bail-out

A week and a half ago, a good friend bailed out on me. We were meant to take a trip together, to get away for the weekend, to fly to a land neither of us knew, but my friend got out of the bargain at the last moment. I can't blame him, and I feel more for him than I commiserate with myself because he didn't do it maliciously. He didn't even do it voluntarily. Here's what happened.

On Sunday nearly two weeks ago, my friend was on his way to the railway station, hot in pursuit of important business. He was crossing town on a swift clip and would have made the train he was shooting for, had it not been for the season. It was winter and the sidewalks were icy. In sight of the station already and slowing down, my friend slipped on the approach and fell. He got up no problem and it didn't hurt to bad, but when he tried to take a step he nearly collapsed again. Fire burned madly in his ankle.

On Monday he sent me a text, saying he was in the university medical center, with a triple fracture in his foot, unable to walk, immobilized for weeks. He wouldn't be flying to Lisbon to visit collaborators, a long-planned two-week stay whose academic seriousness I was supposed to break during the weekend that was just around the corner.

I decided to go without him even though I couldn't find a replacement sidekick on such short notice. Then the first storm of the season struck London, and Gatwick, the most fragile airport in Europe, shut down for three days because of the cold and the snow, two features of winter that come, with depressing regularity, as a complete shock to everyone in the transportation business here and cause chaos all over England. My flight was canceled.

The same snow and freezing temperatures that had thrown my plans in disarray made me change my flights to dates precisely one week later, and change the hotel reservation, never mind the charges. I could have asked the airline for a refund and canceled the hotel, but I was sick of the cold and greedy for warmth and tossed common sense aside.

I also felt it my duty to help out Portugal in a tough situation. Taxpayers in the European Union, I among them, had to bail out the Greek half a year ago and the Irish last month. The specters of financial ruin haven't been silenced in the south and the northwest of Europe, but they have been muted. But like a hydra that grows new heads whenever you chop off existing ones, the possibility of financial catastrophe is now growing in the southwest. Portugal is going down, it says all over the news.

The near-bankruptcy of Greece was explained with general laziness, with three-month vacations on sunny islands and retirement at 52, with a royal lifestyle inexplicably based on exporting a few barrels of olive oil and assorted produce. Ireland was going to the dogs, they said, because the twin brothers of credit inflation and house price explosion had driven the entire country to spend many times the amount they could ever recover by selling whiskey, stout and butter. Portugal's problems, in contrast, haven't found simple populist explanations yet.

If any hypotheses about what's wrong with Portugal have been put forth, I haven't seen them. But I don't need them either, to be honest, because the solution will always be the same: Bring money into the country until the sinking galleon of public finances has been stabilized and put on course to prosperity again. During this long weekend in Lisbon, I will do my share by eating out and drinking, seeing monuments and castles, and sleeping like a king. It certainly beats seeing my taxes increased to contain the contagion and fend off doom, yet again.

out in the snow

It's freezing outside, as if the whole of England were one big ice chest. Frost lies thick on hedges and heavy on bald country trees. Relentless snow has converted innocent hills, beloved in gentler times by walkers and horse-back riders, into amorphous heaps of endless, featureless whiteness. The horizon bleeds into the distance of the landscape without apology or explanation, the hazy sky a natural extension of the snowy ground.

Bridleways trace ominously through the virgin land, their darkness a memory of a few warmer days last week when melting snow disappeared into the ground. The black mud that flourished briefly is now frozen solid and no danger to shoes and trouser legs.

The sun sits low and is sinking fast; winter solstice is only a few days away. The lazy rays are long, coming as they do from way behind the horizon, and paint the warmth of great photographs into brambles and copses, a warmth that can be seen but not felt. The cold bites.

We got off the train at Guildford a good two hours earlier, certain of our destination but in complete cloudy ignorance of how to get there. Navigating of the downtown maze of high street and labyrinthine shopping center ate precious daylight time but was aided by countless signposts for the bus station. It was in vain; there were no buses on Sundays. Consultation of a large-scale map of the region at the local Waterstone's gave us two options for walking, both away from the main roads and rather straightforward: Long straight segments connected by ninety-degree turns at obvious places. We set out when the sun waned already.

