifted some stuff on EBay over saturday and sunday, including the sound card which I had left over from the build of my new PC. I'm quite a late convert to EBay but since I took the plunge, it's become something of an obsession and I'm both buying and selling like crazy. I've got my eye on a couple of new lenses for my Nikon D1 which is looking a little bit the worse for wear after seeing action in Iraq. I spoke to Nikon last week who have said they'll happilly sort out the mostly cosmetic signs of wear whilst I wait if I want to take it down to them myself so it looks like a trip to SW London is on the cards. I spoke to Martin in Iraq yesterday, one of the guys I was on my pre-deployment course with. We ended up in the same accommodation block whilst I was in-country and as he's a Millwall supporter, he's flying home next week on leave for the FA Cup final. I spoke to the Customs and Excise guys, and they're all up for it, so it looks like a London reunion is on the cards for us all which I'm really looking forward to. It's P's birthday next Monday, so I'll be rushing round like a headless chicken this week trying to find an appropriate present in between attepmting to tackle some of the work that's been piling up whilst my mind has been wandering. I'm taking her away to a new hotel in central London next weekend so I've made a start at least. Otherwise, all is quiet for me after the excitement and industry of Baghdad. I need some inspiration. |
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4.5.04 13:11 |
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DESPERATELY SEARCHING FOR INSPIRATION
Jacked from Harmony... I want everyone who reads this to ask me three questions: no more, no less. Ask me anything you want and I will answer it. Then, I want you to go to your journal, copy and paste this allowing your friends (including myself) to ask you anything. |
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6.5.04 16:52 |
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COOL FOR CATS
This weekend provided a nice counterbalance to some of the less enjoyable aspects of my journalistic career, coinciding nicely with my wife's birthday. It's one of the nicest elements of freelance journalism sometimes, that the line between work and play is so marginal and I'll try and arrange things to coincide, fitting together seamlessly to make the experience all the more enjoyable. I took P to the coolest new hotel in London on Sunday night, The Zetter in Clerkenwell Road, EC1. It's only been open a month, and having had a heads up on it eight months ago, I was eager to see what all the fuss was about. There's been something of a revolt within the hotel trade of late, a move away from the anonymous, 'luxury-by-numbers' five star chains like Le Meridien or Marriot in favour of small boutique style affairs where rooms are individually themed and service is the watchword. Chains like Hotel du Vin which look for listed buildings, old warehouses, etc, and utilise as much of the charm of the original facade as possible. It's the small things that count - fresh milk in the rooms, fresh coffee in cafetieres, that sort of thing - anything to make you feel more like you're in a bedrrom at a friend's instead of just another nameless, anonymous coporate place. I have to say, The Zetter excelled in every way. From the rooftop suite we stayed in, the views across London were wonderful. Beds made up with Egyptian Cotton Percale linen, duck and goose down quilts and pillows, silent air con...all conspire to make sleep an easy and heavenly affair.
The hotel only has 59 rooms, but each one is individually styled. Facilities are state of the art - broadband, LCD TV, DVD players and computers in every room, Wifi access in public areas, etc. The TVs are interactive, offering all sorts of information as well as access to a free music library of over 4,000 tracks. There's a self-service coffee point on each floor with mugs a top of the range espresso machine so you can make you own delicious filter coffee, whenever you want it. Hot water bottles on each bed and variable colour lighting add to the luxury, and the owners have deliberately structured pricing competitively, with rooms from just £125 per night. With the nightclub Turnmills literally across the street and no end of other clubs within ten minutes walk, it would make a wonderful venue to stay at after a night on the town. Just imagine coming back to one of those rooms and watching the sun come up from your own private balcony with views across the capital, your own personal soundtrack pumping out mellow chill out tracks from the CD player, the pink lighting creating a pleasant ambience. Breakfast was a delight, possibly the best hotel breakfast I've ever tasted. We stayed at The Metropolitan in Park Lane last year and breakfast there is served in Nobu but priced accordingly - I seem to recall our full English costing £18.50 each, surely something of a record. At The Zetter, you're looking a £5.50 for a couple of perfectly poached, fried or scrambled eggs on toast, with side orders - bacon, sausage and roasted tomatoes - at £1.00-£1.50 each. And they really are something to talk about. The most bizarre thing happened on Sunday evening as we were getting ready to go out which I thought was personal service above and beyond the call. Regular readers of my blog will recall that we have two Russian Blue cats, Pepsi and Katya, two sisters from the same litter who are quite the most lovely creatures. This is Katya:
