Delaware: the minimum wage and Rep. Smith

State Rep. Wayne Smith was unhappy with raising the state's minimum wage from $6.15 to $7.15, citing this awful consequence for him and his family (see photo): 'Lisa took the kids to McDonald's tonight because this may be one of the last times they will be able to get anything off the dollar menu," he said, referring to his wife and their youngsters. "Make no mistake about it: This bill will act like a tax and raise prices for consumers.' We must therefore keep people in abject poverty so that Smith's family can eat junk food off the dollar menu! I can hardly recall a more immoral or offensive statement: this is America not pre-revolutionary France. Or shall we just call him Louis XVI? But let's not linger in the past. Let's see how we can move on.

I have a practical suggestion for Mr Smith and others who oppose raising the minimum wage. Let Mr Smith spend one year of his life on $6.15 for each and every hour he works. We'll include the time he spends at home reading reports, working on the Internet, and the like. Not everyone gets this benefit, but we'll be generous to the poor soul, because we know how his family will suffer if they don't get their $1.00 McShite. Of course, all benefits cease. No health plan other than what he can scrape together, no luncheon vouchers, no travel grants, just $6.15 before tax and deductions.

Mr Smith: 'Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel.' (King Lear) If after that you're still convinced that your McCrap at a dollar a piece is more important than clothing, feeding, and generally looking out for the poorest people in this country, I'll personally take you out and buy you a burger. But not just any burger: it'll be a Big Mac at the very least. I, at least, am not a cheapskate.

just in case the words Pizza Hut made you feel hungry ...

The last time I ate at Pizza Hut was 11 months ago and it was bland, unmemorable, and not as cheap as I'd expected; but it was all there was and at least I wasn't hungry afterwards. If, immediately after eating the stuff, I'd been told what I've since learnt, the parking lot would have been lavishly embellished with my meal. I have it on excellent authority from people who have worked at Pizza Hut that it was and perhaps still is common practice to add additional toppings to Pizza Hut's already generous provision. According to my sources, they include saliva, bogeys (lumps of mucus from somebody’s nose), urine, and possibly two or more other bodily excretions, which decency forbids my mentioning. It is, I suppose, possible that Pizza Hut is not the only one of these chains offering such culinary variety, but it is to this restaurant that my attention has been drawn, so I won't be eating there again. Ever! The reason given for this revolting behaviour, by the way, is dissatisfaction with the management. Bad treatment and, I assume, bad pay. It's not really very nice of them to penalise the poor old public, but it was ever so. There's not much point in taking it out on the management after all.

Israel and Ireland

As Israel gears up for more hell and damnation in Palestinian terrorities, this time in response to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, it is interesting to ponder what the world's response might have been to Britain had she decided to behave towards Ireland's militant element in the same way as the Israelis deal with the Palestinians. The circumstances are different of course: N. Ireland exists by virtue of an international treaty, so British armed forces there cannot be deemed an army of occupation. On the other hand, Israel occupies large slices of Palestinian land and restricts economic activity and so on elsewhere. We can, using Bush's terms, refer to the Irish militants, loyalist and republican, as terrorists, but Palestinians fighting an occupying power in their own land might rather be referred to as freedom fighters, the resistance, and other terms that had such resonance in the Second World War. When their activities enter Israeli land it is harder to be so clear, for their methods are plainly those of terrorists, but would we have thought so badly of members of the French Resistance entering Germany and blowing up a train or two?

My point, however, is that if Britain, instead of relying on intelligence, aggressive policing, military checkpoints, and finally political compromise, had invaded parts of the Republic of Ireland, there would have been uproar. And yet the conditions are similar. People in the Republic supported the IRA. Indeed, people in America, S. Africa, Libya, and other countries were most generous to the terrorists. The British could have bombed Dublin. They could have interned, tortured, and massacred hundreds of Irish people they thought were concealing terrorists. They could have 'taken out' Charles Haughey's limo and killed the man known to have helped the IRA. They could have bulldozed houses and even entire villages. They could have engaged in ethnic cleansing. They could have made life unbearable for the Republic by restricting the flow of people in and out of the country and closing sea lanes. We could go on.

There would have been international outrage and condemnation if Britain had behaved in this way.

Heaven knows, Britain did some terrible things during the Troubles, awful crimes were committed, but the fact is, Britain maintained more or less friendly relations with the Republic, and in the end it was a combination of high quality intelligence, political compromise, a willingness to make sacrifices, and maintenance of diplomatic ties that eventually ended terrorist violence in Ireland.

