A day for turning cartwheels

29 April 2011

A Westminster Abbey verger brilliantly summed up the day in actions rather than words. Long after the guests had left he was caught on TV turning two cartwheels on the Abbey's red carpet.

And that was the day really - plenty of surprises - and despite the overly stuffy and formal service it was a day when the monarchy and the people connected.

The Brits do manage pageantry well. And the attention to detail is exquisite. At a time of expenditure cuts, true hardship, real unemployment it was a day for a smile and a toast. No one expects no to stand to attention and tug forelocks. Britain is a more realistic place. This is not about fairytales. Tomorrow, and on every other day of the year, we will have to re-enter the world of reality.

I did not like the use of old style wording for the wedding service. No one even knows what "thereto I pledge thee my troth" means. It was too formal and too solemn. More like someone had died than a joyful wedding day. And the so called happy couple did not seem as close during the service as two people committing to eachother should be.

Wedding highs: The Beckhams looking very smart. Beatrice (daughter of Andrew and the non-invited Fergie) doing Gaga. The orchestra belting out Jerusalem. Crown Imperial. Decent Weather. The drive away Aston Martin. Crowds along the mall, in front of Buck House and in Hyde Park - wonderful.  Pippa. Some great hats. Hats are back. The Battle of Britain flight.

Wedding lows: Not enough champagne. I only had one bottle. The trees in the abbey - weird. Princess Anne's outfit - weirder. Elton not singing. No Madonna. No Barack. Pippa. Sally Bercow - the wife of the speaker - one Sky TV commentator said babies everywhere would be looking on hungrily. She was showing too much cleavage. Samantha Cameron - hatless. Some less than great hats!

Pippa apears twice as she might have stolen the show! She is already being described as the hottest bridesmaid ever.

If you want to see an alternative upbeat version of the wedding - then watch this from T-Mobile.

To be honest you have to be a real grouch not to have been impressed by today's wedding or to have a genuine feeling of goodwill to the happy couple. What we saw today wasn't a celebration of aristocratic privilege. It was a celebration of a shared heritage. And that heritage is owned as much by the political left as by the right.

Cambridge is now cool; Oxford is presumably feeling a bit snubbed.

Thailand was represented by Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn - not by the Crown Prince and presumed heir.

There were some things wrong with the wedding; the snub of both living Labour prime ministers was simply rude. Tony Blair and Gordon Brown should have been invited. This is made worse considering the tickets dished out – and in Syria's case withdrawn – to tyrants and their professional apologists.

Good luck to the newlyweds.

Nice's sporting 22R Saleya approach

27 April 2011

Arriving on Friday into Nice we landed on 4L. Watching the arrivals yesterday flights were landing on 22R which requires a sporty approach inside the Baie des Anges and a big left turn over the beach to align with the runway.

22R starts with a right break in order to avoid the posh houses on the headland (Sir Elton John has a house there) and then as you head towards the beach you you do a big left turn on to finals and make sure your pointing at the right runway, not the taxi way. If there is sea spray the PAPIs can be obscured, just to add to the level of interest.

Other fun elements; there is a lot of French radio traffic; English is not the only language spoken there. And a large amount of helicopter traffic especially in summer.

The other thing to notice is that aircraft are not allowed to take off from 22L if an aircraft is making a 22R approach. This is to ensure the safety of both aircraft as the take off and missed approach paths would cross.

Nice is France's third busiest airfield after the big two in Paris and has an interesting mix of commercial and general/business aviation. 

Green joins red and yellow on Thailand's political battlefield

27 April 2011 By Pavin Chachavalpongpun for The Nation

"Forget red. Ignore yellow. Don't even mention blue.

The dominant colour for this pre-election season is green. But do not confuse Thailand's "green politics" with being environmentally friendly. This green is indeed the colour of the military's uniform.

Since the coup of 2006 that ousted the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra, the military has regained control of the political domain. Thailand's foreign allies are watching this development closely. They are aware of the increasing militarisation of politics. A former American diplomat recently compared the political transitions in Thailand and Burma.

He said that while the Burmese state is becoming more "civilianised", the Thai state is becoming more militaristic. While the Burmese generals are becoming more discreet in their domination of politics, seen in their willingness to exchange their uniforms for civilian attire to participate in the election, the Thai generals are glaring and blatant in their interference in politics. They have stage-managed the country's political affairs even as they wear full military uniforms.

And while the Burmese military claims to be happily embracing democracy, the Thai military doesn't even pretend to show its affinity for democracy. It is absurd to learn that the Burmese junta is now more liberal than the Thai Army.

Thailand's next general election will be held in the next few months. Already, the Thai military has hinted it is not ready to welcome a new government if it is to be led by the pro-Thaksin Pheu Thai Party. The constant rumours about another coup and the latest round of armed clashes with Cambodian troops in the contested border area are meant to send a strong message that the election is untimely. Above all, these incidents indicate that the military has no intention of staying out of politics in the near future.

The military's latest fuss about Indonesia's mediation effort in the Thai-Cambodian conflict and its decision to engage in deadly clashes with Cambodia successfully unveils the face of the real "boss" who is commanding Thailand's domestic and foreign policy. Even the Oxford-educated Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva declared on Sunday that his government would provide full support to the Army in defending Thai territory against any threat from Cambodia.

The involvement of the military in politics has been triggered by several developments, most of them related to the character of Thaksin's previous rule. Retrospectively, one of Thaksin's strategies was to fragment the institutional unity of the Army. He created a rift within the armed forces, promoting those outside the old power network while alienating those inside it. He then began to place his relatives, friends and loyalists in key military posts. This factionalisation split the Army between those who perceived themselves as truly professional (such as rejecting being co-opted by the government) and those who allegedly were not.

Thaksin also sought to re-politicise the military by stamping his authority on its internal affairs. Aside from his control of military promotions, Thaksin acquired a firm grip on the military budget and national security policies. Gradually, the military saw its role in regional security diminished. Thaksin's transformation of long-standing Southeast Asian enemies into trading partners, although seemingly serving Thailand's interests, effectively stripped the military of its influence on external relations. Against this background, there was a strong sense of loss of traditional military roles and expertise within the officer corps, leading to a determination to regain them through political intervention.

Finally, the coup ended Thaksin's successful attack on the military elites, restoring the pre-2001 balance of power between the social, economic and political forces associated with the Army.

Today, the military-dominated balance of power has been fiercely protected. In the current crisis, the military has shown no sign of giving up its political ambition. It has continued to identify old and new faces and threats, including Thaksin, his red-shirt supporters and his Cambodian friend across the border, Prime Minister Hun Sen. This explains why the Thai military has refused to enter into an Asean-sponsored dialogue with Cambodia unless its request for a bilateral solution is adopted.

Within the realm of domestic politics, the colour green has been painted everywhere. The Army chief General Prayuth Chan-ocha has come out of his barracks and confidently crossed over into the political field. In the past weeks, some Thais who were not familiar with Prayuth genuinely thought that he was one of the Democrat candidates running in the upcoming election. Such confusion was a result of Prayuth's many political speeches.

On March 21, Prayuth said, "I am willing to accept the poll outcome." Two weeks later, he assured Thais, "There will be an election." And on April 11, Prayuth called for a large voter turnout in the election. He rationalised that a high voter turnout was the key to safeguarding the monarchy and bringing about change under a democracy.

The military's footprints in politics have never been clearer. Green, as the latest colour competing in Thailand's rainbow politics, is further complicating our highly polarised society. As Thailand is moving into a period of greater political uncertainty, it is likely that Thais will experience the influence of an even deeper shade of green. In this context, green might not necessarily symbolise lushness and abundance. It could on the contrary signify aridity and bleakness."

Pavin Chachavalpongpun, a former diplomat, is a visiting lecturer at the Department of Political Science, the National University of Singapore.
 

The must have wedding souvenir

27 April 2011

Royal wedding sick bag in red. Hand signed by Lydia Leith. Screen printed. Open edition. Designed by Lydia Leith. Future collectable?!

Not so Nice

26 April 2011

Nice is the fifth biggest city in France and is the commercial center of the Cote D'Azur. To the east is Monaco; to the west is Cannes and further around the coast you get to  Marseilles.

The whole coastline survives through tourism and increasingly through expatriate ownership of properties. It is a strange land of rich protected homes, euro tourists, refugees and jobless.

For the most part the Riviera is a place people come to spend money rather than earn it. Unemployment levels are high, casual work hard to come by, and as everywhere, service industry jobs tend to go to those with low wage expectations.

There are flights from some 69 European destinations; including 18 in the UK and Ireland. Nice at the Easter weekend seemed to be overrun by Brits. Which was vaguely amusing as the weather for the first two days was miserable while England sweated through an unseasonal heatwave.

The food is OK; but badly needs a helping of chilli. The service is generally average at best. Most restaurants are not looking at repeat business; simply to feed transient tourists.

And most things run with customary French inefficiency. Try queuing for a ticket at the train stations. Then on an Easter weekend when the city is packed with visitors most of the city is closed and public transport runs a reduced service.

The airport is run down; far too small and dismal. Due to its proximity to the Principality of Monaco, it also serves as that city–state's airport. I suspect it operates more efficiently for the rich and famous in their business jets than for Easyjet's passengers.

Down the road in Monaco they have their own Royals - the House of Grimaldi, which serves as something of a surrogate royal family in France. In July, Monaco will celebrate the wedding of Prince Albert II to the South African former Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock, though the impending nuptials have been overshadowed by the grander preparations in London.

The biggest issue in Nice appears to be how to manage Tunisian refugees entering from Italy. Since the Arab uprisings began in January, some 25,000 people - mostly Tunisians - are estimated to have made the short but often perilous trip across the Mediterranean to Europe, and the start of what they hope will be a new, prosperous life.

Italy has encouraged other EU states to take some of the illegal arrivals. It has granted thousands of temporary permits allowing them to stay in Europe and armed with these, many Tunisians have chosen to head for a country where they have family and friends - France.

Europe without borders is quickly becoming a Europe where nations want borders. The short train ride starts in the northern Italian town of Ventimiglia; to get to Nice there is no border sign, no flag, certainly no immigration check.

The train runs though Monaco, through several tunnels and several stretches of sparkling coastline later, and they are in Nice. 

The French authorities have been beefing up security along the route in recent weeks. There are large numbers of railway security at the station. But many still arrive in Nice and look to stay there or head for Paris.

There is talk of re-working the Schengen agreement to allow more scope for countries like France to patrol the border. There is talk also of help for Italy.

