You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2007.
…and so now, I’d like to say; people can change anything they want to and that means everything in the world.People are running about following their little tracks - I am one of them - but we’ve all got to stop just following our own little mouse trail. People can do anything. This is something that I am beginning to learn.
People are out there doing bad things to each other. It’s because they’re being dehumanised. It’s time to take the humanity back in to the centre of the ring and follow that for a time.
Greed; it aint going anywhere. They should have that on a big billboard across Times Square.
Without people, you’re nothing. That’s my spiel.
Joe Strummer
The above wasn’t originally meant as a Christmas message but I think it makes a pretty good one.
Naive? Yes. But naive is good. That’s one thing that I have learned over the past three years of adventures. You can do it. We can do it. Realism has its place but not as an excuse.
I can’t help but think of Christmases past. And New Years too. Times that changed my life forever and the way I see things. They’ve also influenced my ambitions for the future.
I am back in Newcastle. A timeout if you like.
Now is about people I care about. Resetting my default. Realising afresh how lucky I have been to live the adventures of Vietnam and Nicaragua.
Happy Christmas one and all, this is me signing off for the festive period. A family Xmas followed by a week in snowy Poland.
Who knows what 2008 holds for any of us and there is a danger of looking too much into the future instead of enjoying the now. But it will be the year when plans for the next adventure take shape.
Have a good one.
Following on from the post below. Paul Linford explains why he’d prefer to vote for a Christian.
Via Bob Piper, I read Paul Linford’s take on new Lib Dem Leader Nick Clegg’s admission that he doesn’t believe in God.
Paul writes:
(it’s) certainly concerning for me as a Christian..
And Bob posts:
Why on earth do Christians like Paul Linford have to be concerned about someone’s private religious beliefs, or lack of them? Should I be concerned if Clegg is a meat eater? I just don’t get it.
If Clegg had just been elected Pope and declared he didn’t believe in God then Christians might have cause for concern, but is Clegg’s crime of being a non-believer going to influence his opinions on the Single European currency, devolution, or the war in Afghanistan? I don’t think so.
No matter how many times people tell me Blair’s Iraq adventure was inspired by his religious faith, I don’t believe a word of it.
I couldn’t agree more. My own comments on Linford’s blog are as follows:
I wrote:
“concerning for me as a Christian”
Why? As a non Christian I have had to suffer Christian leaders and for the most part put up with it with relatively decent grace.What is there to be concerned about?
You worried that without religion to guide him Clegg might…well the mind boggles.
Then again when Blair, with God as his co-pilot, uses religion as an excuse to bomb the third world - well, not sure I’d ever vote Lib Dem but I just got a whole lot closer
.Good on the guy. It’s about time a politician had the guts to the truthful in this area. Good to see that politics can grow up and shed religion. Can’t we leave that to the Americans?
In all honesty I don’t know a single person who goes to church. It’s about time that majority got represented.I ask you, Clegg not being a Christian - how does that make him a lesser politician, or person for that matter.
Paul has promised another post where he deals exclusively with this matter.
In the meantime I have added, in reference to Clegg’s non believing making him, in Paul’s eyes, a “lesser politician“:
Looking forward to the post Paul, perhaps you can also include whether you consider other none Christians ie Muslims, Buddhists are lesser politicians too.
Are none Christians, lesser people too?
And if being a Christian really does makes you a better politician - what the hell happened with Bush and Blair? Or will you point at their longevity rather than their death tolls.
Perhaps we can talk about why Christian politicians tend to be such hypocrites. Thou shalt not kill. Remember that one? Then there’s 9/11 - perhaps they could have turned the other cheek?
Perhaps you would have preferred Clegg to lie. But there’s another commandment gone right there.Okay, apologies, as a lifelong none believer I get steamed up about this but I await your post with interest.
From an article in today’s Guardian discussing predictions for 2008.
Another solid basis for futurological speculation is to follow the flow of people. Paul Saffo, a respected California-based forecaster, argues that the next few years will see the beginnings of a “reverse knowledge migration” in which, as well as bright and well-educated workers coming from the developing world to the west, people will start to move in the opposite direction.
This new global class of “cyber-gypsies”, says Saffo, will not only include American and European Asians returning “home”, but also highly educated, non-Asian Americans and Europeans going off to make their fortunes in places such as China.
The trend, he argues, will soon move from a source of sociological curiosity to a source of alarm for governments and businesses. Companies, universities and thinktanks in Europe and America, he warns, who often smugly assumed that they would be a magnet for the world’s talent, are going to discover that this is no longer the case.
Predictions for 2008? Ha. It’s already happening, maan. I’ve been meeting these people for the past three years.
Asians returning home, seen them. Europeans and Americans looking for new horizons, uh huh.
Much more than this. Try these: Brits, Australians and Americans shamed by their countries’ actions in Iraq (the shame drain). Individuals who no longer want to be part of the bullying first world, people who are fed up with just how complicated it is to live in the west and just how horrifically expensive it is too. Those of us who recognise the waste, on every level, of living in a developed country.
When you can plug in your computer anywhere, is it not increasingly likely that we’ll choose to be online somewhere cheaper, more colourful, and where our high streets aren’t just an identikit jumble of Starbucks and McDonald’s?
All this shock horror crap about migrants into the UK. Hey, we’re all migrants now.
Here’s something a little unusual for a Sunday Evening.
Enchanted Parks has been taking place in Gateshead’s Saltwell Park and Leazes Park in Newcastle.
In short it’s a kind of haunting. The parks, which seem more than a little spooky at night, are made all the more strange with the addition of sounds, lights, costumes and performers.
In Saltwell Park we were treated to bandstand waltzes, war time memories, ghostly beyond-the grave miners and a load of stuff that went whoosh..right over my head.
