Don't panic: this isn't going to be yet another re-run of my theme-song about NATO's illegal attack on Yugoslavia over Kosovo in 1999 having been an unalloyed failure, contrary to the prevailing wisdom. Anyone who wants to see that argument and the evidence for it can easily do so by clicking, for example, here and, especially, here (among many other posts littering this blog for years). My purpose here is to recommend a deeply depressing, superbly well documented article in the London Review of Books, 17 July 2008 issue, by Jeremy Harding, about the current situation in Kosovo, nearly nine years after NATO's air war against the Serbs on behalf of the Kosovo Albanians, and a few months after the Kosovo Albanian majority in Kosovo, cynically egged on by the United States, Britain and much of the rest of the EU, unilaterally declared Kosovo independent in the face of furious opposition from Serbia, Russia and some others: an act disagreeably reminiscent of white Southern Rhodesia's disastrous Unilateral Declaration of Independence, or UDI, on 11 November 1965.
Harding's article graphically describes the dire economic situation in Kosovo: 40 to 50 per cent unemployment, infant mortality rates worse than those in Mexico or even the Occupied Territories of Palestine and twice those in Serbia, a Kosovo Serbian minority numbering around 200,000 wholly dependent on "money from Belgrade, a system of local patronage, and, like many Albanians, on racketeering." 45 per cent of the population live below the poverty level, i.e. unable to meet basic needs: "around 15 per cent live in extreme poverty, earning less than a euro a day." Harding comments:
No one would have imagined that a UN protectorate in Europe, stuffed with NGOs and awash with donor receipts, could perform so badly. Kosovo has low growth, no inflation, and few signs of an emerging economy. The roads are bad, the water supply is subject to cuts – the water is contaminated in any case – and the two coal-fired power stations in Obiliq, a township outside Pristina, are dying behemoths, polluting their way to extinction, unable to provide domestic users with regular electricity. Obiliq itself, stifled by their exertions, has a higher rate of respiratory disease than anywhere else in Kosovo.
Once a supplier of farm produce to other parts of Yugoslavia, Kosovo now brings in almost all its food, along with fuel and building materials. Its leading ‘export’ is scrap metal, a harvest of rundown plant from the Milosevic era and Nato bomb damage. Kosovo’s trade gap is dramatic: imports account for 90 per cent of legal cross-border trade. The UN, the EU and Nato have frozen the conflict between Serbs and Albanians for the last four years; inadvertently, too, they’ve kept development on ice.
Of course things weren't much, if any, better in the days of Serbian rule immediately before 1999, when Kosovo was by universal recognition a province of Serbia — as, according to Serbia and its allies, legally it still is. But Kosovo UDI has precipitated a fatal breach with Serbia, on which Kosovo's economy has hitherto largely depended. Relations had anyway been badly damaged by the western intervention (brokered with the Serbs by US, Russian and Finnish diplomacy) under which Serbian military and administrative rule has been replaced by a UN-sponsored international military and civilian authority, ending the ethnic cleansing of the Albanians by the Serbs. Then relations were even more seriously undermined by the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian minority in Kosovo by the Kosovo Albanian majority, carried out under the noses of UN, NATO and EU troops and administrators.
The 'independence' declared by the Kosovo Albanians and promptly recognised by Washington, London and most other western capitals is a pretty unconvincing thing. Predictably, neither Serbia nor Russia recognises it, nor is either likely to do so in the foreseeable future. This means that membership of the UN for Kosovo is out of reach, since any application for it would inevitably be vetoed by Russia (and, probably, by China), even if the necessary nine-vote majority for Kosovo admission were to be obtainable in the Security Council. Economic independence is similarly out of reach: the only hope for Kosovo, now that it has cut itself off from Serbia, lies in the EU, although any glimmer of hope of eventual EU membership for Kosovo is so far down the road as to be virtually invisible — while Serbia's journey along the path to EU membership has now accelerated with the handover of Radovan Karadži? to the War Crimes Tribunal at The Hague on charges of genocide and other war crimes. Little support for Kosovo from UN bodies is likely, given Russia's certain opposition to anything that might smack of UN recognition of Kosovo's 'independence'.
