Those Damn Normans

Coming over here, slaughtering our nobles (who in their turn had slaughtered many Romano-British nobles), building their castles on our monastic cemeteries - and hanging onto their ill-gotten gains...

Telegraph :

"People with "Norman" surnames like Darcy and Mandeville are still wealthier than the general population 1,000 years after their descendants conquered Britain, according to a study into social progress. Drawing on data culled from official records that go back as far as the Domesday Book as well as university admissions and probate archives, Gregory Clark, a professor of economics at the University of California, has tracked what became of people whose surnames indicated their ancestors had come from either the aristocratic or artisanal classes. By studying the probate records of those with “rich” and “poor” surnames every decade since the 1850s, he found that the extreme differences in accumulated wealth narrowed over time. But the value of the estates left by those belonging to the “rich” surname group, immortalised in the character of Fitzwilliam Darcy, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, were above the national average by at least 10 per cent. In addition, today the holders of "rich" surnames live three years longer than average. Life expectancy is a strong indicator of socio-economic status."

But not always :

"Throw up your chin a moment, so that I may catch the profile of your face better. Yes, that's the d'Urberville nose and chin—a little debased. Your ancestor was one of the twelve knights who assisted the Lord of Estremavilla in Normandy in his conquest of Glamorganshire. Branches of your family held manors over all this part of England; their names appear in the Pipe Rolls in the time of King Stephen. In the reign of King John one of them was rich enough to give a manor to the Knights Hospitallers; and in Edward the Second's time your forefather Brian was summoned to Westminster to attend the great Council there. You declined a little in Oliver Cromwell's time, but to no serious extent, and in Charles the Second's reign you were made Knights of the Royal Oak for your loyalty. Aye, there have been generations of Sir Johns among you, and if knighthood were hereditary, like a baronetcy, as it practically was in old times, when men were knighted from father to son, you would be Sir John now."

"Ye don't say so!"

"In short," concluded the parson, decisively smacking his leg with his switch, "there's hardly such another family in England."

"Daze my eyes, and isn't there?" said Durbeyfield. "And here have I been knocking about, year after year, from pillar to post, as if I was no more than the commonest feller in the parish…"

Cognitive Dissonance Alert - Daily Mail Edition

In the Money section, Jonathan Portes (Gordon Brown speechwriter and author of the report "Migration: An Economic And Social Analysis", famously revealed by Andrew Neather as "aimed to make Britain more multi-cultural for political reasons") :

"There is not a single serious economic study that suggests immigration has had any significant impact on the employment of British workers. Immigration may have had some effect on wages, but not very much. A report last year from MigrationWatch found that unemployment is higher in those areas of England that have experienced the highest levels of immigration. True. But those areas had higher levels of unemployment to start with - so it wasn't the immigrants who caused it. Even more to the point, during the period MigrationWatch looked at, the areas with more immigration actually did better in terms of unemployment.

Nor are immigrants a drain on the state. Some immigrants claim benefits, use the Health Service, have children at school, commit crimes and so on. But they pay taxes too. And on average, they pay more in tax and use less in services than natives. This is hardly surprising since many, if not most, immigrants come here to work or study. So overall they reduce the tax burden on the rest of us. Fewer migrants will mean higher taxes or cuts in services."

Alas he gives no references for these remarkable claims. I point readers towards the ONS figures for unemployment by ethnicity.





















Given that "Mr Portes remains an enthusiastic advocate of the benefits of immigration. He wrote a report for the Department of Work and Pensions last year rejecting claims that Eastern European workers had stolen the jobs of British counterparts, arguing Britons lacked the skills and motivation", I think we can probably take the attitude to his writings that Mary McCarthy took to Lillian Hellman's ("every word she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'").




I digress. In that same edition of the Mail, news section :

"Migrant crime wave revealed: Foreign arrests have almost doubled in just THREE years"

"The number of foreigners arrested for committing crimes in Britain has almost doubled in the past three years, police revealed today. Figures show that in 2010 more than 91,234 non-British nationals were held for crimes including murder, burglary and sexual offences. By contrast, only 51,899 foreigners were arrested in 2008 - meaning there has been a worrying increase of 76 per cent over the past three years."

Yes campaign denies it kept white actor off leaflets

(As seen in all papers.)

By Kunal Dutta

Monday, 4 April 2011

Tony Robinson: The actor's endorsement of the Yes campaign was printed on leaflets for the Home Counties, but not for London, where Benjamin Zephaniah was used instead.

Campaigners supporting the alternative vote have denied accusations that they "airbrushed" the white actor Tony Robinson out of leaflets distributed in London.

The campaign used Robinson's picture as an endorsement on literature in the Home Counties, Hampshire and Cornwall, but in London the leaflets featured the black poet Benjamin Zephaniah, prompting accusations from rivals that the Yes campaign was "ashamed" of the actor's backing.

A Few Cowslips From The Curate's Coppice

It's not going too well at Fukushima. I think the words "sawdust and newspapers were also used" are the giveaway - never words you want to hear in the context of a leaking nuclear reactor.

