After a rocky start – pissed fat guy staggering around the hotel lobby whilst a particularly crabby woman checked us in slowly – our first day here turned out really well. The people are really friendly even though I am using the tried and tested English method of conversing with foreigners – speak slowly and loudly - prices are so good you overspend and the quality of local food, drink and wares seems high.
Very hot sunny weather but with a refreshing breeze off of the Black Sea. The final big surprise was that the hotel not only has wireless, which I was not expecting, but it is free.
Looking forward to the dolphin show and the pirate ship thingy. For tomorrow though I think just bucket and spades down on the beach, time to earn my holiday “wings” as a dad and let my boys bury me in the sand.
Since I saw Princess Leia asking Obi Wan for help in Star Wars I have wanted two things, a droid and 3d holographic displays (of course minutes later I really wanted a lightsabre)
Well I have a RoboDinosaur that is pretty naff, but this gives me hope for my second choice.
If someone could send me a unit for review and possibly throw in a lightsabre as well, I’d be chuffed, you could get R2 to deliver it for me.
Anyone that knows me, knows that I have quite a nose and today I am proud of the noes that managed to block the Lisbon treaty. Okay flippant I know(s), but I feel that my faith in the ability of people not to be rail-roaded into doing what the powers that be dictate has been restored.
There was an awful amount of money thrown into the “yes” campaign, just take a look at the amount of yes posters, when compared to those of the noes. Every parliamentary party except Sinn Fein advocated a yes vote and threw their weight behind behind the campaign, yet we managed to make a stand against pissing away the rights and privileges that so many fought and died for. Don’t get me wrong I am not the type to get the soapbox out or to rant on about the struggles with the English (hardly possible with my broad cockney accent and London upbringing). I have however read quite a bit of Irish history (I may have mentioned my love of history before) and know that this country spent far too long without effective democratic process, to just hand away our rights now, leaving Irish voters practically disenfranchised. I will not even get into the wars fought in Europe to secure freedom and the right to elect by democratic process those who govern.
The question is, as the title says, what is next? I doubt that anyone for a minute believes that the whole process of turning Europe into a super state will just go away. There is too much money at stake and if anything this whole referendum will highlight to the elites of Europe just how inconvenient this whole democracy thing is.
Anyone going to open a book on how soon the next reincarnation of this “treaty”comes around? I am betting it will be within three years.
I was just going to write a brief plea to anyone reading to vote NO to the Lisbon treaty, but having been lazy about looking into it, and having only just read into it a bit, I cannot believe how scary it is, scary in a grab your tinfoil hat, where’s my conspiracy theory trench coat kind of way. I knew it was trouble when all the “money” wanted a yes vote.
Having read a dozen or so blogs, another dozen sites arguing for and against it, I am convinced that they cannot be serious.
I just happen to be covering competition amongst the elite of the late Roman republic and the causes of the Roman revolution at the minute I cannot help but draw comparisons to current events. The fact that I have also been listening to an audio version of “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” add to my growing sense of “holy sh*t” how are we being manipulated. I read words written over 2000 years ago and I get a shiver as they seem to be so typical of what is happening now.
Mighty kings were vanquished, savage tribes and huge nations were brought to their knees; and when Carthage, Rome’s rival in her quest for empire, had been annihilated (146 BCE) every land and sea lay open to her.
It was then that fortune turned unkind and confounded all her enterprises. To the men who had so easily endured toil and peril, anxiety and adversity, the leisure and riches which are generally regarded as so desirable proved a burden and a curse. Growing love of money, and the lust for power which followed it, engendered every kind of evil.
Avarice destroyed honour, integrity, and every other virtue, and instead taught men to be proud and cruel, to neglect religion, and to hold nothing too sacred to sell. Ambition tempted many to be false, to have one thought hidden in their hearts, another ready on their tongues, to become a man’s friend or enemy not because they judged him worthy or unworthy but because they thought it would pay them, and to put on the semblance of virtues that they had not.
At first these vices grew slowly and sometimes met with punishment; later on, when the disease had spread like a plague, Rome changed: her government, once so just and admirable, became harsh and unendurable. “Handford, S. A.(trans.)(1963) Sallust, The Jugurthine War/The Conspiracy of Catiline, London: Penguin, pp.181–83)
I know it is all very Revelations, but this was Sallust’s idea of how Rome became corrupted by Empire, how the rich and powerful became greedy and wanted more and more. Of course in the late republic when the top few elite tried to subvert constitutional power, they played the fear card, they pandered to the masses, they offered free grain and gladiatorial games. Now although we get the fear card played daily, we have to pay inflated prices for our grain and our entertainments. Veni, vermini, vomui!
Anyway this was an interesting video (produced on a shoestring I’d say, but well done to the lads who put it together as it is very informative) take a look, it’s long at over an hour and twenty minutes, but worth a look.
And if that is just too much for you to watch here is a clip from Rainbow (a TV show from my childhood) and ask yourself, are they serious?
prices are so good you overspend and the quality of local food, drink and wares seems high.
