Dawn

Dawn

Wednesday, May 09, 2012


Opening a briefcase I last used about fifteen years ago, I came upon a two-page document I used to carry round and read from time to time. It's called "Laugh your Way to Success"- I wanted to cite a reference to it but, unusually, it's not on the web. There are, to be sure, lots of things with the same title but none of them is what I'm looking for. So I'll have to type it all out for you. Meanwhile, here's the final sentence - If you see someone without a smile, give them yours. In this way you will never be short of friends. OK, two sentences.

For those who are very committed to their religion, here's a question you might like to ponder - "What would I have believed if I'd been born 2,500 years ago". Certainly neither Christianity nor Islam. So, in reality, one's religion is an accident of time and birthplace.
Which should surely lead to some soul-searching. Unless you're now a Zoroastrian, you certainly would have believed something markedly different from what you believe now. Raising the question of whether you would have made it to the Heaven or Paradise you now aspire to.

After I'd published yesterday's post, I discovered an apposite paragraph I'd previously jotted in my notepad. And, as I don't want to waste it, here it is:- Greece: So, what next? You'll recall that Plan A was to take effective control of the Greek government; impose the harshest possible austerity on the feckless populace; and ignore the will of the people. But we don't know what Plan B is. Indeed, is there a Plan B? Or are there several, the preferred one being dependent on exactly how Plan A is thwarted? Will Greece be allowed/forced to leave the eurozone? Or will Brussels just send in the troops to enforce implementation of the austerity measures, accompanied by David Bowie and Mick Jagger singing Rioting in the Street? I guess nobody knows. Least of all the bureaucrats in Brussels.

Talking of bureaucrats, the UK Minister Vince Cable believes the tide is turning against EU bureaucracy. And that, ultimately, "a new progressive European majority will replace the dinosaurs of the past". The impetus, he says, is coming from a "like-minded group" of 15 of the 27 members of the EU. Other optimists, especially in the Guardian, see evidence of a softening of the EU/German stance on austerity and harsh deficit targets. Sometimes I wonder whether commentators don't see things that fit with their political leanings, with everyone else missing them. We see what we want to see, in other words.

And what of Germany and her response to the weekend's developments? Well, even AEP is an optimist this week and reckons that our temporary Teutonic masters have had to cede ground in the face of an insurrection that was inevitable." This phase of the crisis is over" he says. "Now Germany itself will have to adjust." More here.

Interesting. Only a few minutes after bringing up the page of one of our local Thai restaurants, I get a spam message in (Latinised) Thai. A coincidence? Possibly not. But how do they do it?

Finally . . . A woman in Epsom here in the UK had her rubbish/garbage bin stolen. When she asked the local council to send her another one, they told her she needed to report the theft to the police and to get a crime number. After she'd got this, the police called to offer 'crime victim counselling'. When she queried the relevance (sanity?) of this, she was told "We have to do it". Which presumably explains why policemen have disappeared from the streets of Britain. Though they appear many times a day on the road through Headingley in fast, garish, siren-crazy cars.

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