If we consider the brutality of Israel and its chronic inability to think its way out of a spiral of violence, we have to feel very sorry for the Palestinians who want their country back and to get on with their lives. Why isn't there greater outrage in America and elsewhere about what Israel does? In this David and Goliath situation, can people not see that Israel's actions are outrageous? They should try, just for a moment, to imagine a comparable situation in Ireland with British tanks rolling, not into Gaza, but into Dundalk in response to the kidnapping of a British soldier (which happened during the Troubles).

Biblical nonsense

One of the many reasons why I'm highly sceptical about all the claims made for the Bible is that it contains so much offensive nonsense. So much, indeed, that it's no wonder Christians are responsible for so many wars, massacres, persecutions, oppressions, etc. in the world (as religions go, Christianity is probably no worse than several of the others). The Bible does a special line in misogyny. Here's a random sampling, which I have to confess I took from a great site called whywontgodhealamputees.com/bible.htm.

I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. [1 Timothy, chapter 2]

a squalid Starbucks

I tend to think of Starbucks as a fairly predictable chain of coffee houses. I know what the coffee will be like, the espresso brownie is always delicious, and I expect a fairly decent area to sit and congregate in. But the Starbucks in Princeton, NJ (in the main street facing the university) is squalid. There's no other way to describe it. Of all the places for the franchise to get it wrong, this has to be the oddest. My seating area smelt of sick today. As you enter you see a vast dead area with no functional counter and rubber mats strewn over the floor. Cleaning materials are placed awkwardly in the way of customers. There's a smelly toilet (the cleaning materials are presumably decorative), the main queuing area is too narrow for comfortable movement, and I could continue, but I think I've said enough. This is a really shite Starbucks.

don't we love these Christians

Shortly after that great human being G.W. Bush was reelected for a second term, a BBC reporter asked a voter in the born-again Christian's heartland what he was most celebrating. The voter replied that at least Bush would protect the institution of marriage, i.e. stop same-sex marriage. Wow! Isn't that nice and caring. The first thing this conservative Christian can come out with is this resounding 'up yours' to a large part of the American population. Nothing about love, compassion, spirituality, protecting the poor, working for peace, and the other things Jesus spoke of at length and Bush is so devoted to. But these barmy Christians really are out to get the gay guys and women. In a letter to yesterday's Delaware News Journal, Marriage is for man and woman under divine plan, we get the astonishing news that

'We redefine love according to our own lights at our own risk. The average life span for a normal American male is about 76 years. For those men practicing a disordered lifestyle, it is about 43 years.'

This letter is from the lovely, caring, compassionate G. Matt Matthews of Frankford. We can, fortunately, be clear about one thing: the Bible bans a great number of things, many of which Christians are only too happy to overlook. The few passages in the Bible that mention physical love between two men are in contexts where other issues are also under discussion, such as Jewish law, and as numerous books and articles have shown, they can be interpreted in several different ways. If some right-wing, evangelical Christians are seeking justification for their homophobia, let them discover it in their bitter, twisted, nasty, self-righteous, judgemental hearts, not in the teachings of the Bible they're so fond of quoting (when it suits them).

doughnut malaise

When I arrived in Delaware, Krispy Kreme products were securely available on Concorde Pike, Wilmington. Acme also sold them, so I could enjoy these excellent pastries with their slightly crispy exterior and delicious fillings and coatings. The best doughnuts I've ever eaten were made fresh, on premises, near the Westgate Centre in Oxford (England). They came in just two flavours, namely jam filled and apple with cream (if there was another, I've forgotten it). Weekly trips to the public library at the Westgate acquired additional momentum thanks to this noble manifestation of the baker's art. I gather these doughnuts have long since vanished from Oxford. Now Concorde Pike has failed me, for Krispy Kreme has gone, suffering apparently from losses and all sorts of other problems. I now have to travel 68 miles to find a store. So for the regular doughnut there's not much choice: Dunkin' it is. Dunkin' Donuts opened in Ireland several years ago and, believe it or not, failed. I suspect Dubliners found the doughnuts too bland. Whatever the reason, I'm not happy with this new monoculture prevailing in Delaware. I want choice. These monocultures seem to be a serious problem in a culture that favours the big corporation. If America's not careful it could end up like the Soviet Union where there was presumably a state doughnut -- take it or leave it. Well, I'd sooner leave Dunkin'. I want Krispy Kreme back, please. Don't make me beg.