As Jeremy Harding shows, the international bodies that have been governing Kosovo in the nine years since 1999 — NATO, the EU, the OSCE, under a rather nominal UN umbrella in the shape of Unmik — have an extremely unimpressive record when it comes to promoting economic and social development in this poverty-stricken backwater of Europe. With the gradual dismantling of UN authority and increased dependence on the EU, it seems unlikely that Kosovo will prosper any more in the next nine years than it has done in the last nine. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that the declaration of independence was a dreadful mistake. Jeremy Harding again:
The unilateral declaration of independence came on 17 February; it was made amid much jubilation in the Kosovo assembly, in signal disregard of SCR 1244, and pinpointed the tensions between the UN and the government. Over the years there have been many disagreements, yet the tendency to bat decisions back and forth has been a problem too: it has suited the Kosovo government to blame its failings on Unmik, while Unmik has been happy to criticise locals when its own shortcomings are under scrutiny. Perhaps the EU, now preparing to take over from the UN, will bring an end to this inertia, but it is not a foregone conclusion.
Kosovo Albanians have lived in dependency for generations, and the years under Unmik, with its fudges and flops, have seemed like a forced march along a familiar road. The only period of which they speak fondly – older people, obviously – lasted from the end of the 1960s until the beginning of the 1980s: a time of prosperity, growth, regional autonomy and relative democracy for Kosovo within the Yugoslav Federation.
The tragedy is that a similar status of extensive autonomy under almost nominal Serbian sovereignty was probably available to Kosovo as an alternative to the equally nominal 'independence' which the western powers encouraged Kosovo to declare. It's described as 'supervised independence', surely the most glaring example of oxymoron in modern times: if you're supervised, you're not independent. In the run-up to UDI, Serbia, clearly under pressure from Moscow, urgently offered to restore Kosovo's autonomous status, brutally stripped away by Milosevic in the late 1980s. It would have meant Kosovo acquiescing in continued Serbian sovereignty, and forgoing the trappings of full independence for which the Kosovo Liberation Army had fought. But it would have ensured Russian as well as western support; Kosovo membership of the EU as technically part of Serbia would have become an attainable objective; some kind of UN observer status could probably have been devised, with Russian and Serbian agreement; possibilities of UN, Russian and Serbian as well as EU and other western economic support would have opened up; Kosovo could have enjoyed almost all the practical advantages of independence without having to cope with the penalties that it is now paying for a UDI that is incapable of achieving universal recognition. Kosovo, in short, threw away the realities of a generally recognised and rewarded autonomy, for the sake of an independence which is so attenuated as to be almost unrecognisable. The daunting implications of this are vividly described in the LRB article.
US and UK policy towards Kosovo and Serbia committed an unforgivable blunder with the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, an illegal act of aggression which achieved not one of its stated objectives. Now, nine years after Serbian authority was driven out and Kosovo placed under international control, the US and the UK, with others, have blundered again in encouraging the Kosovo leaders into a damaging and probably irreparable breach with their Serbian neighbours by insisting on a fake and moth-eaten form of 'independence' which falls far short of the real thing. It looks very much as if western attention to the Kosovo problem is going to leave that unhappy province in virtually permanent international limbo, and virtually permanent poverty too.
Brian
This is a contribution from a not-disillusioned friend who never had any illusions. It leaves me with nothing to add:
There is one person whose partial responsibility for the Glasgow East disaster is generally ignored. That is David Marshall, whose 'ill-health' brought about this unnecessary by-election. While all other reporters merely put the diagnosis in quotation marks, printed or unprinted, Michael Crick eventually revealed the nature of the ill health on Newsnight. According to Crick, the allegation is that Marshall had been using parliamentary allowances to pay his wife and daughter, Conway style. Also, allegedly, from another allowance he had been paying himself rent to use his residence as the constituency office — but Crick was unable to find anyone who had ever seen the home in use as a constituency office.
I believe that Mr Marshall has denied any any wrongdoing. Received political wisdom has always been that the electorate punishes parties which send them to the polling stations without good cause . So Labour was fighting at a disadvantage anyway, particularly when they couldn't get anyone to agree to stand until the last minute. And there must be a story behind that. Some of the many Scots who inhabit both front and back labour benches might usefully turn their attention to introducing democracy and transparency into the Scottish Mafia.