The silence is nearly complete. There are no ramblers or berry pickers. All gatherers of mushrooms and chestnuts have retired to cozy spots around the hearth, warm to the bone, enjoying the fruits of their excursions in the bountiful fall. There are no animals either. Birds have long made the journey to the south. Those hardy creatures that habitually stay are nowhere to be seen. The might have found hollows in tree trunks to keep them out of the elements or protected spaces in barns and under slate roofs. Rodents and small mammals, invariant companions on summer hikes through rural Surrey, are all holed up deep underneath the snow, in caves or burrows that are their only shot at surviving. Wherever we look, we're really the only ones out here.

The last turn, according to the map sketched hastily in our brains, takes us onto a gently sloping footpath that would be a riot on a mountain bike, even in the cold. Gracefully decaying leaves cover treacherous roots most insidiously. To the left and the right, rusty soil banks high, killing the view but also the icy wind. At the foot of the hill, a farm comes into view, horses in woolly trousers standing sullenly on frozen fields. Visibility has dropped to the next hedge.

The path opens into an access road, slippery slush piled in its center and melted snow flooding its tracks. This must be the last part of the walk. And indeed, five minutes later Watts Gallery announces its ongoing refurbishment and a sign indicates the chapel that we've come to see, Watts' mortuary chapel, a gem of Italianate architecture and design that's so over the top inside that it would be criminal not to visit it.

The highlight of afternoon, though, is the tea room at the gallery, open despite the work being done to the adjacent building. It's warm inside, the tea is hot, and the cakes are tasty. Time moves as we rest. The sun completes its short foray into the winter sky, and darkness falls. The fog is drawing closer as well. It will, once we step out into the night, cover our eyes with a eerie veil and conspire with the darkness and the muted sounds of the countryside to turn the walk back into an experience of supreme spookiness.

Paths lose themselves in voids of space and time. Nonexisting creatures make alien sounds, impossible to place or trace. The wind rustles the brittle branches of sleeping trees and builds soundscapes of scariness. Specters hover just out of sight, a few feet away. Working each other into a frenzy of fear and foreboding, we involuntarily start to believe in ghosts and work frantically to fend them off.

Suddenly sounds, coming from behind, quick footsteps, their bearer invisible but approaching fast. Is it the slasher of Surrey or a boar with daggerlike fangs? We see nothing but step aside, behind a doom-laden oak tree, just in case. Abruptly, splashes of neon green pop from the darkness, bopping in the rhythm of a fast-paced run. A jogger, more out of place in this nocturnal ice world than werewolves or gigantic vampire bats, waves by cheerfully. The reality of Guildford, civilization, and the train back to London can't be far.

taking a leak

Today is one of these common occasions when I sit down in front of my computer with only the vaguest idea of what I want to write about and let creativity and spontaneity take over. Usually, when I have a pretty good outline of the post to come, it takes hours to mature the piece into something that can be unchained. Much to my chagrin, starting out clueless is often better.

Today I am clueless. I only know that the post will focus on the recent waterfall of WikiLeaks that is being frantically mopped up by radio stations and newspapers up and down the country and, with much amplification, redispensed over a public that can hardly escape. I'm sick of it. I can't take any more revelations that are blown up to sound as if they come from God itself. I'm sick of hearing WikiLeaks mentioned. But despite the exposure, I'm not sure what to think of WikiLeaks itself.

WikiLeaks made its name in April of this year with the release of video footage taken from an US Army helicopter that showed the gunning down of persons in the street, to put it most simply and generally. With bits and pieces of their equipment scattered all over, two of the victims were later identified as a Reuters photographers. The video caused outraged worldwide, mostly because it seemed at first glance as if the soldiers were carelessly shooting unarmed civilians.

Whether this is what really happens is anyone's guess. The video starts in the middle of the action; it's impossible to say what led to it. WikiLeaks doesn't tell, and doesn't say why. Did they get a longer version that approached completeness? Why weren't the photographers identified as members of the press? Where did the unmarked van come from that drove into the scene, ostensibly to evacuate the survivors? If the video showed anything clearly, it was the fact that war is muddy and complex and impossible to judge from a single piece of evidence, no matter how visual.