The issue will not go away; many more will cross the Mediterranean from Libya and Tunisia to Europe. Their goal is France – the former colonial power, whose language they speak, whose economy is healthier and where many have relatives.

The journey to Menton, the first stop in France, only takes nine minutes. Qais had no eyes for the stunning Mediterranean coastline, but watched the sunny platform nervously for police. Five or six officers stood on the platform, ready to grab anyone who got off, but made no move to board. Qais looked ahead, trying not to meet their eyes.

Just as the euro relied on the hope that all EU countries would run their economies in the same way, the free movement area was predicated on the idea that they would all adopt common immigration policies. Both are in the process of being exposed as another Euro-delusion.
 

Guantánamo piled lie upon lie through the momentum of its own existence

25 April 2011 Julian Glover The Guardian

Let them read the documents. Let them try to tell us after that (as some still do, even now) that the Afghan war was fought well, and fought morally; that Guantánamo was a limited and necessary evil; that there was nothing that amounted to torture; that the prisoners stolen from across the world were almost all fanatics; and that it was necessary for democratic states to excuse themselves from the rule of law in order to save it.

"If you could only know what we can know, you would understand that what we are doing is right," our leaders used to assure us. Well now we really do know – we have the documents, we have the transcripts of interviews with former prisoners, we have everything it takes to understand the nasty story of Guantánamo, exposed today in 759 leaked documents containing the words of the people who ran the place. And it is obvious that we should have seen through the evasions from the start.

The leaked files published by the Guardian and the New York Times reveal horror that lies only partly in the physical things that were done to inmates – the desperate brutality of heated isolation cells, restraining straps and forced interrogation. Such things are already grimly familiar and have been widely condemned, and perhaps for the 172 inmates who remain in Camp Delta despite President Obama's promise to close it, they continue in some lesser form. Worse things have been done in war, not least by us British, as emerging evidence from the campaign against the Mau Mau in Kenya should remind us.

But what is given new prominence by these latest Guantánamo files is the cold, incompetent stupidity of the system: a system that tangled up the old and the young, the sick and the innocent. A system in which to say you were not a terrorist might be taken as evidence of your cunning. A system designed less to hand out justice than to process and supply information from inmates, as if they were not humans but items of digital data in some demented storage machine programmed always to reject the answer "No, I was not involved". The clinical idiocy of this dreadful place is the most chilling thing of all, since it strips away even the cynical but persuasive defence: it was harsh but it worked and it kept the world safe.

It didn't work, much of the time. These files show that some of the information collected was garbage and that many of those held knew nothing that could be of use to the people demanding answers from them. Far from securing the fight against terror, the people running the camp faced an absurdist battle to educate a 14-year-old peasant boy kidnapped by an Afghan tribe and treat the dementia, depression and osteoarthritis of an 89-year-old man caught up in a raid on his son's house.

Other cases are just as pathetic. Jamal al-Harith, born Ronald Fiddler in Manchester in 1966, was imprisoned by the Taliban as a possible spy, after being found wandering through Afghanistan as a Muslim convert. In a movement of Kafkaesque horror the Americans held him in Camp X-Ray simply because he had been a prisoner of its enemy. "He was expected to have knowledge of Taliban treatment of prisoners and interrogation tactics," the files record.

Again and again, what stands out from these stories is not some as yet undiscovered horror from the secretive steel-barred and orange-suited compound, but the chaos, the confusion and the casualness of it all. The people who ran this place were not deceived. They too could see that this was not the distillation of evil that the American government claimed it to be, but a shambolic catch from a trawl whose nets had dragged in all sorts of people, many of them by mistake.

Some of the small fry and the innocent were eventually returned (it is important to acknowledge this) but innocence did not exempt them from ill-treatment, or a system of interrogation guided by a note among the files – GTMO Matrix of Threat Indicators for Enemy Combatants – that reads as if engineered to prove that people are hiding from the truth. It is no surprise that the files record that one in seven of those detained developed psychiatric illnesses. This was a place that portrayed itself as the ultimate expression of a forensic and rational war run by the most sophisticated power on the planet, with the best intelligence available. The reality was an almost random collection of the bad, the accidental and the irrelevant. The American state can be understood as such, but could never own up.

Among the prisoners are very dangerous men: real terrorists, driven by hate and out to destroy the sort of liberal values we believe superior. Some of them had done things that merited imprisonment (although that does not mean it was necessarily America's duty to seize them). Some are still there. But nine years after that creaking warrior Dick Cheney called the inmates "the worst of a very bad lot", the possibility of prosecution has been polluted by his Guantánamo regime.

As a result Barack Obama – who was surely serious when he said that he wanted to shut the place – has failed to make much progress in closing Guantánamo down. The Washington Post recently described the final sad failure of the president's attempt to have Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged 9/11 mastermind, prosecuted in a federal court; he will now face a military tribunal of the sort the president once wanted to abolish.

The half-life of the toxic slurry left by Obama's predecessors has made decommissioning the extrajudicial system too difficult. As the documents show, the camp has been left holding a miserable mix of detainees who have nowhere safe to go – such as Yemenis and Chinese Uighur Muslims – the demonstrably dangerous and the unprosecutable. Pull it to bits, and some of those still inside will try to hit back at the west (as perhaps 150 of those already released may already be doing). But keep it going, and this president is dragged back towards the his predecessor's disaster.

The final indictment of Guantánamo is not just that it broke the rule of law temporarily, but that by doing so it made the breach permanent. Justified as a way of gathering information from the guilty, it forced the innocent to invent falsehoods as well. The security forces and politicians who permitted the camp often accuse its critics of being simplistic and squeamish. They say that the things that happened inside it were much less nasty than the things the people it contains did to others. In some cases that's right. But the Guantánamo system piled lie upon lie through the momentum of its own existence, until no one could know which those cases were, or what was true.

At times, I have feared that obsessing over the injustices of Guantánamo Bay has become a surrogate for a wider hatred of America. Read the files, and you'll realise that obsession is the only possible humane response.

Dubai seen as a refuge amid turbulence

25 April 2011 The Financial Times

Yaser Alamoodi, a Saudi Arabian public relations executive, had his plans to holiday in Dubai during this month’s school vacation thwarted because he could not get a seat on a flight.

The aircraft were packed as tourists from Riyadh swarmed to an emirate they saw as immune to the kind of uprising that made it too dicey to go to their normal haunts.

He explained: “People didn’t go to Lebanon and Syria because of the situation. Egypt was out of the question. Bahrain was out of the question. So everybody just ended up going to the emirates.”

Mr Alamoodi’s frustrating experience is a sign of how Dubai, which only a year ago was mired in a debt crisis, has received an unexpected leg-up from the political crises breaking out around it in the Arab world.

Now it is a refuge not only for Saudis seeking a more liberal environment of shopping and cinemas, but for companies and investors seeking a safer base to serve a region that promises to be swilling with money as oil prices soar above $120 a barrel.

Mohamed Alabbar, chairman of Emaar Properties, Dubai’s largest developer, said: “Dubai does well when the region is doing well and, unfortunately, we also prosper when the region isn’t doing so well.”

This year’s Arab world revolutions have provided some unexpected respite for the emirate from the scorn poured on its economic model 18 months ago, after it shocked global markets with a request to defer repayment of about $25bn of the conglomerate Dubai World’s debts.

With a restructuring deal signed a month ago, the city’s overall $120bn loan burden is moving into the background, overshadowed by the tumultuous year in the Middle East that has left investors in the region nervous.

The Dubai economy’s traditional tripod of tourism, trade and transport was already feeling a pick-up in 2010, with Citigroup forecasting growth of up to 4 per cent this year, rising to 6 per cent next year.

That upward trend has been reinforced by the knock-on impact of revolts in other Arab countries on the tourism sector.

Mr Alabbar said Emaar Properties’ large shopping centres – which include Dubai Mall, in the lee of the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building – have seen a 30 per cent rise in annual footfall this year.

Dubai is also seeing more expatriates who work in turbulent spots in the region and are looking for temporary bolt holes while they decide whether to bet on peace returning.

Repton School Dubai, the region’s only boarding school, said it had taken in about 35 students from Bahrain, as the military presence prompted parents to leave the country.

Analysts say professionals are mulling making the move to Dubai, where the financial centre is set to double its leasable space over the next two years.

Budapest-based Political Capital, a think-tank, said in a note that Dubai would benefit in the short term from business relocations, from an inflow of capital and the spike in oil prices.

“This will lead to increased deposits in Dubai banks, which we estimate are likely to increase by between 8 and 12 per cent during 2011,” it said.

For all the gains, observers say there are still qualifications to be made to any talk of a Dubai renaissance.

The questions over the death of Lee Bradley Brown, a London tourist, in police custody this month are a reminder that Dubai can be a tough place for foreigners, although an official investigation said he died from natural causes.

And while Dubai’s debt fallout may be out of the spotlight, it has not disappeared: the emirate faces up to $20bn in repayments this year.

Dubai also faces competition from other ambitious cities in the Gulf – notably Abu Dhabi and Qatar – which have their own development plans and are much richer.

As Saud Masud, chief executive of SM Advisory Group, put it: “Recent socio-political stress in the Middle East may redirect some short-term tourism towards Dubai. But I think the emirate benefits more in the long run from a stable neighbourhood.”
 

Dubai’s Business Bay struggling to attract tenants

25 April 2011 Arabian Business

Delay-hit Business Bay is struggling to attract tenants as an upsurge in construction activity across Dubai squeezes rental rates and occupancy levels, consultancy firm CB Richard Ellis said.

“Despite a prominent location adjacent to the existing central business district (CBD), Business Bay faces a battle to reverse huge vacancy rates,” the firm said in a report Sunday.

Rental rates for one-bedroom apartments in the development average around AED55,000 ($14,974) per annum, or around 36 percent lower than those in the nearby Downtown Dubai district, which average around AED75,000 ($20,419).

“Tenants have proved unwilling to contend with ongoing infrastructure issues and facility shortages,” analysts wrote.

Average residential rates in Dubai declined 17 percent over the last 12 months, with the biggest fall seen in studio apartments, the report said.

In the commercial sector, landlords are struggling with a glut of supply. Office space in the emirate was estimated at 5.7 million sq m at the close of the first quarter, reflecting an annual increase of 17 percent.

“With increasing competition in the market some landlords are now offering all-inclusive deals covering rent and service charges, whilst some even cover chiller costs and DEWA charges,” the report said.

Lease rates within the CBD, but outside DIFC, are down three percent on the year, the report said.