But David Marshall is not the main architect of this defeat. Gordon Brown is the man who is now pulling down the Labour party in his own downfall. I said for years that he was a destabilizing influence and that Tony Blair should sack him. Whatever the spin doctors were saying, anyone who read the newspapers and listened to the political programmes had to be aware that throughout the Blair years, Gordon Brown's main agenda was to assume the office which he regarded as rightfully his. Disloyal briefing, backstabbing, hiding behind others, never standing up to be counted — it was a dreadful atmosphere for a group of bright young politicians to be schooled in government. It was obvious that the centre of government was a battleground for factions. This inevitably meant that no natural successors to Tony Blair could emerge. Nobody but GB was allowed to be seen to shine or to contemplate advancement. I suspect that this was also one reason why there was such a constant merry-go round of ministerial changes. Nobody ever stayed long enough anywhere to build up expertise or respect. So when GB is seen as a flop, we are left with an old weary gang of place servers and has-beens. His activities over 11 years have helped to corrupt and destroy the future leadership of the party.
I won't write an essay on Tony Blair. I left the Labour Party because of the cavalier way he took the country to war and then showed that he didn't give a damn about the poor bloody infantry he sent off to fight it. The sickening hypocrisy of the weekly 'tributes' at PMQs has been continued by GB. And don't forget that he was a powerful member of the Cabinet that allowed the British Army, and Navy and Air Force, to be turned into Hessian soldiers at the behest of US overlords.
He deserves defeat and so do all those people who knew what he was like and were too cowardly, or stupid, or ambitious, to warn about what would happen.
————–
Can't argue with that.
Brian
Yet more questionable snippets from the media and nearby:
Labour Central lets you share Labour related content with the rest of the Labour community. You can do this in two ways – with the Labour Central toolbar or by placing the URL of the content you want to share in the box below. We'll then try and automatically work out what your trying to share.
(http://www.labour.org.uk/central/home) [Why has "your" instead of "you're" suddenly spread like an epidemic?]
We gave the impression that the Citroën C1 is presently exempted from the London congestion charge.
(The low-carbon motorist, page 8, Budget report, yesterday. Guardian, Corrections and clarifications, 14 March 2008.)
[Guardian Style Guide: "presently means soon, not at present"]
A spokeswoman for the Department for Transport said last night … "…That is why one of the many things we are consulting on are obligations around air quality which we agreed with other government departments…." (Guardian, 13 March 08)
[One of the things are? Obligations around air quality? what exactly did we agree with other departments -- consulting, obligations, air quality?]
[H]ermits are making a come-back in Italy… The majority [are] former clergy or missionaries. "The number of women reflects the amount of ex-nuns who have sought out a degree of autonomy in life that they could not find before," said Turina [a sociologist at the university of Bologna]. "Some are equipped with internet, which doesn't necessarily disqualify you," said Turina. "It's like meeting people. You do it within a spiritual framework."
(Guardian, Laptops but no beards for new hermits in Italy, 13 March 08.)
["The amount of ex-nuns" is a phrase that must have sounded better, or at any rate less hilarious, in Italian. It suggests that the ex-nuns were all weighed together on an enormous set of scales, each presumably with her laptop. But the rest of the story is to be treasured, too.]
Mr Obama predicted that the Republicans will attack whomever becomes the nominee…
(Times, 17 Apr 07 'Obama grilled over patriotism and links to militant')
Accordingly, she advised that caution should be exercised when considering the views of he who had uttered the threat…
(para 27, Judgment of Lord Justice Moses and Mr Justice Sullivan in BAE fraud investigation case, High Court, 10 April 08
http://extras.timesonline.co.uk/pdfs/bae_judgment_10.4.08.pdf)
"Gordon Brown kicks off his three-day state visit by appearing on breakfast television"
(Caption to Guardian photograph of Gordon Brown on official visit to the United States, 17 April 08)
"The pope is greeted at a Maryland air force base by President George Bush ahead of his six-day visit" (Caption to Guardian photograph of the pope on his state visit to the United States, 17 April 08)
[A contrast in celebrity welcomes!]
No one thinks, having seen the results at polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election. A stolen election would not be a democratic election at all. As the general secretary has said, the credibility of the democratic process depends on there being a legitimate government. (Gordon Brown, UN Security Council, 16 Apr 08, in clip shown repeatedly on television news bulletins: see (and hear) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7351105.stm.)
but:
No one thinks, having seen the results at polling stations, that President Mugabe has won this election. A stolen election would not be a democratic election at all. As the secretary-general has said, the credibility of the democratic process depends on there being a legitimate government.