A complete history of radiation incidents - I see that Russian criminals seem to be able to get hold of radioactive sources, while in Taiwan and China people use them to attack their co-workers. Many remote Russian lighthouses are powered by radioactive sources - which foolish crooks try to steal for scrap - a usually fatal decision. But the scariest stories of all are the criticality accidents. You're experimenting with a ball of plutonium and accidentally drop a piece of metal too close to it - a blue flash and a wave of heat - you swipe away the metal, but in those seconds you receive a fatal dose of radiation.

I mentioned flight JAL123 the other day, in the context of the downside to Japanese acceptance of responsibility. What I didn't mention was that the Japanese pilots kept the plane in the air for 32 minutes (passengers wrote farewell letters), despite having lost ALL the main controls - rudder, ailerons, elevators. The only control they could exert was differential thrust on the wing-mounted engines. When pilots attempted similar control on simulators as part of the post-crash analysis, they couldn't match the performance of Captain Tamahaka's crew in terms of keeping the aircraft aloft.

JAL123 lost control near mountains and nearly all the passengers and aircrew died. When United Airlines Flight 232 lost all controls after an engine failure, they were over level country. Using only the engines to steer the plane (they could only turn right, so moved in a series of loops), they found an airport and crash-landed on the runway - the majority of passengers survived though over a hundred died. The cockpit recording transcript is as gripping as any novel, and Captain Haynes lecture at Edwards Air Force Base shows you one impressive character.

I missed this one - Julie Bindel treading carefully on the subject of Charlene Downes.



UPDATE - commenter Brian says : "The story of the radioactive boy scout isn't mentioned (in the radiation log - LT)."

Oh yes it is.

Praise Japan - Up To A Point

Katharine Birbalsingh in the Telegraph lauds those Japanese executives with whom the buck stops.

"These Japanese men have a code of honour that tells them that they are responsible simply because they were in charge. These days, that way of thinking is so alien to us in the West. We used to think like that once upon a time, long before I was even born. When the terrible events in Japan first happened, I looked on with admiration at their ordered and sensible behaviour. Now I look at two men and wish not only that my kids could know their sense of honour and duty, but that I might have the privilege of being like them too."

Well, up to a point - or maybe several points. One is that a sense of honour and duty can be associated with very unpleasant behaviour. The Japanese sense of honour and duty - bushido - led their soldiers to fight unto death in WWII. At Iwo Jima "of the 22,785 Japanese soldiers entrenched on the island, 21,569 died either from fighting or by ritual suicide. Only 216 were captured during the battle.". The flip side of this was that Japanese troops despised those Allied soldiers who did surrender - and this attitude enabled the dreadful treatment of Allied prisoners, among other war crimes.

Another point relates to the sense of personal, corporate or national responsibility. Twenty five years back, a younger Laban was impressed by the reported response of Japan Airlines executives to the JAL123 crash, where one of their planes lost all control and flew into a mountain, killing more than 500 people in what remains the world's worst single-plane disaster. According to press reports at the time, JAL executives accompanied relatives of the dead on the difficult climb to the crash site - and they carried or supported frail or elderly relatives up the mountain as a token of contrition. The JAL president resigned and a maintenance manager committed suicide, as did the engineer who supervised the repair which failed and was the cause of the crash.

All very noble, and accepting of responsibility. But ...

"United States Air Force controllers at Yokota Air Force base situated near the flight path of Flight 123 had been monitoring the distressed aircraft's calls for help. They maintained contact throughout the ordeal with Japanese flight control officials and made their landing strip available to the airplane. After losing track on radar, a U.S. Air Force C-130 from the 345 TAS was asked to search for the missing plane. The C-130 crew was the first to spot the crash site 20 minutes after impact, while it was still daylight. The crew radioed Yokota Air Base to alert them and directed an USAF Huey helicopter from Yokota to the crash site. Rescue teams were assembled in preparation to lower Marines down for rescues by helicopter tow line."

Now we see the other side of "accepting responsibility".

"The offers by American forces of help to guide Japanese forces immediately to the crash site and of rescue assistance were rejected by Japanese officials. Instead, Japanese government representatives ordered the U.S. crew to keep away from the crash site and return to Yokota Air Base, stating the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) were going to handle the entire rescue alone."

But by now darkness was approaching. The JSDF helicopter didn't get to the site before dark and couldn't land. It could see no signs of life, and so rescuers didn't start out to the site until the following morning.

"Medical staff later found a number of passengers' bodies whose injuries indicated that they had survived the crash only to die from shock or exposure overnight in the mountains while awaiting rescue. One doctor said "If the discovery had come ten hours earlier, we could have found more survivors."

Yumi Ochiai, one of the four survivors out of 524 passengers and crew, recounted from her hospital bed that she recalled bright lights and the sound of helicopter rotors shortly after she awoke amid the wreckage, and while she could hear screaming and moaning from other survivors, these sounds gradually died away during the night."

Those people died because the Japanese authorities did not want to lose face by making the rescue an American one, despite the fact that the Americans could have had medics on site within an hour of impact. Responsibility also meant that the responsibility for the rescue must be Japanese. I can't but feel there's a parallel here with the behaviour of TEPCO (and, to some extent, the Japanese government, with whom the buck finally stops) in the first week after the tsunami hit the Fukushima nuclear reactors. It was only after two major explosions, a series of fires, and efforts which revealed to the world that they were running out of ideas, that outside help was brought in.

Radical New 'Welfare-To-Work' Scheme

People often knock the travelling community. I've done it myself. But I've never said they were stupid people.