After this leak came the Afghan War Diary and the Iraq war logs, both of which exposed examples of questionable behavior of troops in either war, but also listed names of local civilians that helped the US military administrations. They were praised and condemned in nearly equal measure because of this. It was said that lives were put in danger because of the release, though to say that the actions described in the leaks had put lives in danger (and cost countless lives) is probably closer to the truth. The messenger can't be blamed.

Revealing the identities of translators and drivers is harder to justify. These were honorable citizens that had taken their jobs because they needed the money or because they believed in the future of their country as designed by the United States. They were now targets of elements of the insurgency, unjustified by their actions. On the other hand, the moral case for collaborating with an occupying force is rather thin, I would think.

Last week the Fourth Great Leak was issued, and what a bore it was by comparison. A quarter million missives, send to the mothership from embassies around the globe, exposed American diplomats as broadly complying with common stereotypes: dismissive, snide, and condescending. Maybe that's why they made such a splash internationally. But are they worth precious news time? Does anyone need to be reminded that Berlusconi is a brainless philanderer and Putin the godfather of Russia?

The impact of this most recent flood of words is bound to be minimal. All governments have received very similar cables from their own embassy staff. Featuring in the released material is thus not a cause of diplomatic disgruntlement. In contrast, not featuring is because it shows the lack of importance of the absentee. If there is any damage, it's that international politics and diplomacy is demoted to the level of celebrity gossip. A blurry picture of a star in a compromising situation published in the free newspaper confirms celebrity.

In light of that, the buzz around the latest leak is rather disingenuous. On the other hand, classified information, i.e. state secrets have been exposed. These leaks must be plugged. It was apparently one single person that handed all the data to WikiLeaks. How come that person had so much access? What was his motivation? Here, some tough questions have to be answered. WikiLeaks should be thanked for pointing out flaws in the system.

Instead WikiLeaks draws heaps of criticism and aggression. It is perhaps understandable that WikiLeak's webspace host in the US terminated their contract because its servers received such a fury of denial-of-service attacks that it threatened to corrupt other websites' operations. More bizarrely, Paypal has cut WikiLeak's account, ostensibly because its "payment service cannot be used for any activities that encourage, promote, facilitate or instruct others to engage in illegal activity". I find it very frightening when a payment processing company steps into the judiciary realm and decides what is illegal and what is not. It should be mentioned that WikiLeaks has never (to my knowledge) hacked into any computers to obtain information.

In some ways I'm very much in favor of the concept of WikiLeaks, of free information and transparency. It's a clearinghouse for whistleblowers, a blind rush of air forcing potentially incriminating material from secrecy and the danger of forgetting. Consider that the architects of the Enron failure, Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling, met justice only because the inner workings of their fraudulent operation were exposed in emails made available to prosecutors.

I'm tempted to say that targeted leaks are good and avalanches just noise. But who would do the editing? Why would I or anyone trust WikiLeaks to be impartial and free and open? And who says editing hasn't already been done to color the leaks to make a certain point? Julian Assange, the head and mouthpiece of Wikileaks, doesn't provide much comfort in that regard. With Swedish courts going after him because of allegations of sexual assault, one would think it in the spirit of freedom and transparency if he stepped forward to answer these charges and clear his name.

The reason for setting up WikiLeaks was initially to expose "oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations." Not cooperating with the judicial system of Sweden doesn't fit into that list without some major contortions, and that's why I'm left with a bad feeling in my mouth.

winter surprises

When I opened the curtains this morning, I was in for a bit of a surprise. It had been cold for a week, unseasonably cold, so cold in fact that parts of the Grand Union Canal are frozen over, and the Serpentine doesn't call for a dive either. It had been cold but dry. This morning, there was snow.

Snow didn't exactly pile outside my window but it lay there in undeniable quantities. It covered the roofs of the estate across the street and had pulled white hoods over the cars parked below my windows. It wasn't exactly a winter wonderland, but an inner-city simulacrum of sorts. Beholding it made me happy, but I feared the ramifications.

Yesterday already, Gatwick, the UK's second busiest airport, had remained shut because of severe weather conditions, as winter is invariably referred to. I didn't expect it to be any different today. After three years in London I have learned that there are only two classes of reactions to the annual recurrence of winter.