(Gordon Brown, UN Security Council 16 April 2008, text on No. 10 Downing Street website http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page15286.asp)
and:
There will be a meeting of the South African ministers this weekend. They will discuss whether the democratic principles have been upheld and will report on that. The General Secretary of the United Nations, the Secretary General has now announced that he's prepared to offer the officers of the United Nations to help.
(Gordon Brown, interview with Nick Robinson, BBC political correspondent, 17 Apr 08 http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/newsroom/latest-news/?view=PressR&id=3125802) (Emphases added)
[Robert Wardle, head of the Serious Fraud Office] also wants new offences of "false accounting". Observers think that these may have been quicker in catching companies such as BAE, …
(David Leigh, G2, Guardian, 18 April 08
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/18/bae.armstrade)
["May" have been? Well, were they, or weren't they? (And see 'comments', below.)]
We have a disturbing report from Tanzania, where witchdoctors are peddaling the myth that possession of a potion made of an albino's hair, blood or limbs paves the way to riches. (Newsnight daily e-mail, 22 July 2008, Gavin Esler.)
[Witchdoctors on bikes are a charming thought. Perhaps they have laptops, too, like the ex-nuns?]
In the past six months, it has become patently clear people see in him whatever they want to see. After being told his parents' race and nationality, more than half (55%) of white people said he was biracial while two-thirds of African-Americans said he was black, according to a Zogby poll. A New York Times poll last week showed two-thirds of black people believe he is very patriotic while one in five whites believe he is not very patriotic.
(Gary Younge, Guardian, 21 July 08, "People see in Obama what they want to see – that's a blessing and a curse"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jul/21/barackobama.uselections2008)
[It seems that (leaving aside the "Don't Knows"), 66% of black people and 80% of whites think he's patriotic, which I ungenerously suspect is the opposite of what Mr Younge is trying to tell us, if it means anything at all.]
A vibrant media, although under threat from many sides, also exist. (Observer, main editorial, 20 July 08)
[I know, whether media is or are singular or plural is -- are? -- a little tricky, so the safest thing is to make it both, as here.]
When you see this generation en masse there seem good reasons to argue that in the main, our society is robust, tolerant and works pretty well. (Henry Porter, Observer, 13 July 08).
[Trouble with lists again: I suspect that some cloth-eared Observer sub-editor may have removed the indispensable 'and' after 'robust', thus incurring poor Henry's wrath, no doubt. That sub-editor is dim, illiterate and ought to look for different work.]
As the Tories roared, I was reminded of the Thurber cartoon in which a fencer neatly slices off his opponent's head, with a cry of "Touché!" The joke is that the other fellow simply doesn't realise what has happened. (Simon Hoggart 18 Mar 08 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/mar/18/houseofcommons.gordonbrown)
[No, that isn't the joke, Simon. Anyway --
'In fencing, touché (French: touched) is used as an acknowledgement of a hit, called out by the fencer who is hit' -- Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touch%C3%A9 (emphasis added)]
Practise makes perfect. (Andrew Rawnsley, Observer, 27 July 08)
…the procedures … provide a means to allow practitioners to show they practice in line with the requirements of the national occupation standards for nutritional therapy…
(Mike O'Farrell, CEO, British Acupuncture Council, letters, Guardian, 28 July 08)
The Soya Protein Association refutes your article. (Letter, Guardian, 26 July 08).
[The letter advances counter-arguments to those in the Guardian's earlier article but does not 'refute' it.]
[Shriti] Vadera refutes the idea that business has fallen out of love with Labour (David Teather, profile of Shriti Vadera, Guardian, 26 July 08)
[No, she doesn't.]
Still they come!
Brian
I have been copying my treasured Billie Holiday LPs and 45s (remember LPs and 45s?) into my iPod 
via iTunes on my computer, as part of my battle against terminal boredom as I pound the treadmill and pedal furiously on the stationary exercise bike at my local gym. To do this I have been using a miraculous machine, a birthday present from my imaginative offspring, which converts the sweet old records into mp3 files. At about the same time the Guardian has been issuing with the newspaper booklets of (mostly contemporary) song lyrics in its series "Great lyricists" [sic]. One of these, a collection of lyrics by Bob Dylan, has prompted a pungent attack by everyone's favourite Aussie Sheila, Germaine Greer, who quotes a few lines of a Dylan lyric and comments:
It's not verse, not even doggerel. Nor is it prose, because it doesn't make sense. Its combination of pretentiousness and illiteracy isn't surprising, which would be something; it's just annoying. God knows why the texts put to 20th-century music began to be called lyrics rather than words.