death penalty and terminal stupidity

In today's The New's Journal (Wilmington DE) correspondent Sharon Brackin argues that convicted murderers should not be allowed another means of appeal. Rather 'their suffering should be equivalent to what they caused.' Or, as she writes, ' We should use methods comparable to what the murderer used.' Er, hang on Sharon, let's think about this, if you're capable of thought. Somebody commits a crime, namely taking away somebody's life. You are proposing that in response to the crime of murder you should commit the crime of murder, magnifying it by massive premeditation and the recreation of the original means of denying life to another human being employed by the murderer , such as slow suffocation, stabbing, beating, etc. Can you not see the illogicality of this (not to mention the barbarity!)? Are people on the right side of the law not expected to be a step or two up from the criminal? Apparently not. I hope you don't cross my tracks Sharon, because I dread to think what your 'eye for an eye' approach to human interaction entails in your day-to-day existence.

amazing prospect for Brighton & Hove

Although I'm not much given to prayer or optimism, I'm trying to cultivate both in the hope it might encourage the city of Brighton and Hove to adopt this fabulous design for the prominent seafront site at the King Alfred. Past performance over the last 50 years gives absolutely no reason to think that anything attractive will ever again be built here, but we really have to have this one. It's gorgeous! (Needless to say, residents of the city seem determined to thwart Frank Gehry's genius.)

West Pier, Brighton & Hove, England

Very sad to report, this is the last gasp of the once very beautiful West Pier. The finest of all Victorian piers it was neglected, vandalised, hit by weather, and finally subject to an arson attack (connected in some people's minds with the neighbouring Palace Pier's desire to be free from potential competition). In spite of galant efforts to restore the pier to its former glory, the picture shows what a forlorn hope this now is. You'd be starting from scratch with no guarantee that the project was viable. The West Pier Trust, which campaigned so bravely for its reinstatement, even after the arson attack left it as you see it now, seems to want to build a spectacular viewing spire at the site of the pier's former entrance. This has some merit, but I'd love to see a really exciting architect and engineer given a brief to design a new structure out to sea a bit that ran parallel to the beach. Maybe clubs, restaurants, viewing area, cinema -- whatever looks good and makes money. Something that really adds to the beauty of the city, which took such a knock for the loss of the West Pier and so many bad planning decisions that I cannot walk around the place without experiencing a doubling of my blood pressure.

Muzak

Background music is the scourge of our modern world. It's hideous. It's damaging. It's irritating. It degrades our quality of life. Nowadays we carry music around with us and choose when and where we listen to it. Restaurants and pubs, supermarkets and railway stations, shopping centres and buses, hotels and even churches, etc., etc. should take note. We don't want your noise passing through our ears uninvited. GET RID OF MUZAK now and forever. It desensitises us to one of the greatest gifts of all: music. Please, I beg you, get rid of background music. Support the peer Lord Beaumont who has brought exactly the right legislation to the House of Lords. He is a national hero. I want to see him elevated to sainthood in his own lifetime. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5086054.stm.

England in Germany

Not being a huge football fan and being largely indifferent to the jingoistic pressures it poses, I decided to support the underdog in the World Cup, in so far as I intended to support anyone. I would therefore have supported Trinidad and Tobago today had my mind not been changed first by the Scots and then the Irish. First I learnt that a favourite bet in Scotland was that England wouldn't get beyond the first round. Then I saw in today's Evening Herald, an exceedingly grotty Dublin newspaper, that half of one page was a flag of Trinidad and Tobago in full colour that readers were invited to place on top of their TVs during the match. That was enough for me. This tedious, mediocre, knee-jerk anti-English sentiment reflects more on the sad inadequacy of the perpetrators than on England. Well, here's my response: England 2, Trinidad and Tobago 0. Scotland and Ireland? Not even in the competition. Long may it remain so. 

anti-social pubs (Brighton, E. Sussex, England)

This pub in Brighton (south of England) likes well-behaved children at certain times but is less inclinced to behave well itself. Recently it apparently decided to host a 'DJ Night' at which noise was played at deafening levels while the pub's doors and windows were left open. The racket could be heard several blocks away and the following day more than a few people in this usually quiet, densely populated neighbourhood complained to the council (and presumably the police). I just wonder what people are thinking when they inflict their music on others. Have they no imagination? Is the 'me important, you fuck off' mindset so entrenched that they can't conceive of the impact on people in the vicinity. I don't get it. They are obviously vermin, but what do you do with them. Of course, we should boycott the pub, complain about noise, lobby councils, and so on, but I fear the battle is being lost. People have just no idea of the damage they inflict.