The first is honest surprise combined with a complete lack of preparedness. Sub-zero temperatures and frozen precipitation never fail to utterly shock those whose businesses should attune them to the weather. Trains stop running because of ice on rails; airports shut down because there are no snowplows; roads remain impassable because rock salt wasn't ordered or the equipment to distribute it broke or the dude to drive it lies in his bed after twisting his ankle on the way home from the pub after watching Chelsea have their asses kicked yet again.

The public outcry, in that inimitable self-deprecating way of the English, erupts while the chaos is absolute, demanding improvements to the situation, accountability, and preparation for next year. Mayors, railroad bosses, transportation undersecretaries and stand-up comedians take to the mike to assuage the public, to confess that the level of snow is unprecedented, and to show that bold steps have been taken: Ambulances in London were fitted with special winter tires.

This ping-pong of expected incompetence and pointless outrage amused me royally during my first three winters here: a great spectacle and impossible to avoid. Winter hits southern England only one or two weeks out of the year, and people who've been here longer than me remember extended periods without any snow. It would be foolish to be permanently prepared for the worst, and financially irresponsible. Much cheaper to just get on with it.

The second reaction is not as easy to spot as the first but just as prevalent. People expect clement conditions every day of the year and are blind to evidence to the contrary. They drive just the same on a sloping icy road with two inches of snow on it as they would on a country drive in June. They see every delayed commuter train as proof that the Empire is falling. As much as I like to ridicule the inadequacy of the response to snow and ice, I can see that there are ice and snow. I expect sidewalks to be slippery, crossings treacherous, and transportation under strain.

You can't have it both ways. You either go for the initially cheap solution of considering proper winter conditions freak events. This will make for occasions of suffering that can be truly horrible for some. Or you take winter seriously as a season and take it into account during annual spending and improvement reviews. But if you want trains running through blizzards as they do in Norway and Switzerland, you'll have to put down some serious cash. Winter came early this year; there's plenty of time to weigh the options.

worst of

Yesterday I got a bit side-tracked. An excellent 2000 Saint Julien helped loosen my brain and lubricate my writing. I didn't stop much for fact-checking or to find ludicrous synonyms, and I certainly didn't bother to write with the subject in mind that I had earlier set myself. The bail-out of Ireland was only meant to provide the backdrop to a banking horror story that I've gone through recently. Instead of tagging this onto a post that looked, though the haze of a good red wine, as if it could stand on its own, I decided to dedicate another post to the topic of incompetent companies and their place in the modern economy. You will find that it connects smoothly with what I wrote yesterday.

The eponymous bad bank of the previous post is Santander. This originally Spanish bank had entered the British market quite a while ago, mostly unnoticed. About a year ago, they introduced their brand name to retail customers and have since been trying quite hard to increase their market share, aggressively advertising deals that often sound too good to be true.

I was caught in their close-meshed net at the beginning of this year when shopping for a suit. I was about to pay when the shop assistant offered me a store card, complete with MasterCard and Santander logos and twenty percent off my first purchase. As I said yes, thick smoke seeped in from womens' wear and a ear-piercing fire alarm went off. I should have taken this as a warning, but I came back half an hour later to sign the card application. The suit I left on the hanger; it had a hole in it.

The credit card was much worse. It came with a credit limit that wouldn't get me through a week if I had to spend all my salary on it. It has frequently failed me, sometimes on the sharp gravel of far-off lands, when one large transaction (like a flight) prevented another (like a car rental deposit). If the card were just useless, I could simply use another, but it has recently assaulted me with customer service that's so spectacularly poor that it amounts to abuse, and that's harder to stomach.

My credit card account is linked to my bank account, so that each month's balance is always paid in full. Last month, this didn't work. There was no explanation and no apology. In contrast, I had to call Santander twice to make the payment, and then again to get the late payment fees and interest charged canceled that the bank had quickly slapped onto my account to punish me for their blunders - all the while I was receiving threatening letters concerning my alleged non-payment.

I shouldn't have been surprised. Santander really is that bad. Surveys done by the consumer finance information and discussion website moneysupermarket.com have repeated ranked Santander as the worst by far. In line with this, my letter of complaint has gone unanswered. Now I'm really glad I didn't sign up for their current account, a very poor deal indeed despite the £100 sign-up bonus and 5% interest on balances up to £2,500 for the first year.

