Politicians' statements after terrorist incidents are a challenge for them. They risk appearing callous if they say nothing, but (if they have any nous) know that whatever they do say can look formalistic and insincere.
William Hague got it about right with his statement today on last night's blasts in Kampala. Short, measured and a genuine expression of condemnation and condolence.
My only quibble is with describing the attacks as "cowardly". This is meant to highlight the fact that the attackers hit purely civilian targets at their most vulnerable - without warning and on an occasion that was meant to be a fun night out. But it risks grading terrorism. Are some attacks less cowardly?
Much happier news recently from east Africa was the presidential election in Somaliland. But would anyone guess from the official British message of congratulations to the winner - by chance, on the FCO website adjacent to Hague's condolence message - that the UK (and all other countries) do not (officially) recognize Somaliland as an independent sovereign state?
Remarkable!
Showing posts with label British Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label British Empire. Show all posts
Monday, 12 July 2010
Thursday, 1 July 2010
Rich and Poor
The government's decision that international aid will be one of the few areas of spending protected from cuts prompts the question: why are some countries so much poorer than others? Or to put it another way: what makes countries rich?
One answer is that rich countries are that way because they are rich. They have well developed physical infrastructures, near universal education (often to a high standard) and good levels of public health (very low rates of transmittable, high-mortality diseases). All those things are massively useful in helping them to stay rich. And if you don't have them - if you have poor roads, no railways, limited mains electricity, high levels of illiteracy, high rates of disease, low life expectancy - you struggle to advance.
Natural resources can help. The gulf sheikdoms would be among the poorest places on earth but for the oil. But it doesn't always work. When I heard that Ghana - a country I know slightly and admire considerably - was to become an oil exporter, I felt both hope and alarm. Nigeria has plenty of oil; Switzerland none.
A classic geographer's recommendation for getting rich is to avoid being landlocked. Outside Europe, there's a high correlation between being landlocked and being poor. But it's not a firm rule. Even ignoring Switzerland again (and some other landlocked but wealthy European countries), there's landlocked Botswana - one of Africa's richest states. And not being landlocked certainly doesn't automatically make you wealthy - e.g. Nigeria, again.
A view advanced in one of my geography A-level text books more than 30 years ago was climate: the debilitating heat of the tropics is not conducive to hard and productive labour - physical or mental. That sounds simplistic, almost laughable, but what about those surveys that tell employers here in the UK to keep their offices at exactly the right temperature to ensure happy and hard-working employees?
Tanzania's Julius Nyerere (a generally well-meaning fool) certainly thought climate was important. He said the extremes of summer and winter in the higher latitudes instilled a discipline in their inhabitants. It taught them to take good advantage of the summer to prepare for the winter ahead. In the tropics, such planning is not needed as much. Some food crops may grow all year round, there's no need to draught-proof your home against winter gales, the same clothes can be worn in all months.
I have two recommendations for escaping poverty: avoid violence and get a good government. There are no countries in the world that are violent and badly-run and rich.
My advice to DfID is - except in those cases where it may be possible to recolonise a violent, very badly run and very poor country to turn it around (what we are doing in Sierra Leone) - only invest your aid in countries that are peaceful and well governed. Otherwise, it will just go to waste.
One answer is that rich countries are that way because they are rich. They have well developed physical infrastructures, near universal education (often to a high standard) and good levels of public health (very low rates of transmittable, high-mortality diseases). All those things are massively useful in helping them to stay rich. And if you don't have them - if you have poor roads, no railways, limited mains electricity, high levels of illiteracy, high rates of disease, low life expectancy - you struggle to advance.
Natural resources can help. The gulf sheikdoms would be among the poorest places on earth but for the oil. But it doesn't always work. When I heard that Ghana - a country I know slightly and admire considerably - was to become an oil exporter, I felt both hope and alarm. Nigeria has plenty of oil; Switzerland none.
A classic geographer's recommendation for getting rich is to avoid being landlocked. Outside Europe, there's a high correlation between being landlocked and being poor. But it's not a firm rule. Even ignoring Switzerland again (and some other landlocked but wealthy European countries), there's landlocked Botswana - one of Africa's richest states. And not being landlocked certainly doesn't automatically make you wealthy - e.g. Nigeria, again.
A view advanced in one of my geography A-level text books more than 30 years ago was climate: the debilitating heat of the tropics is not conducive to hard and productive labour - physical or mental. That sounds simplistic, almost laughable, but what about those surveys that tell employers here in the UK to keep their offices at exactly the right temperature to ensure happy and hard-working employees?
Tanzania's Julius Nyerere (a generally well-meaning fool) certainly thought climate was important. He said the extremes of summer and winter in the higher latitudes instilled a discipline in their inhabitants. It taught them to take good advantage of the summer to prepare for the winter ahead. In the tropics, such planning is not needed as much. Some food crops may grow all year round, there's no need to draught-proof your home against winter gales, the same clothes can be worn in all months.