Dr Greer goes on to compare Dylan's words with the best-known poem by William Blake (O rose, thou art sick), not necessarily to Mr Dylan's advantage. This has earned her a magisterial rebuke, very Guardian, from Michael Horovitz (identified as a jazz troubadour, Poetry Olympics tochbearer and editor-publisher of New Departures, described in Wikipedia as "often considered … to be one of the last living links to the Beat poets and their milieu") under the wonderfully predictable heading: Bob Dylan does not deserve this snobbery and pedantry.
I don't always agree with Dr Greer — who does? — but I'm bound to say that I think she has a point, even though I enjoy some of the Bob Dylan classics. One of the many glorious songs sung by Lady Day and now securely housed in my iPod is that great standard, These Foolish Things, written by Eric Maschwitz and others. Here are a sample verse and chorus:
The smile of Garbo and the scent of roses,
The waiters whistling as the last bar closes,
The song that Crosby sings
These foolish things
Remind me of you.How strange, how sweet to find you still!
These things are dear to me
That seem to bring you so near to me!
The scent of smould´ring leaves, the wail of steamers,
Two lovers on the street who walk like dreamers,
Oh, how the ghost of you clings –
These foolish things
Remind me of you.
One of the Guardian Great Lyricists, with a booklet to himself, is Alex Turner of the Arctic Monkeys. In his Foreword the poet, playwright and novelist Simon Armitage writes that –
[O]f all those writing lyrics today, Turner is among the most poetic. His use of internal rhyme exists to be admired and envied.
Here's a sample, chosen more or less at random, of Mr Turner's poetic lyrics; it's from a song called Red Light Indicates Doors Are Secured:
You see her with the green dress?
She talked to me at the bar
How come it's already two pound fifty?
We've only gone about a yard
Didn't you see she were gorgeous
She were beyond belief
But this lad at the side drinking a Smirnoff Ice
Came and paid for her Tropical ReefBut I'm sitting going backwards
And I didn't want to leave
I said it's High Green mate
Via Hillsborough please[Original punctuation]
You don't need to compare that with Blake. Eric Maschwitz will do. "Snobbery and pedantry"? Who, me? I never said a word!
I rest my case.
Brian
Today's Guardian treats us to a précis of an exceptionally emetic[1] piece in Comment is Free (the giant Guardian blog) by Ruth Lea, formerly of the Institute of Directors and currently director and economic adviser at the Arbuthnot Banking Group (which "offers outstanding Private Banking and Wealth Management services") and a governor of the London School of Economics. Ms Lea explains 
that the current strike by public sector workers against the government's pay deal, which represents a cut in their standard of living in real terms, is unjustified: any pay award above the level of inflation just leads to even higher prices, you see, so any such pay increase is bad news for all the rest of us. Why single out public service workers for pay cuts as part of the government's attempts to contain inflation? Because there's more job security in the public sector than in the private sector (a woefully out-of-date assertion), and also because above-inflation awards in the public sector will incite private sector workers to demand similar inflationary awards (which presumably wouldn't have occurred to them without those wicked nurses and teachers and postmen setting a bad example):
And – surely the clincher – council staff workers must realise that they will be condemned as irresponsible and unfair if they push for high pay awards when their private sector friends may be losing their jobs.
Ms Lea's article (worth reading in full on CIF, if you have a sufficiently strong digestive system) prompts at least two questions:
First, is she really unaware of the intense resentment among public sector workers, many of them among the lowest paid in the land, over the Government's attempt to place the whole burden of reduced living standards at a time of mounting inflation on them, when there is not the slightest effort to spread the burden more fairly by using the tax system to curb monstrously inflated salary increases and astronomical bonuses, often quite unrelated to performance and way above the level of inflation, awarded to one another by her friends in the City and business? Or is she aware of this (wholly justified) resentment, but can't understand it? Or does she fail to acknowledge it simply because it would spoil her self-serving argument? Her failure even to mention it does leave rather a large hole in her treatment of the issue.
Secondly, what on earth does the Guardian think it's doing publishing this reactionary rubbish, not once but twice – in print, and in Comment is Free? There are plenty of far right-wing media outlets only too happy to host this kind of stuff in defence of Ms Lea's fellow-bankers and their living standards. God forbid that these people's inalienable right to an annual hike in the salaries and bonuses that they pay each other should be threatened by a pay award to rubbish collectors and librarians in line with, or even above, the level of inflation, to ensure that at least they don't continue to get a little poorer every year.