Was it any good? Yes and no. With the organisers requesting we got tickets first and being marched around the site it didn’t really live up to the preparation nor anticipation.
Before we knew it we were back in the car headed home.
But there is the nucleus of a tremendous idea in there. Next year? More, more, more. More ghostliness, more music, more lights, more people, more drama.
I don’t to be stewarded around. Let me wander. Let me get spooked. Let me discover details for myself. I want people to tap me on the shoulder and make me jump. I want some of it to be uplifting too - a perhaps dash of Christmas. I want choirs.
All in all though, a fabulous concept. I hope it’s back next year. This is definitely something to build on.
Update: 
So I go into the Peninsula on Chillingham Road. For some reason whenever I start to get better after illness I crave Chinese food.
I swear I haven’t been in there for 10 years at least. Not since I last left Heaton. Not since Vietnam. Not since Nicaragua.
I order. Sweet and sour pork and chicken chow mein.
I pay and then nip out to the DVD shop while my food is cooked.
Less than 15 minutes later I am back and a bag of food is waiting for me.
The owner hands it to me and says: “You been away then?”
Just beautiful. Look here.
So sick of the phrase: “business model”.
In the last few days I have heard it applied to everything from dot com start-ups to Radiohead’s last album:
Type it into Google and you get 881,000 results.
Click here for 22 business model examples including the Gillette-favoured razor and blades model.
Even Flickr has 111 Business Model photos.
Enough.
Yes, cold has turned into flu and I’m surfing the web from my sickbed while continuing to be generally cranky.
Originally uploaded by Alex Osterwalder
Stuck indoors with a cold.
Have amused myself with trying to prove that Louise Taylor, North East football correspondent for the Guardian, is in love with Sunderland football manager Roy Keane.
In my mind, if no one else’s, that is why she continues to write such glowing reports of Roy (transfer spend this summer £35m, league position: third from bottom).
Conversely, because if you love the red and whites, you hate the black and whites (and vice versa) it might also explain whey she write so negatively about my team, Newcastle United.
Anyway, you be the judge. After literally five minutes Googling here are assorted comments on Roy Keane by Ms Taylor.
Personally I think she’s in lurrrve. But that might just be because I’m childish like that.
(Roy is) immaculately turned out but never flashy (link here)
(Roy is) generous to a fault towards those within his inner circle (link here)
Keane is simply refreshingly honest. (link here)
(Roy’s) Touchline style (is) glowering, prowling, brooding, jaw-clenching - but always immaculately turned out (link here)
Sunderland’s manager (Roy Keane) - fast proving almost as snappy a dresser as the Portuguese (refers to Jose Mourinho) (link here)
One of Roy Keane’s most attractive qualities is his honesty (link here)
Sunderland’s eloquent manager (Roy Keane) (link here)
his (Roy Keane’s) invariably cliche- and platitude-free musings are always worth hearing and delivered in flowing, eloquent sentences that never seem to descend into grammatical black holes. (link here)
Now call me childish but: Louise loves Roy, Louise loves Roy, Louise loves Roy.
Oh and for that matter so does, not-as-funny-as-he-thinks-he-is, Barry Glendenning.
Grrrr. Bloody Sunderland loving Guardian hacks.
UPDATE: On going collection of Louise’s love notes to Roy kept here.
While here in Newcastle it’s drizzling, something like five degrees and we’re wrapped up warm even though we’re inside and the heating is on, elsewhere there is excitement in the sunshine.
News reaches me of a - get this - Nicaraguan Earthship being built. It appears it’s something of an eco pad built almost entirely of recycled rubbish - and trust me there is a lot of rubbish in Nicaragua and disposing of it is a big problem.
You can follow the ship’s progress here. We’re currently on day 5 of 16.
Their website offers a more indepth explanation:
Over the 16 days the team will be staging a series of awareness-raising and training events to ensure that the work can be replicated by local builders. The goal is to provide a lasting education on the principles and practical concepts of sustainable housing construction through the utilization of all recycled materials.
Casa Llanta is not the start of the first Earthship community in the world. Dig a little and you will find a host of successful Earthship communities around the world.
But we might just be witnessing the beginning of a Green Movement in Nicaragua, and more on that in later posts on this project
Fabulous. Impressed at the project, and jealous I am not a part of it, in relatively equal measures. Go and watch their progress. Link them. Spread the word. Save the world, etc.
Pics from MyBootsnMe.
It shames us all that we sit by as a nation and as individuals and do so very little to stop this.
Ever since reading this Sacred Facts post, while I was still in Nicaragua, I have been desparate to see The Future is Unwritten - the Joe Strummer biopic.
Finally Love Film - came up trumps and it was delivered to my doorstep.
It proved to be well worth waiting for.
The best part? The World Service bits from Joe’s own show that link it all together. What a presence. What a voice. What great taste.
Today I went out and purchased the CD.
With 25 tracks it’s a good start, but surely there’s a market for the show to be aired again. Maybe to a podcast audience?
It’d be a welcome addition to my Ipod and a great soundtrack to my morning Number One bus trips through Heaton.
So, Mr Sambrook, who do we bully to get this podded?
* The pic is one of my own. It’s a particularly colourful rendition of Sandino, the inspiration behind Nicaragua’s Sandinistas (who The Clash were to name an album after). One of the high points of the film for me was seeing Strummer and the boys sporting Sandinista style scarves, complete with the iconic Sandino image. The shot was taken in Leon, Nicaragua. More Sandino pics here.
Just back from shopping for Christmas deccies.
For the umpteenth time I find myself wondering why you can’t buy miniature Angel of the Norths for the top of your tree.
I can’t imagine anyone up here not buying one.
