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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Why would I waste my time on something a zillion other people either know or could find out? Still, useful ammunition.
CPS weeder: Jimmy Saville file?
Head of section: Good gracious, is that still there?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Counting the Cost (Al-Jazeera)
This is the weekly round up of economic and business news. Three ten minute stories, each one consisting of a five minute résumé and five minutes of a talking head. It's not very ambitious but at least you can count on it for the basics.
This week we start with China's problems and have the quick résumé. Then an interview with Bin Xu, of the China/Europe Business School in Shanghai. Why? What's the point? He's not going to say anything that isn't straight outta Party Central and you've already told us what that is in the résumé
Al Jazeera: Can China really combine growth and stability?
Bin Xu: Yes.
Don't get me wrong. All the talking heads Al-Jazeera rounds up say things of the utmost orthodoxy. It's just a different kind of orthodoxy. A better kind.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | Al Jazeera: Can China really combine growth and stability?
Bin Xu: Yes.. |
For the next round of your family video calls, or trivial pursuits, here's the question you need to ask.
Where's the fastest growing container port in Europe?
Most people, perhaps even in the Harpo family, will suggest Rotterdam or Hamburg.
You'd have to be desperate to suggest Tilbury or Felixstowe.
The actual answer is the main foreign trade port of Greece – Piraeus
How come?
| In 2015, the Government of Alexis Tsipras stated that it was preparing to sell most of the shares of the managing company of the main foreign trade port of Greece – Piraeus. |
Apparently in response to the Greek Debt Crisis earlier in the same year.
| China Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) was named as the main potential buyer of Piraeus, the company, which was given a part of the port for 30-years operation in 2008 for more than USD 500 million. In the spring of 2016, the Greek government approved the deal for the sale of Piraeus to China. COSCO received 67% of its shares. The total volume of Chinese investment in Piraeus is expected to exceed USD 1 billion. |
Is this officially a good or a bad thing?
| Many experts believe that through Greece, Chinese influence could spread throughout Europe. However, they are unlikely to be able to do anything, as their own financial difficulties will not allow the EU states to make proposals to Greece that are more profitable than those made by China. The exclusion of Greece from the European Union is also not an option. |
Some may be glad China prefers peaceful trade deals, with growth and stability, instead of bombing the opponents back into the stone age.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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It's widely accepted that the best career move an artist can make is dying.
Usually applied to painters.
But also true for screen actors.
So no surprise to suddenly be presented with re-runs of all kinds of films with Gene Hackman.
What's actually bothering me is that all over the place I'm suddenly being offered films with Michael Caine. Cos he's not dead yet, is he?
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Borry wrote: | | Is this officially a good or a bad thing? |
This is one of the difficulties of the Belt and Road scheme. Critics might say that the chief 'benefit' of a Chinese super-Piraeus to Greece is that from now on Greek roads will be stuffed to bursting with container lorries heading for points north. After getting a transfusion of cash and job opportunities, the chief long term gain is a few more truck stops in the Greek boonies. Which, given Greece's parlous state at the time, might well be worth doing.
However, other countries who have gone the Belt and Road road report that the Chinese are highly punctilious about requiring their investment (never a grant) be paid back in cash over the considerable future.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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| Borry wrote: | | It's widely accepted that the best career move an artist can make is dying. Usually applied to painters. |
I have written about this somewhere. It is because the market is now guaranteed to be a limited, i.e. a scarce, one. Or so the artist's people maintain. What amateur investors should remember is that a dead artist cannot cry 'fake'.
| But also true for screen actors. So no surprise to suddenly be presented with re-runs of all kinds of films with Gene Hackman. |
Only temporarily while he's in the news. It also depends on the circumstances of his death. The bottom fell out of the Arthur Koestler market when it transpired that he had persuaded his healthy, young companion to join him in a suicide pact. I thought of this immediately when I first heard of the two Hollywood corpses though it has transpired that no fault attaches to Gene Hackman.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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The Real Housewives of Dubai (Apple TV)
I'm a big fan of the Real Housewives franchise now that Neighbours' Wives is no longer stocked at the newsagents but I have to say them all wearing yashmaks made it a bit samey.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | Critics might say that the chief 'benefit' of a Chinese super-Piraeus to Greece is that from now on Greek roads will be stuffed to bursting with container lorries heading for points north. |
You might well assume so, based on UK experiences. However, in the case of Piraeus, they also have a well-developed rail connection, able to move a far higher proportion by rail than in the UK.
