Circa 1971

In the garden in Dartmouth Row, Blackheath. Just to prove I got there with the haircut over three decades before Justin Bieber.

Talent Show

Freya Salkeld on drums...

Chips II

I came across chips nearly as fine as those from the Hind in Bray at a roadside caff on the South Coast near Mombasa, Kenya. 30p a plate. Can't go wrong but quite a trek to satisfy the craving so Heston's number one slot is safe.

This Sporting Life

I am pleased to find that the Kenyans’ favourite cigarette is still called “Sportsman”. Recently in neighbouring Tanzania the name of that same smoke was changed to “Portsman”. The cigarettes remained unchanged as did the rest of the natty orange packaging with its equine branding. The fags are still universally known as “Sports” in both countries.

So what about a rather bizarre new name? Well of course it didn’t just happen. It was a victory for Western health busybodies. No doubt the name change will have been the “output” of some bossy master plan. Goals will have been achieved, targets surpassed, KPIs will be buzzing, a thousand dreary powerpoints will be launched across the development world. And the game won’t be over there, a year on business class to Africa will packed as more “consultants” jet in to justify their existence with evaluations and data gathering. Reports that no-one will ever read will be tapped out on expensive laptops. That’s where your aid money goes, banishing an “s”.

Meanwhile a weary Tanzanian will seek a moment’s solace after a day’s labour cleaning the consultant’s offices or wiping the consultant’s children’s arses or other such services to development, and reach for a “Sports”. What a difference an “s” makes.   

Africa at last

It is very difficult to avoid the Chinese in Africa. They have been there a long while. Graham Greene mentioned the British Intelligence Service’s neuroses over Chinese activity in Zanzibar in The Human Factor. I passed the faded TAZARA railhead in Dar this morning, a 1970s Chinese gift to the peoples of Zambia and Tanzania, or more strategically a route for copper exports out of landlocked Zambia that bypassed apartheid South Africa.

Now it’s business. Scarcely a development goes up without a Chinese name on the construction boards. Take an African flight and the chances are you will be sharing it with a posse of immaculately dressed Chinese businessmen or officials. They drive a bargain as sharp as their suits. The Chinese are here for very self-interested purposes, recognising the long term economic potential of “undiscovered” Africa.  They have of course drawn ire from the Western poverty lobby for their rampant commercialism. I wonder how things will look in fifty years’ time? The selfish Chinese would have to have done remarkably badly to match the disasters of half a century’s Western attempts at development in Africa. We may find that the inscrutable men in suits deliver a lot more to the average African than all the pampered, Land Cruisered poverty parasites we send. 

Alice Beatrice West 1913 - 2010

My grandmother Alice died on Saturday at the grand age of 97. She woke up as normal but faded and passed away in the arms of a carer mid morning.

She really was a link with a different era or indeed eras. Born before the Great War or the Russian Revloution, her parents were Victorians. She came of age during the Great Depression and joined the many setting up home in London's new metroland suburbs.

She saw the abdication crisis, the rule of the dictators and brought her own children up in the Blitz.

She lived through an incredible century. There were properous as well as impoverished times -- she never had it so good with Macmillan and enjoyed a Saga brochure retirement. She enthusiastically took to the new Jerusalem with its foreign holidays, night schools and patio doors but never lost her sense of thrift and self reliance -- she had witnessed the impermanence of civilisations and systems, she had seen them come and go.

I do wonder if we will expereince lifetimes like hers again.

Love at first bite

I fell in love last night...with a chip, or in fact a whole portion. The cause of this potato epiphany, Mr Heston Blumentahl's celebrated thrice cooked version. Sublime. Not that the rest of the meal wasn't up to his "perfection" standards but the chips were something else. I have tried chips on five continents and to eat possibly the most familiar dish in the world and still be rewarded with such a sensation is a real achievement.