If the allegations in this report are correct, the Government need to consider whether handing out welfare-to-work contracts to Serco or Vertex really provides bang for the taxpayer buck, compared with the innovative strategies allegedly pioneered at Beggars Roost Caravan site by the Connors family.

"'The allegation is that the defendants offered accommodation and work to vulnerable homeless individuals then moved them into virtually uninhabitable caravans. They then required them to do manual work for excessive hours for payments of no more than £20 a day and in some cases no payment at all.They were given minimal amounts of food. Movements are restricted, mobile phones are not allowed and victims are kept in fear of reprisals if they attempt to leave. Identity and benefit documents are removed from them for so called safe keeping. We say they were retained by Breda Connors in particular.'

Men would be forced to work for up to 14 hours a day and moved from location to location around the country, he said. 'Many of the victims are homeless alcoholics, the most vulnerable persons in society.'

Mr Dono said police observed 22 alleged slaves living at Beggar's Roost caravan site. They were sent to work in Worcestershire and the West Midlands tarmacking and block paving driveways.

'It is clear from police videos that the slaves have minimal clothing, they are always dirty and disheveled, they look extremely unhappy and there is evidence of members of the Connors family at the locations in charge of the workers.'

On March 22nd, said Mr Dono, police raided Beggar's Roost with a search warrant and arrested William and Breda Connors. A travellers site in Enderby, Leicestershire, was also raided and Miles Connors was arrested there while eight alleged vicitms were found. A site in Common Lane, Pleasley, Derby, was raided at the same time and John Connors was arrested and seven victims discovered. An address in Stanway road, Coney Hill, Gloucester, was searched by police and documentary evidence was seized. Mr Dono said it was alleged that the caravans in which victims were kept had no running water, minimal heating, haphazard and dangerous cooking facilities, and no proper washing facilities. Victims who had tried to leave sites had been tracked down and returned by members of the Connors family, he alleged.

'These victims are extremely vulnerable and are now in a safe house. We say some of them have been indoctrinated for as much as 20 years working in this way, They are people who are clearly fearful. Twenty victims have so far been recovered from the Connors family but inquiries are at an early stage and it is expected there will be more. Some of them have allegedly been exploited and beaten for years and they have described their living conditions as appalling.'"

Now obviously I can't comment on some of the wilder allegations being made here, and which are anyway sub judice. But it seems clear that, given the right incentives and tightly defined business requirements, even homeless alcoholics, a client group which ATOS Origin or EDS would run a mile from, can potentially play a useful role (for up to 14 hours a day) in the important block paving sector. If Mr and Mrs Connors are acquitted, their undoubted management and motivational skills could surely find a place in the consultancy world. Accenture are always on the lookout for talent - and the Connors sound like partnership material.



UPDATE - the legendary Johnson family, stars of their own BBC series, had a chap who lived on their site, described as a 'drifter', who died mysteriously. And Julia has a story of travellers who cared for a man with learning disabilities, and were big-hearted enough to build him a house.

And It Begins ...

18th March :

23:44:Libyan state television cites a senior security source as saying that Libya has decided to "absolve itself from taking responsibility for stemming illegal immigration to Europe"

Gaddafi, until recent events, was paid by Italy (I don't know what's happened to those payments) to police his Med coast - something he seems to have done effectively.

Now :

By Associated Press, Sunday, March 27, 11:32 AM

ROME — Boatloads of illegal African migrants have resumed setting sail from Libya for Italy, authorities said, overwhelming tiny islands and towns in southern Italy already struggling to host thousands fleeing unrest in Tunisia. Before dawn Sunday, Italian coast guard vessels escorted a boat crowded with 284 Somalis, Eritreans and Ethiopians to shore, the first boat to resume the long-established routes of smugglers’ boats toward Italy from Libya’s long coastline.

Since Lampedusa, a tiny island off Sicily, is already straining from sheltering the thousands of Tunisians, who have taken to sleeping on docks and fields after housing space ran out, the boat from Libya was diverted to Linosa, an even tinier island in the Pelagie archipelago south of Sicily.

Authorities said at least two other boats coming from Libya with hundreds of migrants aboard were spotted by fishing boats or coast guard air and sea patrolling the southern Mediterranean Sunday.

A Few Orchids From The Curate's Wood

Fascinating (though some dissent in the comments, both from outsiders and insiders) Telegraph article on the ultra-orthodox Haredi Jews of North London, who are to Judaism what the Jehovah's Witnesses are to Christianity. I think these are the same people (she calls them Hasidim, which is IIRC a subset of Haredi Orthodoxy) who the Indie's Christina Patterson hasn't a great deal of time for (a view returned by non-Orthodox writers with interest). What I'm certain of is that the Hasidim/Haredim will be the people driving the Orthodox population boom.

"It is a deeply conservative community that venerates religious learning above all else and in which Yiddish is the primary language. Following the Biblical commandment to 'be fruitful and multiply’, families of seven or eight children are common; relations between the sexes are stringently policed, and arranged marriages are the norm. It is a community where a lack of secular education means that economic hardship is rife, and dependence on benefits is high. A community where television, secular newspapers and visits to the cinema are forbidden, where the internet is frowned upon, and where outsiders are treated guardedly."