Well Sunday evening was quite balmy and I'd opened the patio doors to the fifth floor balcony at the hotel and hopped in to the bath, laying back to enjoy the bubbles when something caught my eye. I looked up and this was looking at me:
It's a British Blue, spayed, of the most wonderful temperament. He strolled over to me, bold as you like, and promptly settled down in our room. P gave him a saucer of milk and he drank it, purring contentedly and enjoying the attention. I shut him out when we went out for dinner to The Bengal Clipper, but he was outside waiting for us when we got back! Thought it was rather sweet of the hotel - I mean, that's service, even trying to source a pet the same breed as your own for the duration of your stay! Apparently, he lives further along on the fifth floor at a penthouse in a neighbouring building, but wanders along the ledge linking the two. He's made quite a home for himself at The Zetter and is apparently rather well looked after by the chambermaids who all fuss him. Managed to win two auctions on eBay this weekend, securing myself two Nikon lenses which I'd had my eye on and a useful addition to my camera kit. Sold everything I had on there too, which almost pays for what I've bought, so rather pleased with that. Got lots of work to catch up on this week and several commissions to deal with, so it looks like I'm desk bound for the forseeable future. |
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11.5.04 12:41 |
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RANTING
I like to think that as I've grown older and - dare I say it - more mature, I've lost that 'angry young man' quality which saw me through my late teens and early twenties. However, two incidents on Sunday whilst driving to the hotel left both P and myself positvely fuming - and curiously, at a loss as to what course of action to adopt. Traffic on the way into central London along the A41 was horrific on Sunday afternoon, the result of bad driving, roadworks and an accident which all conspired to produce gridlock by the North Circular at Brent Cross. Like several other motorists who know the area well, I turned off down a residential street and made to carve my way through quieter, non arterial roads when we came to a temporary hiatus behind stationary traffic. We were both vaguely aware of the occupants of a pathetically souped-up Peugeot 306 in front of us - an overweight, middle aged woman of apparent African origin in the back, two men of similar appearance in the front. As we were talking the car in front inched forwards, stopped...and the rear door opened. I saw the woman's hand reach out, and without any apparent shame, as bold as you like, deposit in the middle of the road the detritus of a take away McDonalds meal - a large cup of half-drunk Coca Cola, a Big Mac carton, fries and the paper bag which once contained them. Just like that - she dropped them in the middle of the road and shut the door. Then the car moved off. P looked at me - and I at her - mouth agape. It was broad daylight, in a quiet residential street and this pig-ignorant, fucking animal decided that rather than deposit her dirty fucking litter in an appropriate receptacle, she'd leave it in the road for someone else to clear up. The useless, scuzzy fat bitch stuffed her face and dumped every fucking carton individualy in the middle of a London street. It sounds petty, but I can't recall a another incident recently that's left me feeling such an intense, and perhaps misplaced rage. We moved forwards about 100 yards and turned down another street, still trailing the Peugeot, when it again halted. However, before I'd even had a chance to take my foot of the clutch, the woman opened the door of the car in front again, and this time deposited the detritus of a half eaten Kentucky Fried Chicken meal into the road - several cartons, peices of chicken, french fry wrappers and all the crap and accessories they throw in the bag when you buy it. The door then closed, and they drove off. Bear in mind that we were in the middle of a residential area but being Mill Hill/Hendon, it's all relative and you're never more than about two streets from a major road with its plethora of rubbish bins every few feet. We were both livid, but curiously struck dumb for a response. What would have been the point in remonstrating with such an obviously ignorant fucking individual? Would she have listened? No. Would she have cared? No. What would you have done in the same circumstances? Selfish, thoughtless, dirty bitch. By comparison, the cliche who pissed me off with her driving afterwards was saintly of character. Brand new, metallic VW Beetle, complete with plastic flower on the dash. Gorgeous, young blonde female twentysomething driving it. Three lanes, straddling them all, weaving from one to the other at a snail's pace with ourselves and a long, snaking line of frustrated drivers behind her. I floor the accelerator, race for a gap and pull up next to her at the next set of lights. Guess what's in her hand? A mobile phone. For fuck's sake, it's not complicated. If you're that bloody useless at multi tasking, pull over. Better still, don't use the phone at all. Buy a fucking hands free kit - they're cheap, plentiful and easy to use. Then again, if you want to break the law and use a mobile phone held to your ear, at least make sure you can drive in a straight line and not cause a risk to others. Thank you for listening. Rant over. |
