All Terrain Thinking

A Compendium of things I think are Important

Wonderful strange stories from around the world

Ignoring Ends, Means and Iguanas

Freedom to speak is the cardinal sin of political interference during dynasty building for it cheekily inserts itself between ruler and vision, particularly if the ruler is strong on ends and weak on means. To some it's the bane of democracy; to many it lifts the game into something altogether more personal, engaging, argumentative, and perhaps even dangerous. But then politics is personal and democracy is about you in particular; pretending it's otherwise is to fake a distance that reduces its impact.

Politicians might be surprised to know just how many people are acutely aware that political nepotism means something precise: the use of a public position of trust to further your private ends at the taxpayers expense.

Visitors often remark: "So why don't people complain?" Well, they do. But then complaints rise to meet the procedures set up to investigate them, which, on the whole, are completely useless especially when those caught out lying can still keep their jobs. As a result, people in private life don't expect people in public office to tell the truth.

The Italians have known this for years. Wisely, they haven't trusted a government since well before World War II. Italy is a country with lots of rules that are rarely enforced and when they are everyone ignores them completely. They have learned to disregard petty laws because every couple of years a new government comes in and nails and entirely new set of laws on the door of the karaoke bar in the village piazza.

When you don't trust a government, you develop a warm unspoken bond with your fellow citizens. Everyone still gets up in the morning, goes to work and pays the mortgage and throws a little cash at the local mayor and the neighborhood policeman to do a bit of plumbing and carpentry on the side.

The government can rant and rage and lie and cheat all it wants - but it won't make a bit of difference. This is why the EU works so well in Southern Europe. Nobody pays the slightest bit of attention to what it's saying.

*A 40 year veteran of commuting around Southeast Asia thinks that our PM has observed Singapore and sees what he likes as a model for Thai society to work towards: hi-tech, well ordered, dutiful. Trouble is, said the veteran, to achieve this he'd have to run it like Dr Mahatir.

*Although ALMO sounds like an Australian lawn mowing company, perhaps it's only to be expected that the organization is far more curious about who leaked the document rather then what the document was intended to do.

*How times change. Up to a century ago if you wanted more money, you worked harder, or longer or more cleverly. Now you stop working altogether. This is much nicer and anyone can do it.

*Happiness comes in different guises. If you lived behind the Iron Curtain in the old days happiness took the form of having the secret police knock on your door at midnight enquiring 'Ivan Stravinsky?' and being able to say: 'No, comrade, Ivan Stravinsky lives next door." Then closing the door and muttering, "Thank God…," Today, if you live in the Golden Emerald Golf Mining Triangle happiness is when no one asks anything about you at all. At any hour.

*Although the United States will be spending US$346.5 billion on defense this year, the internal escalators at the Pentagon are turned off on Saturdays in order to save money.

*Regional police enquiries were raised to new levels of excellence last week when a Cambodian intelligence officer assigned to the casino town of Poi Pet to keep a look out for Duangchalerm, said he had been looking but hadn't seen him yet, and even though gamblers claimed they'd seen him all over the place, he was still trying really hard. Instructed to monitor 'suspicious foreigners' using the casino the officer said he'd spotted Duangchalerm's dad and his two other boys but as he sees them every weekend, there was no need to be suspicious. As long as he's not instructed to keep a look out for the Giant Rat of Sumatra leaving the gaming tables, this guy seems destined for a rapid rise through the ranks.

*A woman was found guilty of assault and ill treating an animal when she threw her pet iguana, called Igwig, at the doorman of the Anchor Inn in Cowes on the Isle of Wight. (That's a bit of rock off the south coast of a larger bit of rock). Igwig is still in custody, but the woman has been allowed to see visit him. Still on the south coast, there's a problem for digital radios users as just across the Channel, the French use the same digital transmission to operate remote applications. So if a guy switches on his radio in Portsmouth a 1,000 garage doors fly open in Calais. I don't understand why this is a problem.

By Roger Beaumont

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