In the same league as Santander plays Hertz, another unapologetic bottom feeder. I've written about this before, and there's not much to add. Hertz's rates are second to none in Europe, but the customer's experience couldn't be worse. It pays to pay a bit more. I will certainly not rent with Hertz again.

The third company that has shocked me with its incompetence and lacking focus on the customer is eBay. I hadn't used them in a while. With their fees going up every few months, there didn't seem to be a need. In London, gumtree does a decent job of matching sellers and potential buyers. But I was in the market for a little radio to complement my hifi stack and there's an unlimited supply on eBay. I made the single bid on a Technics that I could pick up halfway across town. All was good.

All stayed good until I noticed cheap Wee remotes and remembered the kind of tricks I've always wanted to play with my MacBook. Presentations in style, for example. I bought one now, but it never arrived. Worse, the transaction disappeared from my list of items won/purchased. Serious eBay flaw, I thought. I contacted them but never heard back. Luckily, I found a record of the transaction on my paypal account and could trace the seller. His recent feedback is horrible. My mistake for not checking but eBay's for not closing the account and protecting its members.

I'm not the only one to have opened a case against this seller, and yet his store is still accessible. It is quite obvious that eBay doesn't care. When I opened the case, I received an email stating that resolution of the problem couldn't be expected within another ten days and that, in effect, the guys at eBay were hard at work waiting for the issue to go away. Getting out of the way is great when things go well between seller and buyer, but when there are problems, there'd better be someone to contact. Try to contact eBay. All you can do is put one of a number of approved questions into a form. They say you can call them too, but they won't tell you the number. Stay away from eBay!

Santander, Hertz and eBay are the worst companies I had the misfortune of doing business with in the past year. If any of them went under, it would be a reason to celebrate. I would be happy, and the nation would be better off. Fingers crossed.

---

Astute readers of this blog (and I don't think I have any of another kind) will wonder why Ryanair doesn't feature in this worst-of list. They are, after all, Europe's most offensive airline, and I flew with them earlier this year. True enough, but at least Ryanair is honest about it. They don't pretend to like their customers. They hate them and screw them openly. They're in a different category altogether, having the same effect on a budget traveler as a whip does on a masochist. You know what you get with Ryanair and that it will hurt, but with Santander, Hertz and eBay, people might still have illusions. Don't say I didn't warn you.

bad bank

Last week I bailed out Ireland. I forked over the promise of 300 pounds, to be taken from my paychecks in the form of increased taxes over the next few years. No one asked me if I wanted to help those portrayed in the media as our Irish brethren, our closest neighbors and most intimate economic connection.

Had I been consulted, I would have said no. It's not the Irish government or the Republic of Ireland as such that is in need of money that has suddenly stopped sprouting from trees, but the uninhibited consumer-citizens of that country and the profligate banks. The citizen, as always, are getting a properly raw deal in the proceedings. State employees of all sorts (including researchers at public universities) are seeing their salaries slashed. Values of houses, a sure-fire investment if there ever was one if you were to believe mortgage banks and lazy governments, have come down to sustainable levels. Unemployment has trebled and most Irish can't even afford a horse or two anymore. None of this came as a surprise to anyone looking at the numbers with sober eyes. Not many did, though, least of all the Irish banks.

Irish banks lent half the planet's money to finance spurious investments in a tiny republic. Their portfolios reached several times the entire GDP of the country. Yet no one saw anything wrong. On the contrary. Foreign banks were all to happy to collude in the construction of the mighty pyramid of Celtic prosperity. German banks are invested up to their ears and so are the British. But in contrast to Irish citizens, foreign banks have a strong lobby and have, for this reason only, avoided any sort of financial haircut.

If I understand the bail-out correctly, it makes sure that foreign investments in Ireland and in Irish banks are guaranteed. In other words, tax-payers' money is nearly directly transferred into the vaults of institutions that exhibited the most egregious kind of financial mismanagement and that managed risk more poorly than the winners of the annual Darwin awards. Why do I support this stunning ineptitude?

It is always systemic risk that is cited as a reason for ever-increasing financial sacrifices by governments and, ultimately, tax-payers. This poor excuse ignores the fact that systemic risk is only increased by concerted support for failing institutions. The only future-proof way would be to trim the losers and systematically cut them down to a size where they can be dismantled safely, with the same care but also the same determination you would use for disarming an unexploded World War II bomb.

