Rescuing Sri Lankan Puppies?

On Sunday the Observer had a story about some UK-based kennel worker being bitten by a rabid puppy, aged 8 weeks, which had just been imported from Sri Lanka. The dog is dead, the worker is ok after her injections.

It makes you wonder, though, about the priorities of people. Yes, dogs will not be treated will in Sri Lanka, as they are not in many countries in the world. The charity involved has provided UK homes for 40 dogs from Sri Lanka in 'recent years'. Consider the cost of freighting the dogs to the UK, quarantining and feeding them - never mind the carbon pawprint. Wouldn't it make more sense to put random dogs down, and spend that money on the children or elderly of Sri Lanka, many of whom were affected by the Tsunami of a few years ago?

Schengen

We've really made it! Arriving in Vilnius yesterday I was dismayed when I found myself on the wrong side of the bus to be the first to reach passport control at the airport - my regular sport on my journey home, and one in which I usually win.

Turns out that for Schengen flights there is no passport control any more.....which explains also why the flight left from a passport-free end of Vienna airport (after I had trundled through their passport control to get to the usual departure gate I then found I had to re-enter Austria to leave for Vilnius). Life's so easy now....

Pets, Tbilisi style

Georgians are not that good at pets. They have dogs, but often they are tied up, rarely are they trained, and many live and sleep in the streets. At least, I suppose it's better that dogs sleep in the streets than children or adults....

Bit of a surprise, though, wandering home along Gogebashvili the other night, to come across a group of youngsters with a bird of prey sitting happily on someone's hand. Not the sort of thing you'd expect to see in almost the middle of a European capital. But then you would also not expect to see roads paved with mud, houses without running water.....

Racism in Vilnius

See here on a South African singer of Indian origin, Berneen, being attacked (physically) in Vilnius. It's shocking, but does not surprise me.

Nothing's changed (3)

Now on page 110 of Figes' 'A People's
Tragedy'; he's been talking about the peasant situation for the last
xx pages. We are still in the 19^th century; he's obviously
filling in the background in great great detail.

He talks about the effect of schooling
on peasants, which is not always appreciated: 'Young men and
adolescents often verbally abuse their elders and even beat them'.
The UK, anno 2008? Not sure that in the UK education is necessarily the root cause of this, though....

He describes the peasant legal system
(customary law) of the 19^th century, which was unwritten.
Land and the flora and fauna on it was seen as belonging to those who
worked it, rather than to the landlord. So it was considered
perfectly all right to steal wood from the landlord, or poach on his
land. This reminds me of a study carried out by a friend on the
informal economy in Russia of the 21^st century, where it
was found that following privatisations, people were, to their
astonishment, prosecuted and thrown in prison for stealing from their
employer.

Figes talks about the market economy
being weak in areas of Russia which had no access to cities or major
railway lines. In 2005 I spotted an article in a Nizhny Novgorod
paper where farmers in remote villages had the crops, but no way of
getting them to the market.

Where's the progress?

Fighting the Senior Citizens

According to NGO-online, the former German president Herzog and a social researcher called Meinhard Miegel have called for the fight against senior citizens in Germany. They have apparently been described as 'neo-liberal ambassadors'. Sounds like it. In the UK people could not dare to do this, what with the socio-economic status of pensioners.

Neither Herzog (*1934) nor Miegel (*1939) are spring chickens themselves, of course. But perhaps they have half-decent pensions what with one thing or another, like being a former President.

They are worried that pensioners are gaining too great an influence in Germany, leading, as recently, to inappropriately increased pensions. Note that in Germany pensions are not automatically uprated, and in fact have been cut in recent years - though this is all from a fairly decent starting point. Unlike the UK. Herzog admits that while the pensions increase was probably acceptable, what with inflation, the fact that this takes money away from the younger generation may be against the constitution. Is he serious? Social solidarity? He'll be thinking individual pensions accounts, stock market reliance, each organises his or her own pension, that sort of thing. The last few months have made us all feel warm and lovely inside, as far as the stockmarket is concerned....

Sorry to share this with you, gents, but pensioners everywhere, where they are alive, have a great political influence. Ask Mr Putin whose pensioners regularly step out on the street. Ask Mr Brown whose pensioners are possibly the most committed democratic participants. May have something to do with the older pensioners having been in the war, and the next generation having been on the barricades.

There's one place, though, where I would limit pensioner power in Germany. It seems that there is no mandatory check of pensioners who drive cars. Knowing two, one of whom is losing his eyesight to a degree that he cannot recognise a person across the room, and another who has difficulties with certain aspects of driving, but both continue to do so, I wonder what the effect would be if every driver over 75 were to be put through a driving/eyesight/reactions test in Germany....

Nothing's changed (2)

Chisinau, the capital of Moldova, is described by Prince Urosov, who was made governor there in 1903 as being a city of two parts; with buildings which 'would have made no unfavourable impression even in the streets of St Petersburg' on top of the hill, and a world of narrow and unpaved winding streets, muddy in the spring and dusty in the summer, ....of pigs and cows grazing in the alleys, at the bottom of the hill.

105 years on, it's still exactly the same, or it was last year.

Nothing's changed

Theoretically book reviews on all my blogs should be few and far between, seeing as I've just started Orlando Figes' 'A People's Tragedy', another of his vast tomes about Russia, this time featuring the Russian revolution. I really want to read his 'Whisperers' since that's about the Soviet times, which many of my friends lived through - but I need to read them in order. The Whisperers are waiting for me at home....