I have two recommendations for escaping poverty: avoid violence and get a good government. There are no countries in the world that are violent and badly-run and rich.
My advice to DfID is - except in those cases where it may be possible to recolonise a violent, very badly run and very poor country to turn it around (what we are doing in Sierra Leone) - only invest your aid in countries that are peaceful and well governed. Otherwise, it will just go to waste.
Thursday, 17 June 2010
Bhowani Junction
In comments below, I recommended John Masters' 1952 novel Bhowani Junction to Foghorn59. As this blog could do with more pictures, enjoy these posters of the 1956 film:
Saturday, 12 June 2010
The Jewel in the Crown
My eldest son (19) and I have finished a five-month exercise to watch all 14 episodes of the 1984 TV series The Jewel in the Crown. We normally see each other once a fortnight, so watching just one or perhaps two episodes each time explains why it's taken us so long to get through all of them.
I was a big fan of the series when it was first shown, and have often thought it the best thing ever produced by British television, though before this year I'd only once got round to watching it all again. The books - Paul Scott's Raj Quartet - on which the series is based are equally impressive, and probably my desert island choice (if I could break the rules slightly to take four books).
How did I find it 26 years on? It's still impressive, although the pace seems slow by today's standards. It's been years since any British TV company would consider adapting a literary work over so many episodes.
My main reaction was a somewhat altered attitude to the principal characters. Although Scott was wonderful at characterisation, the diverse (and numerous) inhabitants of the four books can be divided into the Good, the Bad and the Others. Ronald Merrick, the lower-middle-class, chip-on-his-shoulder, repressed-homosexual policeman-turned-army-officer, remains Chief Baddie (though I was surprised when I later read the books that they painted him even worse than the televised dramatisation did: I had expected - and hoped - it to be the other way around).
In the Good camp are British liberals such as Sarah Layton (an army officer's perceptive daughter, out of step with her dull, tradition-minded family), Robin White and Nigel Rowan (colonial administrators trying, in their own minds, to do their best for the Indians) and Guy Perron (a young Cambridge academic). When I first watched Jewel in the Crown these characters seemed very sympathetic. This time I thought most of them (there are exceptions) looked uninspiring, their weedy liberalism (there are other varieties) irritating.
Perron (played by alleged heart-throb Charles Dance - the series made him a star) came across as particularly ineffectual; the only time he looked energized was when he beat up Merrick's Pathan manservant after catching him nicking his wallet. Even shagging Sarah didn't seem to animate him greatly.
What do Indians today make of the books and the TV series? Not much, I'd guess. I don't blame them. Despite its setting, the Raj Quartet is about us, the British, not them. As indeed are most other novels set in the declining years of the British Empire - a topic to which I will return.
Meanwhile, Paul Scott's novels are a cracking read, and I highly recommend them!
I was a big fan of the series when it was first shown, and have often thought it the best thing ever produced by British television, though before this year I'd only once got round to watching it all again. The books - Paul Scott's Raj Quartet - on which the series is based are equally impressive, and probably my desert island choice (if I could break the rules slightly to take four books).
How did I find it 26 years on? It's still impressive, although the pace seems slow by today's standards. It's been years since any British TV company would consider adapting a literary work over so many episodes.
My main reaction was a somewhat altered attitude to the principal characters. Although Scott was wonderful at characterisation, the diverse (and numerous) inhabitants of the four books can be divided into the Good, the Bad and the Others. Ronald Merrick, the lower-middle-class, chip-on-his-shoulder, repressed-homosexual policeman-turned-army-officer, remains Chief Baddie (though I was surprised when I later read the books that they painted him even worse than the televised dramatisation did: I had expected - and hoped - it to be the other way around).
In the Good camp are British liberals such as Sarah Layton (an army officer's perceptive daughter, out of step with her dull, tradition-minded family), Robin White and Nigel Rowan (colonial administrators trying, in their own minds, to do their best for the Indians) and Guy Perron (a young Cambridge academic). When I first watched Jewel in the Crown these characters seemed very sympathetic. This time I thought most of them (there are exceptions) looked uninspiring, their weedy liberalism (there are other varieties) irritating.
Perron (played by alleged heart-throb Charles Dance - the series made him a star) came across as particularly ineffectual; the only time he looked energized was when he beat up Merrick's Pathan manservant after catching him nicking his wallet. Even shagging Sarah didn't seem to animate him greatly.
What do Indians today make of the books and the TV series? Not much, I'd guess. I don't blame them. Despite its setting, the Raj Quartet is about us, the British, not them. As indeed are most other novels set in the declining years of the British Empire - a topic to which I will return.
Meanwhile, Paul Scott's novels are a cracking read, and I highly recommend them!
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