The CEO of H&H Investment and Development, which launched its AED300m 014 property in Business Bay last month, said the district will need another three years before it is completed as low occupancy rates deter new tenants.

Around a quarter of units in the 014 Tower are occupied but a number of tenants who bought space in development in 2006 have not moved in, despite the handover of office space.

“The location they are in right now gave them such a favourable rate it is actually cheaper to rent than to fit out a new office so we said we will wait for a couple of years,” Lufti said.

The 64 million sq ft Business Bay is set to become home to about 191,000 people across 240 towers when completed.

The wedding invite shambles

24 April 2011

I really have very little interest in the royal wedding - now just 5 days away.

But the guest list is worth writing about as much for who is not invited as who has been.

Starting with the not invited:

Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, the Sarkovskys and Mr and Mrs Obama. No Brown or Blair but by contrast, both their Conservative predecessors, Sir John Major and Baroness Thatcher have been invited. Lady Thatcher declined for health reasons although Sir John will be at the ceremony.

Others invited but not attending - the King of Cambodia King Norodom Sihamoni turned down his invitation from the Palace for another engagement.

The Crown Prince of Bahrain, Prince Salman bin Hamad Al-Khalifaha, has said he will not attend the wedding. One way to desperately hang onto power is not to leave home.  But even inviting him in the first place was shameful given the oppression of his own people.

Others turning up include Princess Victoria of Sweden and her former personal trainer husband. The prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard, who is known for her republican views, and her boyfriend Tim Mathieson, a hairdresser turned estate agent, have also made the cut.

King Mswati III of Swaziland will be there; a ruler noted for his life of luxury and practice of polygamy in a poor, backward country will be in the pews.

David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg will all be on show together with George Osborne, the Chancellor, William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, Theresa May, the Home Secretary and Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary.

Then there are the celebrity friends: Rowan Atkinson, Elton John and partner, David and Victoria Beckham, Guy Ritchie, Joss Stone, who sang at the 10th anniversary memorial concert for Diana and – inevitably – Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, described as a friend of Prince Charles.

Among the religious guests: the archbishop of Canterbury and bishop of London will both be officiating at the service; also attending are  Malcolm Deboo, president of the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe, Natubhai Shahi, president of the Jain Academy, the Venerable Bogoda Seelawimala, acting head monk of London's Buddhist Vihara and Scotland's Cardinal Keith O'Brien, who preached a pugnacious Easter sermon condemning society's accommodation with homosexuals and their lifestyles.

Sports stars include Sir Clive Woodward and Sir Trevor Brooking, Welsh rugby star Gareth Thomas, Mike Tindall, there as Zara Phillips's fiance, Ian Thorpe, the champion Australian swimmer, and the jockey Sam Waley-Cohen.

No room for me!
 

Thaksin's policy non-starters

24 April 2011

It is just one sign of the lack of maturity in Thai politics when the main opposition party is still being run and financed by a fugitive ex-Prime Minister who has fled the country rather than accept a two year court sentence.

Yesterday Thaksin Shinawatra addressed a Pheu Thai gathering for two hours via video link at an event to launch the party's political campaign platform and its candidates. The event was broadcast live through red-shirt satellite TV, Asia Update.

Introducing the really catchy slogan "Pheu Thai is ready to run the country, allow us to think again, work again, for all Thais once more", Thaksin stressed his loyalty to the throne and went on to try to defend his record at length. Maybe the slogan sounds better in Thai.

The event was held at Thammasat University's Rangsit Campus Convention Hall. Thaksin went on to set out his economic policy for the party should they be elected.

Phuea Thai under Thaksin would:

Increase the village fund by Bt1 million per village.

Solve the flood problem in Bangkok for good by building a mega-dyke some 30 kilometres in length as in the Netherlands.

Reclaim some 300 square kilometres of land from the sea around Samut Prakan and Samut Songkram provinces and build a new city with an excellent environment and rail link to Bangkok and acting as an IT and financial hub.

Introduce ten new electric rail lines in Bangkok with a fixed fee of Bt20 per ride.

Build new flats and houses to allow students and poor people to rent at Bt1,000 per month.

Improve 25 river-basin areas and channel water from Burma, Laos and Cambodia.

Build a bullet train line from Bangkok to Chiang Mai as well as to other cities like Nakhon Ratchasima, Hua Hin, Rayong

Build a two-track rail line linking Bangkok's vicinity together

Extend the airport link rail to Chachoengsao province and Pattaya

Construct a land bridge linking the Gulf of Thailand and the Andaman Sea.

Eliminate the drugs problem within 12 months and eradicate poverty within four years.

There would be a debt moratorium to those owing between Bt500,000 to Bt1 million for three to five years.

Unmilled rice would be guaranteed at Bt15,000 per tonne.

Reduce corporate income tax from 30 per cent to 23 per cent within the next year.

Guarantee fresh university graduates a minimum monthly salary of Bt15,000 and the minimum wage will be set at Bt300 per day.

Create a Bt1-billion fund to help state and private universities.

Provide tax deductions for those buying their first home or economy car.

Manage the oil-subsidy fund reasonably and develop alternative energy sources such as wind, solar and water.

Promote Thai food abroad and develop Suvarnabhumi Airport into a regional travel hub.

Lots of nonsense here and a serious of projects that could never be delivered upon. And the big unknown - how can the country pay for this? The trouble is the other parties will start to offer their own giveaways. There is little fundamental disagreement or even debate about policy issues among the parties. It is all about vote buying and short of handing out cash the offers from Thaksin are little more that that.

iPad, iPhone, i do

23 April 2011

This may be the first royal wedding of the digital age - and because of that it is impossible to escape the wedding.

There are apps, blogs and videos, plus global saturation television coverage. As a result 2.5 billion people - more than one third of the world's population - are expected to watch Prince William marry Kate Middleton.

When Prince Charles married Lady Diana Spencer in 1981 it was the most-watched live event in television history, with an estimated 740 million viewers.

Fast forward 30 years, and their son's big day will break all the records: an estimated 2 billion will watch on TV, and a further 400 million will stream it online.

The multimedia coverage is already unprecedented. The wedding is all over Facebook and Twitter with updates and tweets; even  official tweets from the royal family and thousands more expected on the day from the 800,000 people expected to line the procession route.

To cater for the royal fever, YouTube launched an official Royal Channel, which has attracted more than 3.2 million views. On the day, it will stream the procession, the service in Westminster Abbey, the balcony kiss and the aircraft flyover.

In a YouTube first, a multimedia live blog will accompany the stream, with commentary, footage and a Twitter feed from staff at St James's Palace.

Plug ''royal wedding'' into YouTube's search engine and 14,400 results will come up. The most popular is an ad by European telco T-Mobile, based on a viral 2009 clip of an American bride and groom dancing down the aisle. The video features lookalikes of Will, Kate and 13 other royals grooving down the Westminster Abbey aisle to House of Love by East 17. The clip has gone viral, with 5.3 million hits.

If you need wedding news and video on a phone or tablet, the ITN Royal Wedding Channel is available as an app. There are, in fact, dozens of royal wedding apps, allowing users to create a fake invitation, dress the royals in bathing suits and other inappropriate attire, examine the history of previous royal weddings, be quizzed on knowledge of royalty, and so on.

A favourite app is one devised by British gossip magazine Hello! Divided into nine sections, it is continually updated with behind-the-scenes commentary and photos. ''A basic picture-driven app that works especially well on the iPad, it stands out from the rest of the royal wedding apps,'' said Britain's Telegraph.

Other apps have 10-day weather forecasts for London and royal protocol tips. One iPhone app lets people set their phone alarm clock to the wedding march or God Save the Queen. The official Royal App tells the story of seven royal nuptials, from Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1840, to Prince Charles and Camilla in 2005.

There are numerous websites dedicated to the event. The official one, www.officialroyalwedding2011.org, features details of the wedding, biographies of the bride and groom, photos and videos. That's complemented by the many unofficial sites.

Google Earth, meanwhile, has expanded its 3D imagery of central London to include the full royal wedding procession route. And, in addition to YouTube, many sites will be broadcasting live on the day, including www.watchtheroyalweddingonline.com.

There is no escape. Like the Borg - you will be assimilated.

BSkyB - because you want to know

19 April 2011

So what was the outcome of the dispute between my mother and BSkyB?

Three apologies...

From Past Due#s Head of Operations

"I sincerely apologise for the issue of a further letter on the 12th of April 2011. This letter was generated automatically by our system and sent in error as the agent who was dealing with your correspondence did not place the account on hold. I can assure you that I will deal with this error accordingly to ensure this does not happen again. I would also like to apologise for the response you received today from Rachel Smillie. You had taken the time to supply us with all payment details. Therefore, Rachel should have investigated fully to rectify this matter rather than refer you to Sky. I have noted this as a training issue with Rachel and will take appropriate actions to resolve....I hope all of the above is sufficient to close this matter, and that you can accept my apology for all inconvenience this matter has caused both you and your mother."

From BSkyB's head of credit control ;

"Firstly, please accept my apologies for what has clearly been a frustrating series of events.

I have tried to establish contact with you on the numbers listed below but without success. I would appreciate if you could afford me some of your time today so that we may discuss the account and provide me with the opportunity to explain the steps taken to resolve this issue."

And from the Executive Office of BSkyB

"Please accept my most sincere apologies for the problems that this matter has clearly caused both yourself and your mother. I cannot stress enough how important your custom is to sky and please accept my assurances that this is not normal practice. It is certainly not our intention to cause anyone any upset.

The letters that were issued were system generated and not intended to cause any unnecessary stress."

I love the excuse that it was not our fault - the letters were system generated. So that makes it OK then?

You know what - my mother is right - they really should have just sent her a bunch of flowers if they really wanted to say sorry.
 

Briton dies in Dubai jail

18 April 2010

I have been cautious about writing about this case because there are too many aspects of the story that really do not make sense.

The simple facts are these:

Lee Bradley Brown came to Dubai and was staying at the Burj al Arab hotel. He was arrested at the hotel on April 6 accused of assaulting a member of the hotel’s staff by pulling her hair and trying to throw her from a sixth-floor balcony overlooking the lobby.

He then died while in police custody on April 12.

The British media alleged that Mr Brown had been beaten by police after fellow inmates of Bur Dubai police cells, where Mr Brown was taken after his arrest on April 6, telephoned his relatives to say they saw him being stripped, tied to a chair and repeatedly punched and kicked in the days before he died.

British Media reports : Telegraph, Sun, Mail. UAE media reports: The Gulf News, 7 Days.