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12.5.04 12:17 |
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DEATH BY STATE
Watching Nick Broomfield's excellent documentary on female serial killer Ailenn Warnoss last night, I couldn't help but dust off and re-examine some of my views on the death penalty. Once, I used to be a vocal advocate of execution by the state, but then in my youth, my politics were slightly to the right of Margaret Thatcher's because I knew no better. How I've changed. There was something terribly sad about last night's tale of one of life's true victims. Aileen had victim writ large across her from the day she was born. Raised by her grandfather, who was also believed to be her biological father, she and her mother were abused from the off. She became a mother herself at the age of 13 and it would appear, was abused and grew to duistrust every single person she came into contact with throughout her life. Watching Jeb Bush as governor of Florida attempting to justify his signing of her death warrant on screen last night left me feeling sickened. Sickened at the flimsy justification he offered, at the cursory way in which she was certified fit to be put to death (isn't there a certain sick irony in that concept - 'fit to be killed'> Quite simply, I felt an overwhelming sense of injustice. Her death achieved nothing. I honestly believe that it ill-behoves society to execute those who commit crimes. The foundations of capital punishment, born of a sense of revenge, of 'justice', are shaky indeed and have no place in a civilised society hoping for advancement still further. Punish, Educate and Rehabilitate. Execution does none of those things. The death penalty is not a deterrent. It is not 'just' on an objective level, but it sates a desire for vengeance, to equalise. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the moral issue, for a state to indulge in vengeance under the flag of justice is disingenuous at best. The one issue that underlines the whole debate is the price which we apply to human life. If we accept that it is wrong for one person to kill another through the commission of crime (e.g. murder), is it not also wrong for the state, through the justice system, to mete out the same treatment? Sorry? Somewhere, the buck stops with one individual, representative as the head of whichever group holds the power. In Warnoss' case, it stopped with Jeb Bush, a man as fit to hold office as Warnoss was to be put to death. What gives that person the moral right to play God with another individual's life?
It is quite simply wrong for the state to take the life of an individual on criminal grounds as a form of punishment. Incarceration of society's killers by the state has the same effect: lock them up, deprive them of their liberty, and they are unable to kill again.
Despite my ability to reason and be objective from my far removed standpoint, I don't doubt for one moment that if I were to be at the receiving end and a close member of my own family, or a freind were killed violently, my attitude would change. But my point here is also one of the tenets of my argument - that those on the receiving end, those suffering most - are least qualified to formulate policy. Subjective judgement, that which benefits the individual, is not necessarily what also benefits society.
We are fortunate in the UK that the death penalty has disappeared from the statute book. Our legal system may be flawed but at least those wrongly convicted of capital crimes are still alive to rejoin society. Murder has one of the lowest rates of recidivsim of any crime, so what good would it do us to put to death those who spend their years in prison regretting their actions and wishing they could undo a moment of madness? Hopefully, if we can learn to treat victims of crime with the care and support they deserve, we can also learn something from those who commit the vilest acts.
We owe ourselves nothing less. |
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12.5.04 13:31 |
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, and sickened at the manner in which seemingly every person involved in her case saw fit to betray her in return for the allure of Hollywood money. |
The Gardener
Border Enforcement Complex, south west Baghdad, Iraq. 11:10am, 2nd April 2004. |
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12.5.04 18:14 |
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I, VISA - WHY IS U.S IMMIGRATION TERRORISING BRITISH REPORTERS?