Old-fashioned Old Labour class envy? No: just an invitation to recognise the indefensible unfairness of government tax and inflation policy — the policy, so help me, of a Labour government (best read with a Kinnockian Welsh accent[2]).
[1] emetic: vomit-inducing
[2] 'Kinnock raged at Hatton and Militant, saying: "You end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council — a Labour Council — hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers." ' http://tinyurl.com/68y6l8 and http://www.psr.keele.ac.uk/area/uk/pebs/lab87.htm
Brian
What a useful resource could be provided if any student could put his or her essays on international affairs on a website for all to read! Now an enterprising group of graduate students from a number of universities have done just that. In the words of one of its editors:
A group of postgraduate students from UK universities including Oxford, Leicester and the LSE run an independent website (e-International Relations) aimed at international politics students. As well as essays, news feeds, and political blogs it contains short editorial comment pieces. The recently built site has already had submissions from British, American and Islamic academics, students, journalists, politicians and advocacy groups. Amongst others we've received pieces from Ian Lustick, Charlie Beckett, John Redwood and David Steinberg.
Since that was written, I too have responded to an invitation to contribute an 'editorial comment piece' on one of my favourite topics, familiar to all Ephems readers: it's currently the 'featured editorial' on the website.
"e-International Relations", at http://www.e-ir.info/, is well worth a visit, not only as a laudable and interesting initiative, but also for lots of stimulating content (not just my own contribution, either!). Of course the student essays as well as the gurus' and others' 'editorial comments' offer rich pickings for student essay-writers to plunder, but then so does all Web content, and these days alert tutors have ways of tracking down plagiarism. Anyway the line between plagiarism and inspiration fired by others' ideas is a blurred one. (Personally I would find it rather flattering to be plagiarised, although naturally I'm unlikely to know it even if I have been.)
The other possible objection is that the mere appearance of an essay or a comment piece on a quasi-academic website may lend it a spurious air of authenticity and authority when in real life it may be full of inaccuracies and misrepresentations. But "e-International Relations" is frank about the status of its contributions, and anyone who takes a student essay (or even a comment piece by an old fogey) as gospel has no business being a student, formal or informal. Caveat lector! In some cases hyperlinks to original sources are an aid to verification by the suspicious; in other cases the main substance is more opinion than fact, and the reader is at liberty to agree or disagree. Some essays include impressive bibliographies and other footnotes, facilitating verification: and all of them include provision for visitors to append comments, or to comment separately on the associated blogs, both sure-fire ways of keeping writers in the blogosphere honest (as we bloggers all know, sometimes to our cost).
It's an excellent initiative, expertly executed, and it deserves to flourish. More publicity for it is needed: fellow-bloggers, please copy!
Brian
Why on earth — the appropriate phrase, for once — do so many of us opt to live in northern Europe? Walking along the Sitges sea front at 8 pm past the families and couples (same-sex, opposite-sex) lying in the sun on the endless beach, or playing or lazily swimming in the blue-green sea; selecting any one of fifty excellent restaurants for supper (or dinner or a snack) and being sure of first-rate food, served up by friendly non-deferential non-snooty waiters; coming out into a brightly-lit Sitges at 1030 pm and walking back to the hotel along the scrupulously clean streets past the groups of beautiful cheerful not-drunk not-violent young people (including many Brits), admiring the audacious bikinis and minuscule shorts (girls, women) and 
observing with less admiration below-the-knees baggy cargo shorts (boys, men, not so audacious); soaking up the bright but friendly sun — we really begin to think that P.H. (you know who you are) has got it right after all and that we should all be looking for airy spacious properties on the Costa Daurada with sea views, within walking distance of several outstanding fish restaurants. (But this weekend's Financial Times reports that the numerous Brits who have emigrated to the Spanish seasides are now experiencing serious problems with the planning authorities and plunging house prices, so perhaps now isn't the time….)