Clearly something very unpleasant happened at the hotel to lead to his arrest; and trouble continued: “Mr Brown created chaos once he reached the police station and also at the public prosecution. We only took measures to control him." the head of Dubai police, Lt Gen Tamim, told the National newspaper.

The results of the first postmortem found that Mr Brown died after choking on his own vomit, and hashish was found in his blood. On Thursday Dubai’s attorney general Eisam Al Humaidan said Brown died last Tuesday of “natural causes”, citing that he choked to death on his own vomit.

A second examination was completed today by two forensic doctors from Dubai Police. This has led to official statements from the Public Prosecutor and the Dubai Media Office. The public prosecutor said that "Police officers who detained Brown said he resisted them violently & was in hysterical temper; Investigators say Brown used indecent language during investigation & was extremely violent; (and) Officers say Brown continuously hit the metal mesh barrier in the police car with his hands

The Dubai Media Office said on Twitter  that "Investigators say Brown suffered nose injury after he hit his head against wall and fell during violent resistance."

The Guardian notes that "Embassy officials are also still trying to piece together the circumstances surrounding Brown's visit to Dubai amid unconfirmed reports that he was invited to the Arab state by a mystery woman."

In an update tonight from the Gulf News they report that : "According to police, Brown hit his head against a wall and injured his nose. He also injured his forehead while police were trying to control him and later fell down while resisting arrest.

Al Humaidan (the Attorney-General) said the autopsy showed bruises on different parts of the deceased’s body: the left side of the forehead, the nose, upper right arm, foot, palm, right eyebrow and lower jaw.

The forensic report concluded the injuries on the deceased’s body resulted from collisions with solid objects, including falls on a hard floor. The report says Brown sustained these injuries four or five days prior to his death.

The report also attributed Brown’s death to asphyxia, saying the deceased choked on his own vomit."

There are many unanswered questions. If he was bruised and damaged after his arrest what medical treatment if any was given over the next five days.

The British press reports have failed to properly investigate and report the reasons for Brown's arrest and his violent behaviour after his arrest. The Dubai authorities were too quick to respond wit ha dismissive post mortem, that denied any form of physical damage and said that he had died choking on his own vomit; a statement that in itself raised more questions that answers.

A more cautious statement that the matter is under full and transparent investigation and that the authorities are working closely with the British consul and the deceased's family would have probably been wiser.

Dubai still needs good PR. It is heavily dependent upon tourism; and tourism is about managing the image created.

I do not think that we have all the facts yet in this very unfortunate story. He was arrested on the 6th and died on the 12th. What did happen during those six days. Were there serious injuries sustained in his arrest and were these treated or did he refuse treatment.

The other lesson is that these stories rarely go away on their own until a full and complete investigation is carried out.

Red Dawn - a remake

17 April 2011 The Economist

Thailand's annual New Year holiday, which this year stretched from April 13-16th, is a time of Buddhist merit-making, family reunions and raucous water fights. Businesses close down and send migrant workers home. Bangkok’s streets become less clogged as city dwellers head for the beaches.

It might seem an odd moment, then, for the International Crisis Group (ICG) to release a sobering report on Thailand’s polarised politics. The timing is apt however: April 10th marked the anniversary of violent clashes last year between red-shirted demonstrators and security forces in Bangkok. Subsequent events took an even bloodier turn, leaving Thailand in a parlous state. In total, 91 people died, mostly civilians, during the protests, which were ended by a military crackdown on May 19th.

“Thailand: The Calm Before Another Storm?” looks at what happened next. It makes for depressing reading, though none of it is entirely surprising. The red-shirt movement has endured, even as its leaders face terrorism charges, and it lives on to harass the government. The army has stonewalled inquiries into protest-related deaths. Investigators have failed to find anyone culpable for killing civilians. The ultra-nationalist yellow shirts, who helped bring down the previous government, are back on the streets. They oppose further voting and want an appointed administration.

Thailand’s prime minister, Abhisit Vejjajiva, has proposed to hold elections by July. Could this be a way out of the cycle of violence? ICG seems unsure. It argues that any elections must be free, fair and peaceful, so that a new government with a proper mandate can pursue “genuine political reconciliation”. But it warns that the losing side may not accept defeat, particularly in a close race. Then there is the army, which seized power in 2006 and could do the same again. Victory for Puea Thai, the red shirts' political wing, would give an opening to Thaksin Shinawatra, the exiled former prime minister. Any sign that Mr Thaksin might make a comeback would be anathema to his conservative enemies.

The ICG takes up the crystal ball, in a well-annotated section of its report:

"Despite the prime minister’s announcement of the time-frame for elections, there is speculation that a military coup or a more subtle “silent coup” could derail the polls. There has been some speculation that if election commissioners were pressured to resign, creating political deadlock, Article 7 of the constitution might then be invoked to form a royally-appointed government. The ECT [the Election Commission of Thailand] currently comprises five commissioners and requires at least three commissioners to have quorum. In March 2011, election commissioner Sodsri Satayatham expressed her desire to resign. Sodsri later said she would likely stay on, but the prospect of her resignation increased speculation that the PAD [People's Alliance for Democracy; the yellow shirts, give or take] would call for Article 7 to be invoked to “clean up” politics. In a media interview, Sodsri confirmed that she had heard from some army officers of a plan to form a royally-appointed government. Senior army commanders deny they will stage a coup and dismiss the idea that they want the king to appoint a prime minister.
Assuming elections do happen, ICG recommends that political parties sign up to an electoral code of conduct. This is a sensible idea. Politicians from all sides should be free to campaign across the country. Their supporters need to respect the rules. Pre-election pacts have been tried in democracies such as South Africa, Cambodia and Ethiopia. Unfortunately that is precisely why it will be unpalatable to Thai nationalists, who look down on each of those countries and are in denial about the tenuous condition of their own democracy."

Independent monitoring would offer another way to keep a lid on any cheating. Critics say Mr Thaksin’s election victories were achieved by bribing gullible rural voters. In fact, such practices predate Mr Thaksin and cross party lines. At the last election in 2007, Thailand refused to allow in European Union monitors. There are anyway local groups that do a decent job and have developed an election-monitoring network with NGOs in other Asian democracies. Thailand has plenty of experience holding orderly elections, when it sets its mind to it. The problem lies more with the adjudication of disputes and the meddling of outsiders, particularly among military and royalist circles.

On April 10th, the red shirts held another large rally in Bangkok. As usual, speakers railed against the lack of accountability for the deaths inflicted last year. What actually happened on that night remains murky. Masked gunmen appeared from the red-shirt ranks and fired at the troops. Other shadowy figures were glimpsed on the rooftops. But most of those who died were unarmed protesters, who were apparently shot by soldiers. Their families are still waiting for answers. A credible law-enforcement investigation would go a long way towards restoring public faith in Thailand’s democratic institutions. An election should not be used as a substitute for justice.
 

Tim Scott shatters marathon personal best

17 April 2011

My crazy brother, now turned 50, shattered his marathon personal best today in a remarkable run today covering the 26 miles and a bit miles in 4hrs 38mins and 7 seconds.

This beat his previous best in 2007 by 34 minutes.

Tim runs for the Leonard Cheshire Homes - and you can read his story here - and even add to the donations.

Some 36,500 competitors took part in the 26.2-mile race, with fun runners and celebrities raise money for countless charities.

Olympic rowing champion James Cracknell, models Agyness Deyn and Elen Rivas, and former Manchester United striker Dwight Yorke were among the famous faces pounding through the streets.

More than 100 marathon world records were attempted, including the quickest person running backwards.

Kenyan Emmanuel Mutai ran the fastest-ever London men's race in a record time of 2:04.40.

Mary Keitany, another Kenyan, became the fourth Kenyan winner of the women's race, finishing in 2:19:17.
 

Keeping abreast of the news from Bangkok

17 April 2011

Bang Rak district chief Surakiat Limcharoen has filed a complaint against three Thai women who were recorded on video dancing topless during the Songkran festival at Silom; his complaint extends to their supporters and to anyone releasing a video clip of the incident on the internet.

The complaints are to charge the three ladies, dancing topless on Friday night at the Silom-Narathiwat intersection area, with a fine of no more than Bt500 each for shameful behaviour in public, while their supporters are to be responsible by two-thirds of the trio's punishment.

Those releasing the clip will face imprisonment of up to 5 years and fined up to Bt100,000 under the country's Computer Crime Act. The jails will be packed. The video has been all over youtube and facebook.

Culture Minister Nipit Intarasombat, has also asked the prosecutor to order those related in the case to also perform public duties in addition to paying the fine such as reading books for kindergarten children about the Songkran festival at least three times to set as good example.

By the way - the Culture Ministry had to quickly change its website today; which was previously showing a mural of three topless girls enjoying Songkran - oops. You can see the before and after pictures here.

He said that the clip has negatively affected the image of Thai culture and that all parties involved with such behaviour should be punished. He asked that police give importance to this issue, as it destroys the country's reputation.

Yeah yeah - but of course Thailand's image is in no way badly affected by any of the following:

Armed takeover of Bangkok's airports and their closure for eight weeks - no one has yet been prosecuted.

Occupation and closure of central Bangkok.

The use of armed forces to remove protestors killing civilians and members of the media.

Red light districts that reveal far more than these girls revealed and that survive through police and official tolerance; and because of the profits generated.

The use of cluster bombs on Cambodia villages.

etc....

Amazing Thailand.

Open letter to BSkyB

16 April 2011

Attention of Mr. J Darroch, CEO, BSkyB

Dear Mr. Darroch,

Sky Account No: xxxxxxxxxxx

For almost two years you have been using threatening letters from debt collection agencies to harass my now 78 year old mother for amounts that are not owed to you.

As you seem incapable of taking the initiative to investigate and resolve this matter yourselves let me again provide you with some background.

In 2005 my father was diagnosed with cancer and unable to leave home. To keep him company I subscribed to BSkyB on his behalf and paid by visa from my account in Hong Kong.

After my father's death in 2006 I continued to pay for the BSkyB subscription on behalf of my widowed mother. The subscription of gbp 522 was paid by visa a year in advance. Email between myself and Mr. Peter Stone of your Customer Zone confirm the payment.

In December 2007 a news and entertainment package was agreed with a lady called Tricia who emailed to confirm that "Further to telephone conversation I can confirm that I have reinstated your mums account on the variety and news package at a cost of £17 per month. I also confirm that I took a payment for £204 from your credit card.

In January 2009 I contacted your customer zone as I had heard nothing about a renewal of the account. In February 2009 Tricia again confirmed that "Further to our telephone conversation I can confirm that I have taken a payment from your credit card for £198.00 in advance for your Mothers Sky account."