It appears that the U.S. is intent on alienating itself still further. A recent polciy change means it now joins the ranks of such notable company asa Cuba, Syria, Iran, and North Korea by demanding that reporters have special visas before being allowed entry to its borders. And you can forget any hope of visiting to cover a breaking story if like me, you're a freelance - as explained in the following story, "Since when is the U.S. government in the business of accrediting journalists—foreign or domestic? The list of enumerated requirements would make it impossible for a reporter from an allied country to cover a breaking story in a timely way". From an article in Slate by Dahlia Lithwick... "Last week a British reporter was detained by immigration officials and then expelled from the United States for traveling here without knowing that the visa rules had changed. More precisely, she didn't know that a decades-old unenforced rule was suddenly being enforced against friendly tourists long accustomed to entering the country without a visa at all. Elena Lappin, a freelance journalist from the United Kingdom (who has written for Slate), was stopped at Los Angeles International Airport, subjected to a body search, handcuffed, frog-marched through the airport, and then held in a cell at a detention center overnight—all because she dared travel to the United States without a special journalist visa. There has been a rule on the books since 1952 requiring foreign journalists to obtain special "I visas," but foreign journalists say it was invariably ignored by Immigration and Naturalization Service officials who required only that citizens of friendly countries apply for a visa waiver, an exemption allowing most residents of 27 enumerated countries to visit the United States for business or pleasure for up to 90 days without jumping through any INS hoops. No more. When the INS was folded into the Department of Homeland Security in March 2003, the I-visa rule began to be enforced in earnest, sometimes, resulting in at least 15 journalists from friendly countries being forcibly detained, interrogated, fingerprinted, and held in cells overnight—with most denied access to phones, pens, lawyers, or their consular officials. Their friendly welcome at the detention center included lights that shone all night long and video surveillance of the entire cell, often including toilets. David James Smith of the Times of London described being denied a blanket, coffee, or a pen during his overnight detention last March. When he first learned he was being denied entry on an immigration technicality, he madly assumed he'd be put up in an airport hotel. These reporters are not enemy combatants. They are not chroniclers of scathing injustices of the Bush administration. One Australian reporter was here to interview Olivia Newton John (God knows, someone has to.) She reported being "body searched and groped" by immigration and customs officials. Ten French and British Journalists were here to report on last summer's Electronic Entertainment Expo, the video-game industry's annual trade show. Unless Super Mario Brothers are secretly accumulating weapons of mass destruction, this mistreatment of journalists from allied countries serves as yet another example of overzealous, unbridled discretionary excesses by government officials who still can't figure out who we're fighting the war on terror. The INS (now known as Citizenship and Immigration Services) has a long, proud tradition of marrying limitless government discretion to obscure Byzantine rules that cannot be understood through ordinary inquiry. Virtually anyone in this country on a visa is in violation of some regulation, although any attempt to understand or clarify one's status is systematically thwarted by an agency that cannot be reached by telephone and cannot be visited in under seven hours. The INS has for years contributed to widespread ignorance and punished it after the fact. What's wrong with requiring foreign journalists to have a special press visa, you ask? Why shouldn't they have to show that they are here for good and benign reasons? Well, for one thing, we don't require most tourists from these friendly nations to obtain visas. Indeed, some of the reporters locked up and deported from LAX had already been allowed through immigration as tourists and were only nabbed later when they or their colleagues copped to being journalists. Singling out reporters for greater scrutiny than ordinary sightseers suggests there is something uniquely dangerous about journalism. As Lappin points out in her piece on her ordeal, only countries like Cuba, Syria, Iran, and North Korea demand that reporters have special visas. As James Michie, the public affairs officer at the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection, told me this afternoon, this happens in other countries, too; another journalist reported to him that she was frequently treated this way in Yugoslavia. America: Striving to be more like Yugoslavia each day. Far worse than the fact that we're singling out reporters for abuses: Since when is the U.S. government in the business of accrediting journalists—foreign or domestic? What possible journalistic standards must be met in order to prove to the INS that one is enough of a journalist to merit a press visa? The list of enumerated requirements would make it impossible for a reporter from an allied country to cover a breaking story in a timely way. Reporters must now provide a letter from their employer detailing their assignment and place their hope in the broad discretion afforded immigration authorities. Of course, freelancers just looking for a story without a contract in their pocket are presumably out of luck, too. Unless, of course, they elect to lie and call themselves tourists with super-big cameras. The state cannot be in the business of acting as arbiter of who's allowed to come and write about America. Predictably, Homeland Security officials insist that the rule-tightening is all vitally important to fighting terror and that it's the journalists' own fault if they don't know the new rules. "It's not about the occupation of a passenger that's coming into the United States," Ana Hinojosa, director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection at LAX, told the Los Angeles Times this week. "We are concerned that every foreigner has the proper visa to enter the country," ignoring the fact that non-journalist foreigners from these 27 countries need not have a visa to enter. Similarly, Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told the paper that these reporters must be cuffed and searched "for their safety, for the safety of our officers and the safety of any other individuals who might be in the vehicle." The theory being that they must be terrorists since we treat them that way". |
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14.5.04 13:59 |
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