A blog for our times

I have been enjoying Redundant Public Servant's blog  if enjoying is quite the right word. He desribes it as "News from the front line of deficit reduction" and like all great blogs it merges the personal with the timely and the profound. He writes so well I cannot picture him as the author of anonymous government memos and disseminator of ghastly offcial gobbledegook. I feel we have a future Orwell prize winner. 

New Internationalism

I was in the USA on Sunday. I recieved a text message from a friend in Zanzibar. He told me that a Spanish footballer in Liverpool had played a blinder, scoring twice and bringing his team, owned by an American, a much needed victory over another English team, owned by a Russian, and populated mainly by Africans...

The Zanzibari friend -- who goes by the name Gerrardi after his favourite English player -- partied all night.

The Best Weather Service

We have launched the new weather service for S4C. It works. It is the UK's first service which uses 1km forecasting data -- that means the information you get is directly relevant to your actual location, not somewhere down the road or over the hill or in the next county.

This is most useful on the website -- here for the English language version, here for the Welsh. When you enter your postcode you get the forecasst for that exact postcode, so it gives a street or close neighbourhood picture. It works all over the UK. This is a huge improvement over the rather dishonest BBC weather website which asks you to enter the postcode and then gives you the forecast for somewhere miles away. Very little use in our highly localised climate.

Elections

With the world's eyes turned on the US Mid-terms it is hardly surpirsing that yesterday's election in Zanzibar has gone unnoticed.

We are still waiting for the result and the EU monitors report no violence or intimidation. Not quite what I am hearing. My contacts on the ground say this morning there is a very heavy troop build-up in the centre of the capital and the usual heavy handedness in terms of beatings and intimidation. People are very scared just now.

Future Weather

The new S4C weather service I have been working on goes live on Monday. We are just beginning to get some publicity. I hope it gets noticed becasue the web service really is something special. This is how Broadcast covered it today:

S4C brings Weather Central to UK

29 October, 2010

By Catherine Neilan

Welsh language channel S4C has signed a deal to become the first UK broadcaster to provide a weather service based on the technology of global forecasting group Weather Central.

Delivered through independent producer Tinopolis, S4C will provide the service both through the TV channel and a purpose-built website from 1 November, claiming it will be the UK’s “most sophisticated public weather information resource”.

Although the service will predominantly focus on the weather in Wales, the rest of the UK and Europe will also be covered. The website will be dual language, while the channel bulletins will continue to be in Welsh.

S4C’s established weather presenters – Chris Jones, Erin Roberts and Mari Grug – will continue to front bulletins, using Weather Central’s technology to zoom in to give a more precisely local picture of conditions.

Adam Salkeld, head of programmes at Tinopolis, said: “With the new S4C weather website you can enter any postcode in Wales and you will get a forecast for that exact street, neighbourhood, town or village… We believe this is the future of weather information services.”

The new service will be produced from Tinopolis’ Llanelli headquarters.

We have all the time in the world...

The web is a fantastic place to root out those who clearly have too much time on their hands. Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for spotting this site - Hot Guys on Judge Judy. Publicly admitting to watching daytime TV is bad enough but setting up a site devoted to its unwitting stars...?

Even more kudos to Mr Sullivan for admitting to the guilty pleasure of drooling over these specimens of American manhood.

A short tribute

Very sad news this week that Derry Wilkinson has died in a motorcycle accident. Whilst I can't claim to have known Derry very well we'd had a fair amount of contact over the past few years. He was one of those -- sadly uncommon -- altogether decent people you meet in the world of work sometimes. Honourable, generous, clever, funny and quietly very successful, Derry had it all in front of him. We shared a great interest in Africa as well as a "hood" in South London. I had always intended to get to know him better, sadly now that won't be possible.

Recommended Reading

Winston Smith's latest post is harrowing and thought-provoking reading. I realise that policy can't be made by anecdote but you do have to ask some big hows and whys about our care system when you read such a story followed by an even bigger who on Earth...?