Above all else, I prefer to talk in pubs. If I go out for a drink, it's to socialise. In these circumstances I don't want loud music, I don't even want quiet music. I WANT SILENCE, apart, that is, from the sound of other people talking. 

ignorant or what?

I heard two Irish girls talking on the bus a couple of days back. From their coversation I gleaned they were students and that they had a problem with the English and Welsh students attending their classes. One of them reported this stupid Englishmen who had incurred her displeasure and censure by claiming that Ireland was a part of the British Isles. 'Will they never get it?' she rhetorically mused. Well the Englishman was right and merely exposed the ignorance of his Irish classmate: Ireland is indeed part of the British Isles, as is the Isle of Man and all of Great Britain. 'British Isles' is a geographical term, not a political one. The Republic of Ireland is not part of the United Kingdom, however, which comprises England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland (formally it is often referred to as the Province of Northern Ireland, and the BBC routinely labels it the 'province'). It's one thing for Irish people to bemoan English people's ignorance of the poltical status of their country, which is rampant and deplorable, but quite another for them to confuse political and geographcial nomenclature.

portamento in the performance of classical music

Listen to old recordings of classical music and you will often hear notes connected to each other by a slide (sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes all the way, sometimes only part of the way). As the 20th century progressed this graceful means of phrasing became less and less common until it almost died out in string playing and vocal performance. Of course, it has to be there from time to time, often played very quickly so as not to be conspicuous, but it's not used freely and expressively in the way that was once ubiquitous. Some conductors actively discourage its use, including Roger Norrington, who also reduces vibrato in string playing in keeping with what he considers to be historic correctness. Sadly for him, portamento was extensively used in performances before the modern passion for 'clean' articulation, so his 'authenticism' is pretty random.

I love portamento. I listen to historical recordings to optimise my chances of hearing it. It's both expressive and musical, for it enhances the connection of two notes and thereby helps reinforce a sense of line, which is crucial in much classical music. I've put up some historical recordings here -- http://www.tcd.ie/Music/audioarchive.htm#_Downloads -- which give some lovely examples of portamento in string playing. The Elgar Variations are especially good from this point of view. (image from www.feu-bleu.com)

World Cup 2006 misogyny

Here we go again. Weeks of football mania. They are welcome to their football and I wouldn't even moan about it if sport wasn't such a misogynistic thing in our society. But with one or two exceptions, all we ever see is sport played by men and commentated on by men. Where do women squeeze in? Even sports they could share, such as darts, cricket, snooker, and others, they are excluded from or kept segregated with almost no coverage on TV. So we are now going to hear a group of barely articulate men spouting cliches and platitudes about another group of men running around a field kicking a ball. Tennis is an exception, to an extent, but at Wimbledon women are treated as second-class citizens: their games are shorter, they are referred to by their marital status, their prize money is less than the men's, and they have to wear skirts, whatever their inclination. All this is pure misogyny and discrimination backed up by TV and huge commerical interests. I find it totally dispiriting. (picture of English team arriving in Germany)

the iPod, the world's most overrated gadget

This may be the world's favourite gadget at the moment, but it's not mine. In some ways I think it's a triumph of style over substance. For a start there was that awful battery on my mark 2 20-gig iPod. From around 6 hours the battery life had subsided to around 1 hours after two or so years of use. My wife's went from about the same to 30 minutes in an even shorter period. Thanks to iPodJuice I'm now back to full strength, but $40 or so is flashing at me on my VISA statement. Then there's the sound. To be fair, the AAC format (mpeg4) is better than most mp3s I've heard, but there is something slightly polite and drab about the overall presentation, regardless of my choice of headphones and EQ. Classical music is also too quiet, so I push it up a bit in the software and, lo and behold, it distorts! Wonderful! When the battery goes flat, which is quite often, all the settings are lost so you have to re-enter the time and date, contrast, backlighting, and so on. And then we have the dreaded silence! What's this about? Pure incompetence? Indifference? Every time the iPod encounters a new track it breaks off for a fraction of a second. Clearly it's all been designed for pop music, but for anything that plays continuously and requires track breaks, this is just bloody awful. Try listening to an act of Wagner with this infernal pause every few minutes. There's no solution other than joining up the tracks, which kind of defeats the purpose. As for iTunes, if you allow it to dominate your computer and don't tax it too much, it's good, but when you confuse it, it can go very wrong indeed. Finally, if iTunes is busy, don't expect your Pentium 4 to be up for anything else. I've seen the software taking up 98-100% of my processing power just staying awake. Opening it on a PC is also hard work: it can take the best part of a minute. I'm not running a slouch. Don't be fooled: the iPod is not all it's cracked up to be.