I guess one man's 'guardedly' is Ms Patterson's 'damn rude'. I can see the point of not wanting to engage with the secular world more than can be helped - a problem that all religious people face in our modern Babylon, be one Christian, Jew or Muslim. But good manners cost nowt. I wonder if the problem is that unlike Muslims and Christians, the Orthodox show little interest in converting the heathen ? I digress. Here's Rabbi Pinter of the (state-funded) Yesodey Hatorah school on sex education :

When the school became voluntary aided, Rabbi Pinter told me, there had been some parental concern about having to follow certain aspects of the national curriculum.

'For example, the law is that you have to provide sex education. But parents can choose to opt out. 100 per cent of our parents opt out. Sex education is something we deal with on our own terms through the Jewish curriculum, based on very strong family values.’

At my child's Catholic primary, the sex education policy used to be that there was no sex education. Alas, not so at secondary level. But surely, with no sex education, the school must be riddled with teenage pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections picked up by the poor ignorant girls. After all, you can't stop them, can you ?

'A question I’m asked is, “How many teenage pregnancies do you have in the community?” To which I reply, “Are you talking about inside or outside marriage? Outside marriage, none.”’

Most odd. Haredim, like Pakistanis and Indians, seem to defy the conventional wisdom that only lashings of sex education can save us from the negative consequences of lashings of sex.



Another community who keep themselves to themselves - the Afrikaners of Orania (who like their Voortrekker forebears set off into the wilderness in search of a place of their own) mourn the death of their founder, Carel Boshoff III.

In the early 1990s, Boshoff, a genteel theologian who favored delicate spectacles and a George Washington-esque ruffled coiffure, abandoned the intellectual life in Pretoria and led a troupe of his fellow Afrikaners to a ghost town in a blasted desert that scarcely supports animals, forget about libraries or concert orchestras. Boshoff thought the soon-to-be black government would rule in a manner so hostile and alien to South Africa's European descendants that retreating en masse into the wilderness -- he predicted the exodus would swell to 2 million, half of South Africa's Afrikaner population -- was the only way to survive.

As it turned out, while there's been a steady bleeding of Afrikaners, murdered on their farms, since Mandela took over, it's not been as apocalyptic as feared :

But instead South Africa's irrepressibly genial black leaders kept following him out there. And so Orania became an accidental symbol not of racial reconciliation's unfeasibility, but of its robustness. Nelson Mandela traveled to Orania in 1995 to drink tea with the smiling widow of Prime Minister Hendrik Verwoerd, the infamous "architect of apartheid." A decade later, President Jacob Zuma toured a dormitory for poor white laborers and commended Boshoff's ethnic awareness, comparing it to his own pride in being Zulu.

The problem for his community and vision is a simple one - whites in South Africa have always employed other, non-white people to work for them - to really and truly do the jobs they don't want to do :

Whites in South Africa remain a privileged class dependent on black labor, said Boshoff, and this position is untenable. To defend themselves against rising discontent among the other half (actually, the other four-fifths) they rely on "good fences and good dogs."

He wasn't totally wrong. The best part of Boshoff's vision of a self-sufficient white community was always the self-sufficiency part. In Orania, white Afrikaners have to do all the work, even the service jobs. Unfortunately for Boshoff, however, this requirement also cut directly against his ideal of preserving Afrikaner traditions. Construction, fruit-picking, janitorial work is not a traditional part of white South African culture. When they realized they would have to do the manual labor blacks do in the rest of the country, some Orania settlers left -- and this was undoubtedly a reason many more whites never came.

And via Capitalists at Work, a little insight from the London Review of Books into the working world of Russian business - in this case TV production :

To get to our office you had to walk down an unlit concrete corridor and turn sharp right up two flights of narrow stairs at the top of which you were confronted by another black, unmarked metal door. There you rang the bell and an unfriendly voice would come through the intercom: ‘Who are you?’ The question was ridiculous: the guard on the other side of the door could see you on his monitor – he saw you every day. But still he asked and still you answered, waving your passport at where you guessed the spy camera to be. Then came the beep-beep-beep of the door being opened and you were inside Potemkin Productions.

Suddenly you were back in a Western office with Ikea furniture and lots of twentysomethings in jeans and bright T-shirts running around with coffees, cameras and props. It could have been any television production office anywhere in the world. But there was a difference. Going past the reception desk, the conference room, coffee bar and casting department, you reached a closed white door. Many would turn back at this point, thinking they’d seen the whole office. But tap in a code and you entered a much larger set of rooms: here the producers and their assistants sat and argued, here the accountants glided around with spreadsheets and solemnity, and here were the loggers – rows of young girls staring at screens as their hyperactive fingers typed out interviews and dialogue from rushes. At the end of this office was another door. Tap in another code and you entered the editing suites: little cells where directors and video editors sweated and swore at one another. And beyond that was the final, most important and least conspicuous of all the inconspicuous doors, with a code that few people knew: it led to the office of Tim and Ivan, and the room where the real accounts were kept. This whole elaborate set-up was intended to foil the tax police. That’s who it was the guards’ job to keep out, or keep out long enough for the back office to be cleared and the hidden back entrance put to good use.