In March 2010 my mother wrote to tell me she had received "a nasty letter from Sky to-day dated 9th March. They say they have cancelled my Sky services and if I haven't cleared my debt of £22.53 within seven days they will refer me to a debt collection agency."

No one made any effort to contact me; as you can see my mother had not since 2006 ever been responsible for payments under this account.

I then attempted to contact Sky to understand the status of the account.

Tricia (who appears to have been the one helpful employee in your organisation and who I can only hope has progressed to better things) appeared to have left the company. At this point I went into the black hole of your call centre who emailed me in March 2010 to say that:

"Unfortunately the email that you have sent has been received and I can confirm that you are not the named account holder. If you are not the account holder, and you are unable to supply the password on the account or if there is no password set on the account, please note that we are then unable to assist unless we have the express permission from the account holder. In this instance can you please arrange for the account holder to contact our Customer Services Department to update your account information."

My attempts to make it clear (with copies of all previous emails) that I had always paid this account were ignored by a lady called Jody - as you then passed the alleged debt to a company called Westcot.

On 24 March 2010 I wrote to Jodie at the Sky Service Center as follows:

Dear Jodie,

Your debt collection agency (Westcot Credit Services) called my mother tonight. I cannot believe this is a coincidence.
It is totally unnecessary. Your simple review of the account will show you that for the last four years I have paid for this account.
And as I keep saying – tell me why there is a gbp22 debt outstanding and it will be taken care of.
Sky was installed to keep my father company over his last nine months while he died of cancer. I left the service in place to entertain my mother now she is living alone.
Is it so hard to appreciate that some accounts are paid from overseas on behalf of aging parents who do not then expect or deserve to be hassled by your collectors?
I cannot begin to express my disappointment in your organisation or your inability to simply tell me why this amount is outstanding and how it is best paid from overseas. In the past a simple call from your office and taking my credit card details worked very well.

Yours sincerely.

Robert Scott

Tarun replied from the woefully misnamed Sky Help Center to say that "As you are not the named account holder, I would not be able to discuss or make any changes to this account at your request due to the Data Protection Act." This became a recurring theme in other emails and appears to be a standard email response which is of no use at all.

Eventually in April John wrote to advise that "The amount is made up of £19.00 (GBP) for TV subscription £4.00 (GBP) for invoice charge with a deduction of £0.47 (GBP) which leaves £22.53 (GBP) that needs to be paid this is for Januarys bill as the Credits for the year up front had ran out."

That was progress of sorts; since no one had ever asked me whether this account was to be renewed the fact that you invoiced an additional month after the renewal date seems to be a liberty on your part.

In the meantime I talked to the Westcot collection representative to dispute the charge; he undertook to review the account with BSkyB; he had my email and contact details. I heard nothing further.

So it was a surprise last month when another collection company Past Due Credit Services contacted my mother for the same gbp 22.53. She received the letter on 9 March. I emailed Past Due on 9 March to explain who I was, that they should deal directly with me and to please not harass my mother. I have copies of all these emails if you wish to see them. It is hard to tell which part of my email they did not understand as on 10 March Past Due called my mother at home. I am curious at this point; do you get a particular pleasure in harassing 78 year old widows?

My email of 10 March was straightforward:

Dear Sir/Madam,

Are you incapable of reading or responding to email?
I asked you by email yesterday (attached) not to harass my mother – and you still went ahead and phoned her today.
The ethical statements on your website clearly do not apply to the way you do business.
Once again – all you need to do is tell me how the debt on this account should be paid (my preference is credit card as this saves bank charges on an international transfer) and you will be paid – simply to stop you harassing my mother. As I said in my earlier email you are harassing her for something that she does not understand and has no responsibility for.
Since your letter to her gave this email address to reply to you could at least take the simple courtesy of responding.

Sincerely,

I also left a message through the company’s web site. A Rachel Smillie contacted me from Past Due on 14 March to advise bank account details for payment. Past Due has a facility for credit card payments - but I guess they assume that everyone live in the UK since their credit card processor could not handle an overseas visa card.

This left me having to arrange a bank transfer which was completed on 15th March. I took the trouble to contact Ms Smillie to advise that the payment had been made from my account. I have heard nothing further from her. Ridiculously I had to pay bank charges that exceeded the actual gbp22.53 debt. For the record I still do not acknowledge that their should be a liability for gbp 22.53. No one asked you to renew my mother's account for a month; and no one made any effort to contact me despite the fact that I had paid this account for the previous four years. I solely paid you to stop you from further harassing my mother.

But this seems to have failed.

Today my stressed mother writes to tell me that she received today a "notice of Impending Court Action" letter from Past Due Credit Solutions. I have already responded to Past Due and given them details of the funds transfer.

You have been paid; despite my belief that this is not a valid debt. If you continue to harass my mother I will have no option other than to instruct lawyers to take action against your organisation.

Yours sincerely,

Robert Scott

Cc: Andrew Griffith Finance Director BSkyB
Steven Liddell DCA Manager BSkyB
Rachel Smillie Past Due Credit Solutions.
 
A fishy soap opera

16 April 2011

Throughout history political commentary has often taken the form of narrative sedition. Sometimes this has been theatrical satire; sometimes puppeteering, sometimes just story-telling.  The internet nicely lends itself to the latter, through interactive sites such as Facebook.

One such example in Thailand is the Hi S Tales which are available in the form of a long series of Facebook posts. They were initially provided on the Fa Diaw Kan web board, and then moved to the Weareallhuman website.

So far, the Hi S Tales comprise 181 episodes.

New Mandala takes up the story:

"The main characters are the owners of a canned fish factory—Uncle and Aunty—along with their four children, their spouses, and a number of their grandchildren. Other characters, mainly among the management and the workers, vary according to the changing events in the factory. The main themes in the Tales include the good image of Uncle’s family, how his family tries to maintain control over the factory’s affairs, power struggles among different factions in the management team, and negotiation between management and the workers. The stories are full of jealousy, revenge, hatred and conspiracy among the main players who attempt to overcome those who block their paths to power. At the same time the stories emphasise the attempts of the factory’s owners to maintain their good image so that the workers will forever pledge their support and loyalty.

The Tales started out in late 2009 as a report on the illness of a certain XXX (later referred to by other names including Somchai and Uncle). The Tales report that XXX’s illness was partly brought about by worries about his only son’s bad behaviour. In the beginning, the Tales focus on XXX’s health and the unpleasant background of some of his family members. There are concerns about XXX being poisoned, his wife’s involvement in some dubious activities, his son’s extramarital affairs and his son’s desire to take XXX’s position. The prodigal son’s new wife—and her colourful background—also feature prominently. There are also rumours about XXX’s grandchildren and his family’s businesses both in Thailand and abroad.

After about 10 or so episodes the Tales focus on the canned fish factory. There are many stories about conflict in the factory and the workers’ uprising to call for equal rights. The stories became tensely dramatic in 2010. The stories present the view that XXX/Somchai/Uncle and his wife were behind the expulsion of the factory’s previous manager and wanted to maintain their absolute management power and position of respect within the factory. The author writes that Uncle and Aunty manipulate the situation by backing the current management team, and their security guards, against the factory workers. The ultimate management victory involved strategic planning by the CEOs and plots and counter-plots to overturn the current bottom-up management style.

However, the Tales portray some differences between Uncle and Aunty on how to implement their vision. Uncle Somchai prefers a gradual and consensual approach which he has successfully used since becoming chairman about 60 years ago. However Aunty prefers a more forceful approach.

There is also conflict between Uncle, Aunty, and their son over the issue of the factory’s next chairman. Given Uncle’s fragile health and advanced age, everyone at the factory is concerned about who should be the next chairman. Aunty used to support her son but has realised that he may not be a good choice to maintain the family’s wealth and power in the longer term. Now she wants to control the factory herself. However, Uncle does not seem happy with either option and may try to hold power as long as he can and possibly change the factory’s rules to facilitate the promotion of his second daughter.

Aunty’s role in the Tales has become increasingly prominent. Given that Aunty wants to seize absolute control of the factory and the workers, she has collaborated with different people in the factory using a carrot-and stick strategy. She is able to manipulate the appointment of members of the management group so they can serve her ends. There are stories about her close relationship with a leader of a faction of the workers who still support the current CEOs.

Aunty and Uncle’s children are not inactive in these unfolding events. In fact, they also seek out opportunities to reap their benefit. While colourful stories of their only son are well known, their second daughter has been regarded as being rather passive. However, the Tales introduce the second daughter’s “dark side” and suggest that she is not as naïve as some people in the factory may think. Recently, the Tales have suggested that this daughter is also involved in a plan with senior management to construct the next management structure in a way that is beneficial to her position."

Like the best stories these episode are full of rumour, gossip, outrageous claims, innuendo, word play, double-entendre and flights of fancy. And of course they bear no resemblance to real life......

Watford's questionable new owner

12 April 2011

All the Middle East riches poor into the premiership. The Championship gets the leftovers.

Baron Ashcroft, the Conservative peer, has sold his Watford shares to Laurence Bassini, the owner of Watford FC Limited, a recently formed shell company.

Mr Bassini was formerly Mr Bazini - and is a former bankrupt. His company appears to have paid about gbp440,000 for the shares. There is also a commitment to a gbp 3.5 million - but this is in the form of a loan - so replaces debt with debt.

The Guardian had the following observations:

"WFCL will take control of the Championship club through a 53.95% stake after Ashcroft, Graham Simpson and Yianna Simpson agreed to sell their shares for about £450,000 last week. Yet Bassini is not a registered shareholder of WFCL. Instead the Highgate-based knee surgeon Panos Thomas, who is, will hold the shares on trust for Bassini.

Why, how and where those shares will be held for Bassini are not explained.

Much about Bassini's business past has been inscrutable. He has admitted to the Watford Observer to having been declared bankrupt "for about a year" from 2007, and temporarily claimed benefits. This led to him changing his name from Laurence, or Lawrence (which he had also used), Bazini. "Businessmen have their highs and lows," he said. It is hard to discover Bassini's highs.

Digger has found 12 companies where he has served as a director. One, which he founded alongside others in 1995, still trades but he left its board in 1996. Another was struck off in 2000, four years after its incorporation, having shown a deficit of £19,372 in the only accounts it ever filed. The other 10, apparently mostly retail and restaurant companies ("Dancing Divas", anyone?), were struck off without ever filing accounts.