What really riles me about this bail-out business is that it's done in the name of capitalism. I grew up in socialism, maybe communism depending on the particulars of your dictionary, and I can attest to the fact that the current economic system is better. And I want it to stay that way. In my book, one of the defining factors of capitalism is that failing enterprises make way for more successful competitors by withering and then going bust. This is not the case in many branches of industry and service.

Left and right, established names are being propped up in the name of, what? I don't want to know! If a company fails, it must go. If it's a big airline, there are ten new ones eager to take the place and provide better service to customers. If it's a Jurassic car company, there are plenty of competitors to put their vehicles in showrooms worldwide. And if a bank has invested poorly and wasted its business, it must go. Life will go on and, most importantly, capitalism will.

dinner

The third exercise heaped upon me at the Creative Writing workshop related to food, with specific emphasis on the cultural aspects of preparing food, the influences of hygiene, religion and ritual, and how my identity relates to this. What I came up with, incubating in my brain for a few day before being written down in a frantic twenty-minute effort right before the course, has nothing to do with this at all. It missed the point almost completely, but I think it's quite nice anyway.

---

Burton stepped out into the yard. It was about time: The sun was setting and Mrs. Burton was getting anxious. He surveyed the scene with the eyes of an expert. On the patch of sand towards the left, Tyler and Ben were fooling around. Heads slouched forward, they were engaged in a kind of friendly battle, an exercise of strength and skill. Thrusting back and forth and kicking their heels, they threw up clouds of dust into the wind.

There was no ball. It wasn't clear what their game was about. Burton laughed it off. They were young and having fun. Not a worry in the world.

He called to the older one but there was no reaction. As he approached, they retreated. The ensuing game of dodge took them to the farthest corner of the year where the hedge met the shed. It was there that Burton managed to grab Taylor and, furious batting of wings notwithstanding, twist the turkey's neck in one swift motion.

Inside the house, Mrs. Burton was shaking her head. She agreed that a new approach to food was necessary, but eating only those animals whose first name you know seemed a bit radical to her.

lesson learned

Whenever I feel particularly angry at something stupid, and that's a situation I frequently find myself in when air-traveling, I slip my noise-canceling earphones deep into my auditory canal and crank up the funk. Let's get retarded is my tune of choice, a powerful palliative that mellows anger into ironic despair. As every rising anger eventually demands to be weaponized, it is much better to be desperate in an airport than angry.

For those who use their brains for the custom production of rational thoughts, it's very hard these days not to be angry, especially at airports. The nonsense that's being performed on the well-lit stage of the security theater is enough to make you cringe even when the Peas work their magic on the drums of your ear. But switching off is not an option. Your safety depends on sorting the useful from the useless, on cutting through endless announcements and procedures to follow those few ones that will actually help in an emergency.

What's the most important thing to do on a plane? Buckle up tightly? Fold the tray table upright? Know a flotation device from an oxygen mask? All nonsense. The only thing that matters is that you know where the emergency exits are. This is where you want to go when things go wrong, even if a developing panic pushes the other way or if thick smoke blocks your vision. Next time you fly, make a strong mental note of where you'd get off.

Another thing is important, on the plane and on the ground. This is alertness. Look around from time to time to see if anyone behaves suspiciously. Most unsuccessful airline terror plots were foiled by alert passengers. Remember flight 93, the shoe bomber, the underwear bomber? Security played only a minor role. Don't trust your life on security. A few glances left and right go a long way towards a safe arrival.

The introduction of porno scanners and loving pat-downs across the US is an example to the contrary, another fold in the dense curtain of obfuscation that's drawn over airport security, another measure that is (quite literally) impressive to look at but quite ineffective. The response to it on the internet was intense; cyberspace is awash in blog posts, articles and news videos commenting on various ridiculous or hilarious aspects of the show being staged. Most are redundant (as is most of the web).

What I recommend you read is a piece of investigative journalism from The Atlantic. Take the quarter hour and read Jeff Goldberg's exposé. I promise that you won't believe your eyes. When you're done, buy a copy of Elephunk, have a safe flight, and Happy Thanksgiving!