I asked Ivan whether all this was necessary. Couldn’t he just pay his taxes? He laughed. If he did that, he said, there would be no profit at all. No entrepreneur paid their taxes in full: it wouldn’t occur to them. Taxes, he said, were just a way for bureaucrats to buy themselves holidays in Thailand. As for the tax police, they were much happier taking bribes than going to the trouble of stealing money that had been paid in the orthodox fashion. In any case, Ivan’s profits were already squeezed by the broadcasters. Around 15 per cent of any budget went to the guy at the channel who commissioned the programme: in Russian these kick-backs are known as otkat, ‘backwash’. A British producer who refused to pay the ‘backwash’ was out of the country within a year.

Hmm.

For my Russian colleagues the tax police raids were a reason to celebrate: the rest of the day was invariably a holiday (deadlines be damned) as Ivan haggled with them to keep down the size of the pay-off. ‘Only a dozen people work here,’ he would say with a wink as they looked around at the many dozens of desks, chairs and computers still warm from use. Then Ivan would bring out the fake accounts from the front office to support his case and they would sit down to negotiate, with tea and biscuits, as if this were the most normal of business deals. And in Russia it was. The word ‘bribe’ was never used. The officials would look at the fake books, which they knew perfectly well to be fake, and extract fines in line with legislation they knew Ivan did not need to comply with. So everything would be settled, and every role, pose, and line of dialogue would reproduce the ritual of legality. It was a ritual played out every day in every medium-sized business, every furniture company, restaurant, modelling agency and PR firm across the country.

So far, so crooked - we're in William Browder territory where everyone conspires to rip off the State. But the cultural rot is much deeper, embedded in the consciousness of ordinary people.

The fundamental premise for most Western reality shows is what people in the industry call ‘aspirational’: someone works hard and is rewarded with a wonderful new life. The shows celebrate the outstanding individual, the bright extrovert. For the Russian version of The Apprentice, Vladimir Potanin, a metals oligarch worth more than $10 billion, was recruited to be the boss choosing between the candidates competing for the dream job. Potanin goaded, teased and tortured the candidates as they went through increasingly difficult challenges. The show looked great, the stories and dramas all worked, but there was a problem: no one in Russia believed in the rules. The usual way to get a job in Russia is not by impressing at an interview, but by what is known as blat – ‘connections’. Russian society isn’t much interested in the hard-working, brilliant young business mind. Everyone knows where that type ends up: in jail like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, or in exile like the mobile phone billionaire Yevgeny Chichvarkin. Today’s Russia rewards the man who operates from the shadows, the grey apparatchik, the master of the politique de couloir – the man like Putin. Promotion in such a system comes from knowing how to debase yourself, how to suck up and serve your master, how to be what the Russians call a holop, a ‘toady’. Bright and extrovert and aspirational? Not if you want success. The shows that did work were based on a quite different set of principles. By far the biggest success was Posledny Geroi (‘The Last Hero’), a version of Survivor, a show based on humiliation and hardship. This chimed in Russia – a country where being bullied by the authorities is the norm.

Don't Like It

According to yesterday's release from NISA, the Japanese nuclear safety agency :

a) hefty chunks of the fuel rods are exposed to the air in reactors 1, 2 and 3

b) there's no information on spent fuel pool temperatures in reactors 1, 3 and 4 (2 is OK at 28C).

c) there seems to be uncertainty about the sources of the smoke observed at all four reactors. Yesterday 1, 2 and 4 were all emitting, 3 was emitting the day before.

d) pressure in #1 is far higher than in 2 or 3.

NHK reports that there's highly radioactive water in the basements of 1 and 3 - not totally surprising given they're being sprayed. TEPCO's latest assessment of the reactors says that the company believes of reactors 4, 5 and 6 that "we do not consider any reactor coolant leakage inside the reactor happened", while remaining silent on 1, 2 and 3. Some are interpreting the radioactive water as the result of a possible breach.

"Water was also discovered in Units 2 and 4, and the company said it suspects that, too, is radioactive. Officials acknowledged the water would delay work inside the plant.

Plant officials and government regulators say they don't know the source of the radioactive water discovered at Units 1 and 3. It could have come from a leaking reactor core, associated pipes, or a spent fuel pool. Or it may be the result of overfilling the pools with emergency cooling water."

I get the impression that the 'injection' of water and seawater into the cores is not accompanied (deliberately, at any rate) by removal of hot water from the cores. Looks like they're just pumping more in. I can see that will reduce pressure in the short term as the temperature drops, but surely that can't go on indefinitely? Yet apparently the fuel is still exposed - where's all the water going? Hopefully not the basement.

Looks like the struggle continues, with number 3 being the beast to tame, because of the plutonium hazard. Best of luck, lads (and lasses - there's at least one woman on the team).

Crowdsourcing

Last week, as the reactor problems piled up for Japan's embattled TEPCO company, the Guardian tried a new initiative.

How would you solve Fukushima?

Use the comments to leave your suggestions on how to tackle the Fukushima reactors

Commenters immediately split into three camps.

Some took the mick :

a) never build the damn thing in the first place

b) see above

"Attach several long cables to each reactor, tow them to the Marianas trench, cut cables."

Some thought the idea tasteless, while a minority were upset or outraged :

I think this entire thing is in incredibly bad taste and frivolous. This isn't some party game for educated liberals, is it?

"I am Japanese and am currently trying to live through all this.
And I would just like to say that I fnd this whole idea of inviting your readers to try and "solve" Fukushima in extremely bad taste.
This is not a puzzle or a quiz---well, it isn't for us, nor is it for the workers and others who are risking their lives on site."