Bassini has suggested he has previously received financial help from his "very wealthy" family, which includes a barrister brother. Digger contacted this brother, who refused to corroborate or deny this claim. Digger also called Thomas to ask about his new business partner and why there was a need for WFCL's convoluted share structures. He also refused to comment.

So Watford will receive a "£3.5m working capital facility" (or loan) from a man whose wherewithal is impossible to gauge. But the money is not his own. WFCL's spokesman told Digger "he has access to sufficient funds" but "has no obligation to disclose his backers.""

That is not good enough. The club's faithful fans are rightly concerned. The local newspaper has weighed in with an open letter.

Watford' debts are significant and need to be paid or there will not be a football club. Away from the Premiership millions this is about survival.

Watford Observer's open letter to Hornets new major shareholder Laurence Bassini

Why City + Airport = the Future

12 April 2011 A review of "Aerotropolis" Source - To be advised.

It’s no longer ok to be a big city. Globalisation is Darwinian and only the hubbiest of hubs will survive. If we want best-of-the-planet goods to arrive the next morning, we must worship the airport.

So thinks U.S. academic John Kasarda. As his co-writer Greg Lindsay explains in recently released, Aerotropolis: The Way We’ll Live Next, Kasarda’s raison d’être is to “answer the question of what the cities of this age should look like.”

Aerotropolis is a story of hubs and human ecology… and how the twain must meet if we want to get on. Kasarda, whose career has been spent persuading governments and corporations that transportation and communication are the “fastest-acting catalysts for expansion and change,” is given a rapid-fire, real-world voice by Lindsay, who follows him around the world and engages in his own frenetic travels to convey the professor’s message.

An aerotropolis – defined by Kasarda as “an airport-integrated region, extending as far as sixty miles from the inner clusters of hotels, offices, distribution and logistics facilities” – is, we learn, the “logic of globalisation made flesh.” London Heathrow, the closest this planet has to a global air hub, handles more traffic than Britain has citizens. Business travel is a trillion-dollar business worldwide and there are 17 trillion air miles in current circulation (together, they’d get you 2/3 of the way to Alpha Centauri). Airlines’ customers are almost twice as likely to make more than $100,000 a year than those who aren’t; frequent fliers, three times.

But my favourite stat of the hundreds rolled out in this book is that in the first 50 years of commercial aviation, before luggage scanning began, 400 international hijacking incidents occurred with 75,000 hostages.

Anyone too busy or important to stay still for long; those aerial commuters who “fly to work, casually overturning 10,000 years of civilisation before breakfast”, will be among this book’s particular fans – though even they may baulk at the idea of living in airport cities strewn with air trains and aero lanes. They do quite enough of that as it is.

The book’s language verges on sci-fi. I was particularly drawn to the definition of a layover experience – we are “stretched for hours inside concrete sensory deprivation tanks, augmented by jet lag… a limbo in which physics and human experience no longer applied.”

It reminded me of Alain de Botton’s 2009 novella, A week at the Airport: A Heathrow Diary, where the author wrote movingly of covered walkways, glazed surfaces, giant potted vegetation and grey tiling. A landing aircraft’s wheels, “having avoided the earth for so long… hesitated and slowed almost to a standstill as they arched and prepared to greet the rubber-stained English tarmac.”

I can never see an air-bridge connecting to an aircraft without thinking of his description: “A passenger walkway rolled forward and closed its rubber mouth in a hesitant kiss over the front left-hand door.”

I digress; the point is de Botton is a man with an unembarrassed infatuation with air termini. I asked him if he agreed with the Kasarda thesis.

“I love the thought that the quality of an airport might really help to determine the success of a city,” he emailed me. “But I think it (nicely) perverse to suggest that its location will decide where a city goes. After all, unlike a ship, a plane can leave and arrive more or less anywhere. So surely airports won’t decide the place. But the authors are right that [they] will be key. He who has a good airport will win…”

It may seem far-fetched to us now, but new cities (and China and India are building over 200 between them), are being planned with airports at front of mind. We’re entering an era where world capitals can appear in former backwaters, where home for many isn’t a street or village; it’s being part of globe-crossing network.

“The age of suburbia is passing,” Lindsay writes poignantly; “just as the economy that drove it – cheap cars, cheaper gas, still-cheaper mortgages and free highways – is passing with it.”

After millennia of fixed dwellings, the world is moving again and that isn’t necessarily going to be healthy. Lindsay devotes ample space to the human costs of living on top of airports, and the community-lite vacuity of frequent air-warriors’ lives, where home life is an afterthought.

For those who live near them, airports take on special significance. Last week I caught Simon Stevens’ play Wastwater at The Royal Court in London. Its characters’ tumultuous lives are all directly affected by their vicinity to Heathrow. One character, an elderly woman living in a village that had stood to be flattened if the proposed third runway was to be built, rues the governments’ decision to halt expansion – it would have given her the chance to start again; another pair seek the solace of an anonymous airport hotel to embark upon an extra-marital affair.

One of most controversial questions asked in Aerotropolis is: Do we retrofit our cities to become future aerotropoli, or save people’s homes? Kasarda takes a tough line. The West, he thinks, must consciously choose to “live in cities built in globalisation’s image – machines for living linked in great chains.” In Kasarda’s dream world, this would happen the world over. Would he, I couldn’t help but wonder, really want to live in the almost fascistically efficient corporate utopia he dreams of?

Perhaps he won’t need to; it seems one has to be a high-functioning autocracy to have a good aerotropolis. China and Dubai have staked everything on the “global triumphing over the local.” China’s “democracy sacrifices efficiency” model allowed its airport in Beijing to be built, Lindsay points out, in the time that the grievances surrounding Heathrow’s Terminal 5 took to arise.

Much of Aerotropolis is given to an Ayn Rand-esque glorification of U.S. airport hubs: O’Hare, which helped Chicago become a “global city”; LAX’s terror of becoming flyover country; Dallas Fort Worth and its generation of 400,000 jobs within a five-mile radius; UPS and FedEx reinventing Louisville and Memphis respectively.

I’d liked to have read more about the Singapore aerotropolis, how Changi International Airport has evolved to become most business travellers’ answer to the question: what is your most seamless travel experience? But Thailand’s still-stillborn aerotropolis, 2006-opened Suvarnabhumi does get a full and very illuminating chapter. We learn that its land purchase by the military junta of the time formed the pretext of 1973’s student massacre in Bangkok and the end to said junta.

Each subsequent Thai coup from 1991 onwards reignited interest in the airport, as if authoritarian rule is necessary for the formation of a hub aerotropolis. In November 2008, swarms of yellow-shirted demonstrators, protesting against their foes being elected yet again, marched on and shut down both of Bangkok’s airports.

The news stories at the time focused on the hundreds of thousands of very annoyed stranded tourists. Lindsay presents the fallout felt by our just-in-time economy; the subsequent closure of many local high-tech factories meant widespread supply-chain disruption, while Thailand lost 3 percent of GDP in a week. Today, factories across the world know the feeling; they’re still reeling from the Japan disaster and the country’s subsequent air traffic reduction.

If Kasarda is right, and in the next 20 years our evolved aviation infrastructure starts to drastically change the way we live, we must welcome a future where “No one will be shackled by the circumstances of birth or upbringing.” On a planet teeming with Airworld natives, the ability to stay still will come at a high price. The rest of us will be stuck in transit.

China crackdown driven by fears of a broad conspiracy

12 April 2011 - Reuters

Days of interrogation in a cold, secluded room taught Liu Anjun that China's security forces see dissidents and protesters like him as players in a plot to topple the Communist Party, a fear that is magnifying Beijing's hard crackdown on dissent.

The most internationally prominent target of that crackdown has been the artist Ai Weiwei, but the net reaches far wider and reflects Party anxiety that it confronts not just general discontent, but a subversive movement waiting to pounce.

Liu, a gravel-voiced, charismatic agitator for petitioners' rights, was taken from his family on February 18. Police bundled him into a van and locked him in a hotel room in south Beijing, where he was watched by rotating teams of guards, he said.

There, for six days, police interrogators showed Liu pictures of dissidents, human rights lawyers, and activists, seeking information about their mutual contacts, beliefs and plans, Liu told Reuters at his home in a Beijing alley where he was recovering after his release from 45 days in detention.

The police have been hunting for evidence of a web of conspiracy bringing together domestic and foreign foes that the Chinese government believes are behind recent calls for Middle East-inspired "Jasmine Revolution" protests against the Party.

"They took out picture after picture, mainly of democracy activists and rights defenders, and asked about each of them," Liu said, seated in his cigarette smoke-filled living room.

"They were trying to build up links among everybody, trying to get me to tell them who was supporting what," said Liu, who walks on crutches after a leg injury sustained in a protest over the demolition of a former home.

Chinese leaders believe domestic foes, their foreign backers and Western governments are scheming to undermine and ultimately topple the Communist Party. Recent speeches and articles from security officials echo with warnings of subversive plots backed by Western "anti-China" forces.

Shortly before China's clampdown ramped up in February, a senior domestic security official, Chen Jiping, warned that "hostile Western forces" -- alarmed by the country's rise -- were marshalling human rights issues to attack Party control.

Many of those that police interrogators quizzed Liu about were already detained in the crackdown that gained momentum in February. They included the detained artist Ai Teng Biao, a well-known rights lawyer, and Wen Tao, a reporter who is a friend and helper to Ai, said Liu.

"They also asked a little about Ai Weiwei and showed me a picture of him from a party," he said. "I told them I didn't know anything about any of them."

Officials have said Ai faces investigation for "suspected economic crimes." But his sister, Gao Ge, dismissed that as a ruse and said Ai was detained for his political advocacy.

"The police officer who led the searches of his workshop was from state security. That says a lot," said Gao. "If this is just an ordinary investigation, why haven't we heard from Ai Weiwei?"

HISTORY LESSONS

China's government does indeed confront discontented citizens and groups who want to end one-party rule, and the United States and its allies make no secret that they want China to evolve into a liberal democracy.

But what outsiders may see as a loose, disparate group of dissidents, bloggers, lawyers, and grassroots agitators, China's security police treat as a subversive, Western-backed coalition with the potential to erupt into outright opposition.

"(In China) there's a tendency to look for the 'black hand' and to look for an organization," said Joshua Rosenzweig, a Hong Kong-based researcher for the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S. group that works for better treatment and the release of Chinese political prisoners.

"Their mentality is still based on the conspiracy of the revolutionary cell," Rosenzweig said in a telephone interview. "The idea of a counter-revolutionary clique has never really gone away in China."