The limiting factor in the UK is that the volume of container traffic suitable for rail transport is relatively low.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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This does not answer my central point. For 'truckstops' read 'trains whistling through'.
Your contention about Greek railway advantages rings somewhat hollow given that the country is currently in the throes of a fierce debate--following the 2023 Tempe Valley collision--about the dire state of Greek railways. Comparisons with Britain is misleading because
(a) the British rail system is the oldest in the world and therefore the least well-suited to modern industrial transit requirements
(b) the British long ago chose--rightly or wrongly--to make their railways almost exclusively for passenger transit
(c) Britain is a transit country to nowhere.
I do not, by the way, say the Greeks were wrong to take the Chinese shilling and develop Piraeus into a hub. My point was the more AE one that there is a Gadarene assumption that building large infrastructure projects, made easy by Chinese money, is win-win.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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I was chopping potatoes in half--isn't it wonderful how you don't have to peel modern potatoes?--when one of them fell on the floor. Modern potatoes are markedly spherical in nature so it started to roll. It rolled into a potato-sized space between kitchen units--isn't it awful how badly kitchen units are fitted in modern social housing?--and out of sight.
Crouching slightly, I could discern it grinning back at me, just out of immediate reach. Foolishly (yes, I freely admit it) I tried stabbing it with a sharp implement and succeeded only in pushing it back to some nether region never explored by mortal man. I cannot kneel on the floor to take further measures because of dodgy knees.
I can wait for my sister to arrive from America in a couple of weeks for my brother's eightieth birthday bash but her knees are as dodgy as mine and she is one of the few people in the world I do not have moral authority over. An unresponsive sister and a slowly rotting potato means only one thing:
| The return of the fruitflies. | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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I wonder if I'm watching the right TV channels any more?
Once upon a time, there would be Kate Adie. Reliably reporting from inside the latest conflict zone. Flak jacket, helmet, makeup, lights, camera, action!
Flying the flag for Plucky Brit War Correspondent With Sex Appeal.
| Veteran BBC war reporter Kate Adie 'only discovered she was partially deaf' when a grenade hit her Beirut hotel balcony. She was sent for an ear test to check the impact of the blast and they told her: "Don't worry, you are deaf as a post anyway. It is just a little worse." |
Being partially deaf might explain why colleagues got no response when they said:
'Ere, Katie love, you know that's not a safe place to go, don't you?
| She had flesh torn from her elbow in the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre by a bullet that killed the man next to her. She was also shot at close range in Libya. | |
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Brian Hanrahan just never had the same appeal.
| ''I counted them all out and I counted them all back'' |
Pathetic.
Kate Adey would have been in the back seat of one of the Harriers with a video recorder.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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Kate Adey's tribulations reminds me of all those generals who 'had a horse shot from under them'. You never hear about a horse complaining about a general being shot from on top of them. Except that one time.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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Why am I wittering on about Kate Adie and Brian Hanrahan?
It's by way of contrast to the current generation of BBC reporters.
Most of what appears on the BBC now seems to be re-reporting of other sources. We can tell that from the credits on the photos. It's not BBC, it's names like Reuters, EPA, etc. Or stock library stuff from Getty Images.
Or BBC Verify, from a safe distance, commenting on other reporters.
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Boreades
In: finity and beyond
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As far as I can tell, the only Brits who are actively reporting from inside Gaza, Hamas areas, Yemen, etc are persona non grata in the MSM.
People like Craig Murray, who was a UK Ambassador who had the audacity to publicly complain about human rights violations.
The Foreign Office was shocked, shocked. Not by the human rights violations, but that one of their ambassadors had opened his mouth instead of just counting the Ferrero Rocher. So they fired him.
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