"It would be one thing to solicit opinions from nuclear scientists and engineers, but I fail to see the benefit of asking for solutions from people with no practical knowledge whatsover. All it does is make a mockery of a very bad situation."

Now this was in the Guardian the day after helicopters had dropped four bags of water - a few tons - over the reactors - the vast majority of which missed the target. The cooling ponds should contain hundreds of tons of water. When people saw this on video they reasoned - rightly IMHO - that the guys on site were starting to clutch at straws. The problems which were preventing them getting cooling water to the ponds were as much engineering issues as nuclear ones. You didn't need nuclear physics to realise that the issues involved getting a lot of water from A to B - where B is in a damaged building with high radiation levels.

So out came the third camp with their suggestions. Some were eccentric but still perhaps possible :

"Use water balloons... instead of trying to drop water by itself. Also it sounds stupid, but if there's something sold and wet to throw, then something like a trebuchet might be able to do it at much longer range than either a helicopter or a fire truck - they have a range of potentially several hundred metres, and it's a large target to hit."

Some were frankly insane as well as not addressing the problem :

"Subject all new models to standardized stress tests of operational full-sized plants recreating the actual effects of earthquakes, floods, and military attacks, singularly and as multiple events."

Hmm. A working, full-size nuclear reactor, and as a safety test you'll subject it to multiple military attacks? And you'll simulate a 9-scale earthquake how exactly?

"It just requires really big laboratories to contain the effects."

But there were a lot of possible ones. Why not attach a hose to a tethered blimp, and keep it suspended above the reactor with multiple guys ? Add cameras too. What about the giant construction cranes Japan has so many of - couldn't you get one over the reactors ? Firefighting boats attacking from seaward. Address the power shortage with a ship's generators.

"Surely they could rig some fire trucks to drive up and pump water"

"Drones for inspection - the US ones are pretty good"

"I would suggest using hydraulic concrete pump trucks to flood the spent fuel rod pools. They can be operated from ground level and reach a long distance both up and over."

And it came to pass :

"Six SDF fire engines resumed blasting the reactor with water shortly before 2 p.m. Friday and worked for about 45 minutes, the Defense Ministry said... Meanwhile, the Tokyo Fire Department dispatched 139 firefighters to the nuclear plant Friday with 30 vehicles, including ladder trucks and chemical fire engines, to aid the SDF's mission."

"A Global Hawk drone flew over Japan’s crippled Fukushima Dai-Ichi nuclear plant today to collect data and imagery for the Japanese government, said U.S. Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton Schwartz. "

"A vehicle with a long spraying arm injected water into the No.4 reactor at the troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for about 3 hours on Tuesday. The vehicle, owned by a construction firm in Mie Prefecture in central Japan, began the operation at 5:17 PM Tuesday at the request of the Tokyo Electric Power Company. The vehicle is used in construction of high-rise buildings, and is capable of extending its arm more than 50 meters to pour concrete.

TEPCO says 2 other similar vehicles are ready to join the water-spraying operations. "

The drone was deployed the same day as the Guardian piece, the firetrucks a few days later, the concrete pump only today. Whether anyone in Japan was reading the Guardian or not, the commenters there seem to be at least as good as TEPCO when it comes to bright ideas.

EU Borders

When the Glorious Tunisian Revolution took place in February, the first reaction of many Tunisians to their new world was to get the hell out to Europe. Between five and ten thousand illegal immigrants - "migrants" to the BBC - turned up in boats at the Italian island of Lampedusa.

Before the revolution Tunisian sea patrols intercepted and turned back boats heading for Europe. So did Libyan patrols, after a deal signed by Gaddafi and Berlusconi in 2009.

"Berlusconi promised to provide US$200 million a year over the next 25 years through investments in infrastructure projects in Libya. Italy provided three patrol boats to Libya on May 14, and has promised three more. Italy has also said that it will help construct a radar system to monitor Libya's desert borders, using the Italian security company, Finmeccanica.

Cosimo D'Arrigo, the commander of Italy's Finance Guard, said that the patrol boats would be "used in joint patrols in Libyan territorial water and international waters in conjunction with Italian naval operations," according to the ANSA news agency. So far, the joint patrols have succeeded in curtailing the flow of boat migrants to Italy."

Berlusconi, btw, has not AFAIK joined in the anti-Gaddafi chorus.

Gaddafi interpreted the deal broadly, and wasn't too fussy about the implementation:

"For Kwame Apeah, life as a migrant worker in Libya was good until about two years ago. 'For a while after I arrived, things were great. I had steady work, something I rarely had in Ghana, and I'd made Libyan friends,' he said. 'But then the police started cracking down on black workers in Tripoli. They didn't want to see us, and accused us of trying to reach Italy. Some friends were rounded up and thrown in jail. Another friend was shot in the arm,' he added."

North Africa has a large immigrant worker population. Most are sub-Saharan Africans who moved North hoping to find work either in North Africa or Europe, but there are also a large number of Bangladeshis.