The Party's alarm about domestic threats inspired by the anti-authoritarian uprisings across the Middle East and north Africa grew after an overseas Chinese website, Boxun.com, publicized calls for peaceful protests across China emulating the "Jasmine Revolution."

That fear has deep historical roots.

In official eyes, the pro-democracy protests against the Party in 1989 were the doing of counter-revolutionary agitators backed by the United States and other Western powers.

More recently, said two sources in Beijing, officials circulated documents claiming to show a Western conspiracy was behind the award of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to jailed Chinese dissident Liu Xiaobo, a veteran of the 1989 protests. Those sources spoke on condition on anonymity.

"It's not just a general sense that the Western governments supported the Nobel decision; it's a real belief that it was dreamed up in Washington as a way to attack China," said one of those sources, a researcher.

INTERNET POWER

Official Chinese fears of Western-backed subversion have been reinforced by the view that "color revolutions" that swept Central Asia several years ago were Western-promoted rehearsals for a similar subversive assault on China.

Chen, the security official, was a senior producer of a documentary shown to officials several years ago to stress the threat of Western-backed "color revolution" subversion.

The call for a "Jasmine Revolution" in particular brings together two of the Communist Party's great fears: Western-backed opposition and the power of the Internet to influence and possibly mobilize China's 453 million users.

"What's been going on in north Africa and the Middle East is a prime example in some people's eyes of the color revolution," said Rosenzweig, the Hong Kong-based rights researcher.

"What we're seeing is in my recollection ... the largest number of people who have been rounded up at once for online expression," he said.

Even if Ai is not charged on broad subversion charges often used to punish criticism of the Party, police will be able to use their access to his computers and records to assemble more information about other potential targets.

"I think now they're going to investigate all the people connected to Ai Weiwei," said Liu, the recently released activist. "Ai Weiwei could be a political sacrifice so they can investigate a lot more people he knows."

He boldy went where no one had been before

12 April 2011

It is a day to look back in wonder. And google did exactly that today with this global doodle.

50 years ago today, as the cold war escalated between Russia and the USA, the Soviet Union, as she was then called, launched a man into space. Yuri Gagarin.

The total mission lasted just 108 minutes, and the trip once around the Earth at up to 17,500 mph took less than an hour and a half.

His story is told through these links. Gagarin died seven years after his famous trip when a training jet he was piloting crashed. He had been made deputy training director of the Cosmonaut Training Center and honored by many countries for his achievement.

His name will live forever.

50th anniversary

Gagarin pictures

Yuri Gagarin and the return of the space heroes

Yuri Gagarin: The journey that shook the world

Sausages in Space? Secrets of Yuri Gagarin's Historic Spaceflight Revealed

Even After All These Years, Gagarin Has The Right Stuff

What if the Soviet Union had beaten the US to the Moon?

Fifty years later, the original rocket man’s legacy endures

Yuri Gagarin's private passions: Pushkin and The Little Prince

Russia has celebrated April 12th as the Day of Cosmonautics for the last 49 years, but this year, and from hereon for evermore, April 12th will be celebrated as the International Day of Human Space Flight after the UN General Counsel passed this resolution last week.

"The International Day of Human Space Flight (12 April) was declared to celebrate each year at the international level the beginning of the space era for humankind, reaffirming the important contribution of space science and technology in achieving sustainable development goals and increasing the well-being of States and peoples, as well as ensuring the realization of their aspiration to maintain outer space for peaceful purposes."
 

First EK A380 to Shanghai

11 April 2011

The Chinese authorities have been very cautious about granting Emirates the right to fly its A380 jumbos into Shanghai's Pudong airport.

Emirates already flies a daily A380 to the Beijing Capital airport.

Emirates has been given permission to use the Airbus A380 on three flights per week between Dubai and Shanghai. The airline currently offers two flights per day on the route, using an Airbus A340-300 and Boeing 777-300ER. However, from April 27 it is planning to replace the 777-300ER on the Wednesday, Friday and Sunday rotations of flight EK302/303.

The A380 serving Shanghai will be switched from the airline’s existing EK 380/381 Dubai – Hong Kong link which will revert to 777s for three flights a week. The Daily EK484/385 flight via Bangkok will not be affected.

Schedule: Dubai – Shanghai Pu Dong

EK302 DXB0310 – 1530PVG 388 357
EK302 DXB0310 – 1530PVG 77W x357
EK304 DXB1035 – 2325PVG 343 D
EK303 PVG0715 – 1235DXB 343 D
EK303 PVG2330 – 0430+1DXB 77W x357
EK303 PVG2330 – 0430+1DXB 388 357

For all Emirates efforts to dress this up as a success it is in fact a mess. Emirates has been trying to get daily flights for the A380 to Shanghai and expected approval at teh start of the year. With only 3 flights a week there is now a rostering headache as the 380 crews are not licensed to fly the 777s. So crews to both HKG and PVG can now expect extended layovers. One of the PVG layovers would have to be 72 hours arriving on Sunday and leaving on Wednesday night. Or the crew are deadheaded back to DXB?

It will be interesting to see how the flights are rostered.

Another Green Line delay in Dubai

11 April 2011

The launch of the second line of the Dubai Metro - the Green Line, has been delayed yet again. The line was originally planned to open in April 2010; it was postponed to August 2011, and the RTA says  it will now be operational in the last quarter of this year.

Another delay would not be a surprise.

The Green Line, once completed, will run through heavily populated areas such as Bur Dubai and Deira and is scheduled to have 18 stations along an approximately 23 km stretch - with six underground stops. The line does not provide any connection to either the existing or new Dubai airports.

Emirates smoke diversion

10 April 2011

An Emirates Boeing 777-300, registration A6-EBK performing flight EK-409 from Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) to Dubai (United Arab Emirates) with 365 people on board, was enroute near Chennai (India) when the crew reported smoke in the cockpit and diverted to Chennai for a safe landing.

A replacement Boeing 777-300 registration A6-EMR, having arrived as flight EK-544 from Dubai and scheduled to fly EK-545 from Chennai to Dubai, reached Dubai as flight EK-7409 with a delay of 23.5 hours.

A6-EBK performed flight EK-545 and reached Dubai on schedule about 10 minutes after A6-EMR.

The airline said the flight diverted due to a technical problem, that could not be solved in time before the crew ran out of maximum duty time. The passengers were accommodated over night.
 

Concerns about the rise of Gulf carriers

10 April 2011

"Author: Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus, Secretary General, Association of European Airlines (AEA)

I would like to response to the comments of Akbar Al Baker, CEO of Qatar Airways, in the last issue of Aviation Business magazine, which discussed my speech at the International Aviation Club in Washington earlier this year. During this event, I was addressing a predominantly US audience on European perspectives for aviation in the coming year. It would be foolish for me to pretend that the Gulf carriers are of no concern to AEA members, and I tailored my speech accordingly, although my hosts were generous enough to allow me time to cover many other topics of importance.

The fact that it has provoked a strong response from Mr Al Baker does not surprise me. The other two of the Gulf ‘Big 3’ – Emirates and Etihad – have for some months now been launching ‘pre-emptive strikes’ against the European carriers, protesting in the loudest of terms their unblemished competitive character. Now the Qatar CEO has joined in the chorus of indignation and I find his arguments unconvincing, just as I have found the arguments of the UAE carriers unconvincing.

The Gulf is a booming region, of that there is no doubt, and the governments of the Gulf States properly recognise the importance of aviation to their economic and social development. But the present and more importantly the future capacity on routes between the Gulf and Europe far exceeds the needs of the local market. Akbar Al Baker will never persuade me that his country of 1.7 million ‘needs’ an airline with the long-haul capability of British Airways, of Air France or of Lufthansa, yet this is precisely what Qatar’s orderbook amounts to. I am even less persuaded when just down the highway, two other carriers have equal or even more grandiose ambitions.

Of course, the Gulf Big 3 argue that they are merely leveraging their geographical position astride the major trade routes, and targeting transfer traffic in the same way that European and South East Asian carriers have traditionally done. To which I answer: yes, fine, so long as the competition is fair, so long as the playing-field is level. The problem is that we do not believe that there is a level playing-field between the European and the Gulf carriers.

How can we believe that, when our competitors are institutionally linked with their governments and regulatory bodies, their airports and service providers? When there are no meaningful competition rules, no consumer-protection rules, no environmental protection rules as we have in Europe? When we have no choice of ground handler, or catering supplier, where we can only conduct business through an appointed sales agent, where we may not recruit staff from the local airlines?

The Qatar CEO asks how I can maintain that his airline, along with Etihad, has never made a profit, when I cannot possibly know since they don’t publish their accounts! I cordially invite him to open his books and prove me wrong. But this is beside the point; the order commitments of all three airlines represent a mountain of debt liabilities which, when measured against the companies’ net worth, are incompatible with the rational investor principles which underpin the competition rules that European airlines are expected to observe.

Contrary to Mr Al Baker’s assertions, we Europeans are not afraid of competition. Our sector was liberalised in 1993, so we have close to 20 years’ experience of operating as commercial enterprises rather than national institutions. The carriers who are members of AEA compete vigorously with each other, as well as with the new entrants who have appeared and thrived since liberalisation, safeguarded by the platform of competition rules which are an essential part of the European Single market. We find no such corresponding rules in the Middle East region with which we can build a common framework.

If one were to assume, and be it only for the sake of the argument, that our concerns are legitimate, the question I had raised was: how can they be addressed? The Canadian-UAE negotiations on additional traffic rights show a possible avenue, namely that of imposing governmental constraints on the other side; but that gave rise to retaliation. Surely trade conflicts that occurred in other sectors have taught us that such situations can best be resolved through sensible and mutually accepted trade instruments and arbitration. I had therefore suggested that politicians develop aviation-related trade instruments so that our sector has the means of raising and resolving such possible conflicts.

We now have heard all three CEOs of the Gulf mega-carriers, or mega-carriers-to-be, telling us Europeans that the problem is entirely on our side, and that if our governments really understood the importance of aviation, they would support us in the same way. Indeed, those are sentiments with which I can readily identify. However, we have no wish to turn the clocks back 20 years. Instead, we struggle to convince our politicians that the benefits of aviation to their citizens will best be preserved by an insistence on an international level playing-field.

Wapping based News of the World (part of News International) is a rag that has confused what is in the public interest with what it thinks the public is interested in. But it is influential - if you can sell 4 million copies a week you have influence.

Which is why politicians and government ministers all seek to be best friends with Rupert Murdoch, his family and his entourage.

Now the News of the World has admitted to phone tapping, as we were all convinced that they were, and apologised to some people - not all.