So 'A People's Tragedy' has 824 pages of text and I am on page 39. You may have to wait for a while. But already there are gems:
'the [state] apparatus was too poorly financed (it was very difficult to collect enough taxes in such a vast and poor peasant country)' [before the revolution]. I am sure that is the case still; if Russia had a sound tax and proper employment system, there would be much more money available. I remember in 2005 / 2006 visiting ministries both in Moscow and in lower levels of government - they were clapped out, semi-derelict, with corridors where the floors tilted gently towards the middle.....there were computers, but they were not usually switched on.

He describes the bureaucracy as one which had 'no principles or regulations which enabled the individual to challenge authority or the state' [in 1900]. Right-on. Nothing has changed. To get anything done, you need to travel to the nearest ministry and sit and wait in the corridors (with the tilting floors). Today. Really helps to know the right people, too.

'Leyla'

Came across an interview with Feridun Zaimoglu reading a paper on the flight to Vienna recently. I like books by Turkish authors, especially when they are about Germany, too and straddling two cultures. Turns out that 'Leyla' has only marginal involvement with Germany, but never mind. It's fascinating! It's also not translated into English, which is a shame - most of his books aren't, but this one would lend itself well.

Leyla is the youngest daughter of a family with 5 children living somewhere in East Anatolia. The father is an extremely violent drunkard and the family cringes and cowers every time he comes home. He has few friends and anyone who looks at him wrongly gets a broken nose, to say the least. Needless to say, they live extremely chastely.

The book covers the whole lifetime, from Leyla's early days to after the father dies (given that Leyla is the narrator you ask yourself, who actually is the book about). Leyla has her protectors in her teacher, and her friends, and somehow she gets married off as the first of the 3 daughters, marrying a generally kinder kind of person, though the marriage is also not easy.

Alongside all this there are fascinating details about how things are done in very conservative Anatolia, how women dress and how they should behave, how laundry should be washed, and later how girls should interact with boys or not, how already then some girls are liberated, how the family moves to Istanbul and lodges with richer relatives (not entirely to their delight), what they think of the Istanbullus, how the father's business affairs keep pulling the family to ruin, repeatedly, and how the family, and Turkish society changes.

There are a few glitches - for example at the start of the book reference is made to sons being lost to the Korean war (in the 1950s), and later something is mentioned which must have happened after 1981, which makes me think our Leyla got married unusually late in life.

Zaimoglu in fact spent only the first year of his life in Turkey, but no doubt grew up in a Turkish community in Germany, and so has been able to research the cultures he describes. The book is much more readable than Orhan Pamuk's books; it's more outgoing and lively, but it also operates at a different level. (Zaimoglu looks rather more outgoing and lively than Pamuk, too...)

Well worth a read if you want to know more about rural Turkish culture (of 40 years ago, or is it?), and you speak German.

Picture from Wikipedia.

These ****ing American advisers

So, in Georgia the health system is all American. There is health insurance, underwritten by commercial companies, though it covers far from everything. For certain poor people there is health insurance paid for by the state but still, I suspect, organised by commercial companies. To say that insurance products are not well developed here is the understatement of the year - or perhaps they are brutally developed on a commercial basis.

A friend works at a small state organisation with, I suspect, a rather more elderly workforce than most (though given that many staff in children's homes are over sixty, perhaps not). The organisation was offered a special deal by an insurance company; pay us 15 lari per month, we pay for your health treatment and when you die, we pay your family 3000 lari.

Recently 6 people died, and about 20 needed operations (if you can't afford it, you don't get it done, so when you get insurance naturally you have it done; not sure what the rules are about pre-existing conditions). Now the insurance has increased the premium to 29 laris per month and cancelled the 3000 lari death payment.

The problem is, of course, that the spread of risk is far too small. If there were some all population enveloping health insurance the risk would be spread much further, and everyone could be paid (though in the early years - about 5 - 10 of them - there would be a huge backlog of treatments to be worked off).

European Union citizens have a legal right to health insurance, which they pay for in some countries, in others they don't, and if they are very poor the state covers the cost anyway. It spreads the risk across the whole population.

Georgia wishes to join the EU? With this kind of protection they won't.

A sad tale of migration

Jolanta Bledaite (35), from Lithuania, grew up in rural Alytus. It seems her mother had an alcohol problem; her father was around, but in recent years there seems to have been little contact. Jolanta was bright, her father says, but did not do very well at school, and had a variety of low-paid jobs. The father now has cancer.

Jolanta went abroad to look for a better life. She ended up in Arbroath as one of the 4000-strong Eastern European community involved in agricultural labour. Most recently she was seen begging around the town of Arbroath.

Last week her head was washed up on the short of Arbroath, as were her hands. Yesterday they found the rest of her body in Arbroath harbour. Two Lithuanian men are in custody.

So much for going abroad for a better life.

Bad taste moment of the month

Piece of spam arrived (nestling in the spam box beside a work offer which I got too late) offering 'Officine Paneriai' watches.

Somewhat unfortunate choice of words, given that Paneriai is the place near Vilnius with the pit to which during the German occupation many Vilnius Jews were marched, before being shot and dumped in the pit. Tens of thousands they were.

The rest of the spam makes it clear that these are not memorial watches of that event.

Scary scary....

The Euro keeps rising and rising. Some of us will have a pension in GBP and other income in Euros....though the pension, in time, will be guaranteed income. Not in the level of income, I suspect.

Since last October the pound has dropped by almost 20% against the Euro and is now 1.26 Euros to the pound. The US dollar (someone pays me in dollars, I really must check my rates) is 0.64 Euros. There was a time when a USD was more than a Euro....

Unfortunately, in nearly 40 years of watching the GBP, I have never noticed it making a significant recovery.

This are the challenges of being 'a citizen of the world'. No wonder some migrant workers are leaving the UK.