The camp has a majority of single men, mostly labourers from from Bangladesh, Sudan, Somalia and Egypt. Aid agencies and Tunisian officials at the camp estimate the numbers to be 18,000, with 14,000 of them Bangladeshis. From the corner of the eye, you notice a Tunisian National Guard security official official stepping out of the shadows and tailing you. Time for a few questions, but he shoots first. ‘’What you doing here, nationality?’’ in halting English. Introductions done, he relaxes, lights a cigarette and gives you the inside story.

‘’There has been some fighting here between two groups,’’ he begins. You ask his name, he brushes aside the question. ‘’The Africans and Bangladeshis don’t get along, so we had to split them and keep them apart. The longer they stay here, the worse the situation will get.’’

The Africans and Bangladeshis don't get on, and neither do the sub-Saharan Africans and Libyans. Gaddafi's use of black mercenaries against his own people certainly hasn't helped, but the attitudes pre-date the uprising.

“There is a hierarchy of races.”

Blacks are widely referred to as “Abd,” or slaves*. Bangladeshis are viewed as little better, and even Arab Egyptians and Tunisians are considered to have limited rights. Migrant workers tell of the “gangsters” who hold foreigners at knifepoint in the Libyan streets, stealing their money and telephones with impunity. At night, said Francis Appiah, 35, a Ghanaian mason who fled the western Libyan city of Zuwarah, “you weren’t able to go out to buy anything,” for fear of attacks. He added that thieves had once stolen a DVD player, a television and speakers from his home. “I didn’t go to the police, because sometimes they arrest black people for no reason,” he said. His landlord once had Mr. Appiah arrested, he said, because he had requested payment for plastering the interior of the man’s house.

In Libya there are a million and a half illegal immigrants. In the Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya I don't think there are benefits or asylum to be had (Google "Libyan benefits system"), Gaddafi seeming to hold to the socialist maxim "if you don't work you die", so they all work.

Sub-Saharan Africans make up a vast majority of the estimated 1.5 million illegal immigrants among Libya’s population of 6.5 million, according to the International Organization for Migration. Many were desperately poor people made even more so by investments of up to $1,000 each to pay smugglers to bring them across Libya’s southern border for a chance at better work in its oil economy... They are trapped in part because most lack passports or other documents necessary to board a plane or cross the border. They say they are afraid to leave the airport or try their luck on the roads to the border for fear of assaults by Libyan citizens or at militia checkpoints.

“Qaddafi has brought African soldiers to kill some of them, so if they see black people they beat them,” said Samson Adda, 31, who said residents of Zawiyah, a rebellious city, had beaten him so badly that he could no longer walk.

I keep hearing about the massive unemployment in Egypt, Libya's next door neighbour, and I seem to recall that Gaddafi was once keen on uniting the two countries in an Arab Republic. Why on earth aren't 1.6m Egyptians working in Libya ? I guess illegal immigrants are cheaper and have fewer rights.

I digress. It's possible that, win or lose, there'll be another Camp Of The Saints style boat exodus to Europe. If Gaddafi wins, there's no knowing what he'd do. If he loses due to intervention the current hefty influx may well increase. The EU doesn't seem to be interested.

"More than 3,000 kilometers away, on the 22nd floor of a Warsaw skyscraper is Frontex, the EU agency charged with border security. It has no ships or helicopters of its own, nor any autonomous decision-making power. Contributions are entirely voluntary, meaning those most affected by immigration flows bear the brunt of the costs. On Feb. 20, Frontex launched operation Hermes, named after the winged Greek god, to assist the authorities in Lampedusa. Italy is providing the most equipment: two patrol boats and a plane.

“Frontex does not replace the border-control activities of members states as these are performed by, and remain the primary responsibility of the latter,” said Frontex spokesman Michal Parzyszek. Interior ministers from six EU countries near the Mediterranean Sea called on member states last month to back the creation of a special fund that will help them cope with an “uncontrolled” influx of immigration from Libya. Their appeal has gone nowhere."

UPDATE - BBC News :

23:44:Libyan state television cites a senior security source as saying that Libya has decided to "absolve itself from taking responsibility for stemming illegal immigration to Europe".

Not to mention :

"Libya will be practising its right of self-defence according to clause 51 of the UN Charter. Unfortunately, according to this, civilian and military targets in the air and sea will be liable to serious danger in the Mediterranean. Due to this flagrant military aggression and this irresponsible action, the Mediterranean and North Africa have become an actual theatre of war."

Gaddafi knows that if he loses, he loses big, so he's capable of trying anything. He'll try and take the temple roof with him. On the other hand, that kind of statement - a threat to attack civilian ships and aircraft - makes it easier to justify removing him "with extreme prejudice".





* as in Libya, so in Sudan.

Well Strike A Light

Last week I speculated that Cameronian foreign policy had given us the worst of both worlds, alienating Gaddafi but not injuring him, and had doubts about Aussie blogger and balance-sheet whizz John Hempton's view that the French were determined to protect their oil interests :

"Now he's (Hempton - LT) making me think again. Could it be that Cameron and Sarkozy have a cunning plan ? It would run contrary to Cameron's current performance, but the past is not necessarily a guide to the future and I suppose it's just theoretically possible. I'd like it to be true, but I think I'm entering into the realms of fantasy, as Captain Mainwaring would say."

As Angela Merkel and the EU machinery, led by one Cathy Ashton, led a chorus of disapproval, and the great and good told us that Russia and China would veto the idea anyway, the whole thing seemed unlikely (in any sense) to get off the ground.