It is of course an attempt at avoiding worse damage in the courts. And an apology from the NoTW is about as credible as Gaddafi joining a human rights organisation. News International's admission of liability, in some of the cases brought against it, is intended to limit the damage it faces - and not just financially.

The company is hoping that by admitting liability it will save on legal costs and the amount of compensation it will have to pay. Any claimant who passes up the offer faces the risk that they could be awarded smaller damages in court and would have to pay legal costs.

Cases could be settled without NoW executives giving evidence in court, and having to reveal who knew what was going on. For years News International insisted there had been just one "rogue" reporter involved in the hacking of phones. Few people believed this.

The company's belated confession comes only when a new, more vigorous, police investigation, has led to two arrests.

News International is said to have set aside up to £20m for compensation. That shows the scale of its problems. Many think it may not be enough. It is likely that NI will insist on gagging orders to prevent those they settle with from talking.

In 2009 the current editor of the News of the World, Colin Myler, told MPs he had conducted a "thorough investigation" into phone hacking and had uncovered no evidence of widespread wrongdoing. They are finally admitting that was misleading. So much for that investigation. And NI only re-opened their investigation after evidence emerged in civil cases that made clear that the company's line that the hacking had been an isolated incident was no longer tenable.

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, whose paper has widely reported the hacking scandal, said the admission that former culture secretary Tessa Jowell's phone was tapped was a "very serious" development.

He said: "You've got a company effectively bugging its own commissioning minister. Just imagine if a bank was found hacking into the chancellor of the exchequer's e-mails."

This story will run for a while; the more information that the police find out the more likelihood there is of criminal charges for other people.

News International, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch and also owns the Times and Sun newspapers, said it would continue to co-operate with the Metropolitan Police inquiry.
 

"As revolutions rage on across the Middle East, with millions in the streets demanding democracy, the absolute monarch of this oil- and gas-rich emirate is not feeling threatened. Not one bit.

For good reason. Neither his 600,000 citizens nor the 900,000 expats working here are clamoring for change, even as they cheer on the changes elsewhere.

People at a regional conference here clapped when Lula da Silva, the former president of Brazil, declared, “I am against any ruler who is a ruler for life,” oblivious that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, 59, is ruler for life.

A day later, at the funeral of an Al-Jazeera cameraman killed on assignment in Libya, a cleric cursed Moammar Gadhafi: “Gadhafi the dictator will soon follow the path of Hosni Mubarak and Ben Ali.”

For the Qataris, the bad guys are somewhere else. Their sheikh is wealthy and wise — rulThe Malaysian Staring with a light touch and no visible security apparatus; liberalizing and modernizing the emirate at a dizzying pace; and pursuing an independent foreign policy that’s as self-serving as, say, that of the United States.

Qatar was the first Arab state to dispatch fighter jets to join NATO in Libya. But it also approved of Saudi troops marching into neighbouring Bahrain to support the minority Sunni king against a rebellious Shiite majority.

This “Switzerland of the Gulf” is the last likely place to have a revolution.

Oil is flowing at 1 million barrels a day. More natural gas is exported than from anywhere else in the world. The economy galloped at 19 per cent last year — the highest growth of any country in the world.

Transparency International rates Qatar as the least corrupt nation in the Middle East — ahead of a fifth of Europe (including U.K., Belgium and France), and also the United States. “That’s a jaw-dropping rating,” says Patrick Theros, former American ambassador to Qatar, who heads the U.S. Qatar Business Council, Washington, D.C.

Per capita income, at $90,000, is the highest in the world. No income tax. Free healthcare. Free education, including studies abroad.

There’s a lot to be content about. But Sheikh Hamad is obsessed with preparing Qatar for the post-carbon era. He’s haunted by the past when the economy collapsed almost overnight following the Japanese discovery of artificial pearls.

Qatar must be more than a gas station to the world.

Thus an array of initiatives, from research in bio-tech and hi-tech to spectacular campuses for prestigious American universities to fine museums designed by the world’s leading architects.

This is a thinking man’s Dubai.

Hamad came to power in 1995 in a bloodless coup against his father, thought by the family to be decent but inept. The house of al-Thani was feeling vulnerable, traumatized by Kuwait, invaded by Saddam Hussein and rescued by the Americans (1991) at a cost of billions.

Qatar had fewer resources and a smaller defence capacity. What was its insurance policy going to be?

Put the country on the map. Get it to punch above its geo-political and economic weight.

Host the forward headquarters of the U.S. Central Command that overseas American operations from the Gulf to Afghanistan.

Get along with Iran, with which you share your biggest gas field. Get out from under the tutelage of your other big neighbour, Saudi Arabia, fellow-Wahhabis, but far more conservative than you.

Become a global mediator, offering Doha as a neutral site for warring parties from conflicts.

Start Al-Jazeera (1995). It’d end up rattling most governments in the region but develop a pan-Arab constituency, plus an audience of 200 million in 100 countries.

Contribute to humanitarian relief — civil strife in Darfur, Hurricane Katrina, floods in Pakistan, etc.

Host the World Trade Organization’s trade talks (2001), forever after known as the Doha round.

Host the Asian Games (2006).

Win the World Cup of Soccer (2022), beating the United States by promising $4 billion worth of stadiums with outdoor air conditioning for the 48 degree C summer, and pledging to dismantle them and donate to poor nations.

“We want to change people’s thinking: How could ‘a camel country’ put on one of the best World Cups ever? But we will,” says Dr. Saif Ali Al-Hajari, vice-chair of Qatar Foundation, the umbrella organization that’s supervising the leap into the future.

It’s a parallel government with a seemingly unlimited budget, headed by Sheikha Mozah, the second of the emir’s three wives. Her high public profile and political heft gets her ranked among the most powerful women in the world.

Qatar dedicates 2.8 per cent of its GDP to research and development — among the highest in the world.

That has spawned a staggering range of projects, including a stem cell bank. It’s available to every pregnant mother, to store the child’s cells for future usage in regenerative medicine. “We are more liberal than the United States in what all we can do with stem cells,” Dr. Ayman Bassil, head of research and training, tells me. “We got Islamic scholars to provide guidelines.”

Renewable energy and environmental protection is a priority. Qatar lacks water and greenery. Most trees must be watered and the grass here must be the most expensive. Yet water is subsidized, as is oil.

“This is crazy,” says Dr. Rabi Mohtar, head of the Energy and Environmental Research Institute. “Decades of bad habits have to be broken.”

He was professor at Purdue University when in the fall of November 2005, he got a phone call in the middle of mowing his lawn. “It was Doha calling, saying Qatar was trying to tap into the Arab expats in environment, computing and biotechnology. So here I am.”

Dr. Khalid Alsubai, a Qatari native, is leading an international team with Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. They discovered a new planet and named it Qatar-1. “Not surprising,” he says. “Arabs have a long heritage of cataloguing the stars. All the bright stars have Arabic names.”

The foundation’s flagship is Education City, covering 14 millions square metres, featuring six American universities, including Carnegie Mellon and Georgetown.

Qatar Real Estate Investment Company is not only developing housing and commercial property at home but 32 projects in 21 countries, worth $88 billion. It has invested in Syria, Morocco, Sudan, Egypt, Yemen, West Bank, Tajikistan and Britain (Chelsea Barracks, a former army barracks near Westminster, Britain’s most expensive residential development).

There’s a mega-railway project on the drawing board linking Qatar to Saudi Arabia and across the waterway to Bahrain, by 2022.

What makes Qatar tick?

The ruling family and also the Qatari character, I am told by Theros, the former American ambassador.

“The emir is a bit of a revolutionary. He was from a young age, it seems. He studied at Sandhurst (the famed British Army training centre) and is well-read.

“Sheikha Mozah is a remarkably determined woman.

“And the Qataris themselves are a self-confident bunch. They don’t have an inferiority complex. They tend to be religious but very tolerant. When they travel abroad, they behave the same way as at home. They don’t feel the need to break out.”

He adds: “The top people here do want something approaching a constitutional monarchy.” When it comes."
 

Emirates launches Rio and Buenos Aires

6 April 2011

Emirates Airline has announced flights to two of South America’s most iconic cities, Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires, from 3rd January 2012.

The daily flight will be non stop from Dubai to Rio and will extend onto Buenos Aires.

Brazil has been part of the Emirates network since 2007 when the airline began flights from Dubai to Sao Paulo. The country will host both the 2014 FIFA World Cup and 2016 Olympics so the timing is ideal. I expect this will be a double daily flight before 2014.

The Dubai-Rio de Janeiro-Buenos Aires service will be operated by a Boeing 777-300ER aircraft offering eight First Class Private Suites, 42 lie-flat seats in Business and 304 seats in Economy.

The bellyhold capacity on the 777-300ER will support key imports and exports including automobile parts, accessories, manufactured goods, fruit and vegetables, machinery and pharmaceutical products from Rio. For Buenos Aires, key imports and exports include perishables, textiles as well as pharmaceuticals.

Brazil stands as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, thanks to its success in the petroleum sector, a young and active workforce and stability in urban growth. Trade between Brazil and the Middle East follows the trend: according to the Arab Brazilian Chamber of Commerce, exports to Arab countries totaled US$12.57 billion in 2010, representing an annual growth of 34%, while imports ended the year with US$6.96 billion, an increase of 33% compared to 2009.

Both Brazil and Argentina are major tourist destinations; according to INDEC (Argentina’s National Institute of Statistics and Censuses) there were 2.6 million foreign tourist arrivals at Buenos Aires airports in 2010, (an annual increase of 27%). Government projections for international visitors for the 2010-2012 period are very optimistic with Asian markets expected to increase their current share of the tourism market.

Starting 3rd January 2012, EK 247 will leave Dubai daily at 0705hrs and arrive at Rio’s Antônio Carlos Jobim International Airport at 1535hrs. It will depart Rio at 1720hrs, arriving at Buenos Aires Ministro Pistarini International Airport (Ezeiza) at 1930hrs. From Buenos Aires, EK 248 departs at 2130hrs, arriving in Rio at 0120hrs the next day. The aircraft will depart Rio at 0255hours, arriving in Dubai at 2235hrs.

It will be a tough flight for the crew - 14hrs 30 mins to GIG; GIG to EZE may be a turnaround although an overnight stop in BA would give the crew some time to recover. It is 3 hrs 10 mins from GIG to EZE and 2hrs 50 mins back to GIG; The home leg from GIG to DXE is 13 hrs 40 mins.

Rio is one of the great cities; this will be a fun trip.