I wore my big tin Obama For President badge (brought under protest by my Anglo-American daughter from New York along with Obama bumper sticker and Obama sweater) at the Santa Maria restaurant on the sea front for a cold cod salad lunch and a couple of gallons of agua con gas and was at once surrounded by delighted Spanish waiters chanting O-Ba-Ma!, O-Ba-Ma! "Obama para el presidente, si?" (or words to that effect), said the maitre d'. "Si, si," we agreed. "Americanos, usted?" "No, no. British." General bewilderment. Anyway, we agreed that we were all for Obama, with or without a vote to make it come true. Later our New York daughter and granddaughters, all three dual nationals and one a NY voter, joined us at the table fresh from the beach and began punctiliously writing their postcards. Luckily they weren't wearing their Hillary badges. The Guardian warns that Obama is craftily tacking towards the soggy centre. Hope he knows what he's doing. If he's as clever as they say he is, presumably he does.
Gatwick to Barcelona was our first experience of Easyjet, and a generally rather good one: the main lesson was that it's well worth paying the extra five quid or so per person to get a priority boarding code on the boarding pass so that there's a virtual guarantee of an aisle seat and travelling companions seated nearby before the great unwashed swarm on board trying to find seats next to each other and grabbing aisle or window seats before they are all taken — scene eerily reminiscent of internal flights by Aeroflot in the Soviet Union in the 1970s, where pre-flight seat allocation was similarly unknown. Being crammed into a middle seat, knees to chin, can't be much fun, so an aisle seat is a necessary bonus, and the front row veritable luxury. Anyway, it was under two hours to Barcelona and we left late and arrived early, reasonably fresh. Our taxi driver taking us from Barcelona airport to Sitges was a former Grand Prix star. Or if not, he should have been. Exhilarating, most of the way; just a little worrying when he took both hands off the steering wheel while going round the steep bends of a motorway access road to conduct himself whistling a flowery song called, he swore, "Viva L'Espanya".
This is positively the last event in the series of celebrations of our golden wedding anniversary back in April, reuniting all three of our adult offspring and both granddaughters, homing in on Sitges from New York, Brighton, London and Ethiopia , the latter (son) making a detour to Barcelona and Sitges en route back to Addis Ababa from meetings in New York. Only his partner, Ethiopia country director of of a busy social work ngo, was missing, detained in Addis by her duties. Better luck next year!
And now to see whether Spain's Nadal's hard court victory over Federer is going to be washed out, as predicted, by rain in Wimbledon, which will undoubtedly mean rain across our London home in Wandsworth too. (In fact, to be absolutely honest, it did rain for about 15 minutes in Sitges this morning, great tropical drops, but the only real effect was to drop the temperature by a welcome couple of degrees for about half an hour.) [Later: The final sets were being played during our extended dinner, back at the Santa Maria, as the daylight gradually faded and the bright lights began to come on. At each heart-stopping moment in the match, diners deserted their tables in droves to crowd round a small television screen in the entrance to the next-door restaurant. As Nadal finally won his decisive championship point, a great cheer went up from the crowd clustered round the set and the waiters and the few still at their tables clapped manically. What a strange and rare experience for a Brit to watch a Wimbledon men's final on television in a country to which the winner belonged!]
Sitges is renowned, among other things, as the gay capital of Europe, and there's plenty of evidence for that reputation on the streets and beaches and in the shops, splendidly colourful and unselfconscious; but there are just as many opposite-sex couples of all ages, many with small children, and even the most flamboyant gays barely rate a glance from anyone else. In this easy-going, relaxed atmosphere — you can't even describe it as 'tolerant' when there's nothing that needs to be 'tolerated' — it's hard to imagine how solemn groups of religious zealots, especially in English-speaking countries in Africa, the US and Europe, can get so worked up about same-sex partnerships, whether of lay people or clergypersons.
And I should include a final plug for our friendly hotel, the Antemare, with its pair of swimming pools, balconies with all rooms, and notably comfortable beds.
It will be sad to leave on Tuesday.
Sitges, 6 July 2007
Older bloggers may remember Owen Barder — yes, we are by no chance at all related — as a distinguished blogger who vanished from the radar screens some time ago after a little local difficulty of no lasting significance. Now he's back in the blogosphere, based in Addis Ababa but currently posting in profusion from New York. There's plenty to read about all his usual themes: development, running, development, cycling, Ethiopia, development and much else.
Owen is the bright new chip off my ever older block and the resident guru of this website, Ephems, and all who sail on it or them: three years ago he gave the whole thing a magnificent face-lift (admiringly recorded here) and since then he has gallantly conducted running repairs to keep it alive. Welcome back!
Brian