Trinity College Dublin and a rainbow

This sort of photo opportunity doesn't come round too often. In this picture, apart from the rainbow you see part of Front Square, the Campanile, and the red-brick building is the oldest part of the university, the Rubrics.

J'accuse

An excellent Channel 4 programme allowed art historians, journalists, musicians, and others to take a 'sacred cow' and dismantle it on TV. This ran in 1995 before Channel 4 started its love affair with fly-on-the-wall documentaries, reality TV, and other decidedly unsavoury programming. Some might question the idea of taking a much-loved building like St Paul's and the holy of holies in cinema Citizen Kane and trying to dismantle their reputations, but I enjoyed the exercise. For one thing, if you love St Paul's it's unlikely that an architect, no matter how good he is, is going to convince you otherwise. On other hand, if you feel, like me, that it's a somewhat suspect building, not to say grossly overrated, why not have a crack at its reputation. The architect in this episode felt that taste in Britain couldn't really progress much until people realised that the qualities that make St Martin in the Fields an incomparable masterpiece of English architecture are sadly lacking in St Paul's. It's also true to say that such an approach is rarely followed: we prefer to talk up works of art and enhance their stature, so a small dose of the opposite might be considered a healthy corrective. In this centenary year for Shostakovich I feel that a little scepticism might not go amiss. Having sat through all fifteen of the quartets in ideal surroundings with the world's leading interpreters to hand a few years ago, I feel that his music has been seriously overpraised. But self-pitying, tediously self-quoting, repetitive, ironic, conservative music has not always appealed to me very greatly.

Wagner

It's pretty common to hear or read about Wagner as a 'pernicious' influence, even from those who have an unabashed enthusiam for the music. The view is so often encountered that it almost has a currency of its own. The implication seems to be that if you enjoy the music of Verdi, for example, you may do so without moral taint, but if it's Wagner that delights you, there is a danger of moral contamination. There's no doubt that Hitler was greatly affected by Wagner, but does that make Wagner or the person who was already disposed to evil before hearing the music the villain? Of course, for those who claim that Wagner incorporated his anti-semiticism into the music dramas, the evil is present in both Wagner's creations and in the people disposed to act on them. Frankly, I strongly believe they are wrong, chiefly because I am highly sceptical about the presence of anti-semiticism in the dramas (and music). There is a much better comparison to be made here, namely with Jesus and Christianity. Over many centuries, numerous branches of the Christain faith have perpetrated one act of cruelty and violence after another. Even now we have an American President waging war and claiming that heavenly voices told him to do so. Either we believe that Jesus was inherently evil or we excuse the Crusades, Inquisition, the Pope in World War Two, Bush, etc., etc., etc., etc., on the grounds that Jesus has been radically misrepresented and misinterpreted. The central themes in Wagner are love and redemption, which are not, in my most humble opinion, the root of all evil.

Dublin Spire

This is the base of the Dublin Spire looking across O'Connell Street towards Henry Street. 

architectural landmark

This is Henry Street in Dublin, which has at one end an enormous spike, the Dublin Spire. It was planted in O'Connell St. in 2002 and completed in 2003. It's just visible at the centre of the picture. It replaced a much older monument, Nelson's Pillar (1808), which was blown up by republicans in 1966. To my eyes it is just about the most beautiful structure to appear in Dublin since the war. This may not be saying much given the repulsiveness of most recent architecture in the city, but it is a truly lovely example of art for art's sake, and a welcome relief from stuffy old monuments to famous men and events. I gather it's 120 metres tall and 3 metres wide at the base, tapering to 15 centimetres on top, but one hardly needs this information to know that it's the tallest structure in the low-rise city.