Blimey.

"Well, the prime minister went out on a limb with Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president. They were so isolated at last week's European Council in Brussels that an adviser to Cathy Ashton, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, said those in favour of military intervention were guilty of "headline grabbing desperation".

A week, as the old Harold Wilson cliché goes, is a long time in politics. And so six days after the German chancellor Angela Merkel blocked any mention of a no-fly zone from the EU summit communiqué, the UN has authorised one."

Well I never. It's a whole new ball game from here on in, with plenty of possibility for chaos and confusion even should Gaddafi now lose. He's capable of owt. The resolution permits "all necessary measures" to impose a no-fly zone, protect civilian areas and impose a ceasefire on Kadhafi's military. I'd have thought that could include strikes on his ground forces.

I don't think we'll be seeing similar action in Bahrain. And here's a handy map of Libya's oil infrastructure.

Why There Aren't Many Illegal Immigrants In Japan

Japan has low levels of legal immigration and almost non-existent levels of illegal immigration, despite being, like Britain, a northerly, rainy trading island with global connections and excellent international transport links. It's a lot closer to a large number of poor people than the UK is, too. I bet there are more illegal Chinese immigrants in the UK than just over the water in Japan.

There's an interesting post on Japanese culture by Thomas Lifson at The American Thinker - an answer to Ed West's question "why is there no looting in Japan?" (about 3,400 comments and still rising - must be some sort of record). The author, who has lived in Japan, is not writing a piece about immigration, but this passage struck me :

"There is little urban anonymity. When I first lived in Japan on a work visa and had my own apartment in a residential neighborhood of Tokyo, in 1971, I was paid a friendly visit by a local policeman. It was a completely routine matter: police are required to keep track of every resident of their beats, and they want to know the basics, such as your work, your age, and your living circumstances. In my circumstances, immigration papers were also of concern, but for Japanese, it would be the koseki, a mandatory official family record kept on a household basis, reporting births, acknowledgements of paternity, adoptions, disruptions of adoptions, deaths, marriages and divorces. Every Japanese is not just an individual, he or she is officially is a member of a household (ie), and the state keeps track."

First of all, imagine the police in London, Bradford or Birmingham doing this ? I can't, either. They'd need backup.

Secondly, imagine keeping this kind of household record for the UK underclass, with the serial partners and fathers. Imagine the Copper or Inspector Gadget doing the interview and getting the whole tale of who did what to whom.

Not that I want to live in a society like that, mind. But the beauty of antediluvian Britain was that we didn't need the officer's clipboard to police ourselves. But "the fewer internal controls, the more external control there will be". Britain's internal, unspoken controls aren't what they were.

"Following the gathering of my information, the policeman no doubt returned to his local substation (koban), which are found every few blocks in urban areas, to record the information for his colleagues. To an American it seemed quite extraordinary, a violation of privacy. But in Japan a lack of anonymity is the norm.

Soon after the beat cop's visit to me, local merchants began nodding to me as I walked to and from the train station, as if they knew me and acknowledged me. I was fairly certain the word had gone out via omawari san (literally, the honorable gentleman who walks around, a polite colloquial euphemism for the police) that I was a Japanese-speaking American in Japan on legitimate, respectable grounds. For a year or so, I was a member of the community."

Remember, this is a huge capital city, a financial and industrial hub, not a small town. Another anecdote :

"... most contemporary Japanese have internalized a deep respect for private property, that is manifested in a ritual of modern life for children, one which we might do well to emulate. When a child finds a small item belonging to another person, even a one yen coin, a parent takes the child to the local koban and reports lost property. As chronicled by T.R. Reid in his wonderful book about living in Tokyo, Confucius Lives Next Door, the police do not resent this as a waste of time but rather see it as part of moral education, solemnly filling out the appropriate forms, thanking the child and telling him or her if the owner does not appear to claim the item, it will revert to the finder after a certain period of time."

Again, you could imagine that in the low-crime Golden Age That Never Was. But now ? The police would never have the time and would probably think you were taking the mick.

We had, once, the happy state where internal social controls (conscience, shame, self-esteem - 'we just don't do that') were so strong that external controls were not terribly visible or terribly intrusive. Japan make assurance doubly sure with strong internal AND external controls.

"Perhaps more successfully than any other people of the world, the Japanese have evolved a social system capable of ensuring order and good behaviour."

One Woe Doth Tread Upon Another's Heels ...

... so fast they follow.

Fire has again broken out at the quake-stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant in northern Japan. The new blaze began at reactor four... on Tuesday morning, a third blast hit the building of reactor two, while a fourth damaged the building of reactor four, where a fire also broke out in the unit's spent fuel storage pond. Reactor four had been shut down before the quake for maintenance, but its spent nuclear fuel rods were still stored on the site.

Officials said the explosions at the first three reactors, and possibly the fourth as well, were caused by a buildup of hydrogen. Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said officials were closely watching the remaining two reactors, as they had begun overheating slightly.

He said cooling seawater was being pumped into reactors one and three - which were returning to normal - and into reactor two, which remained unstable.

What ? Number 4's meant to have been closed down before ever the quake and tsunami hit ! And when was the first explosion in #4 (apparently just before the explosion in #2 yesterday)- we were told about a fire in the fuel storage pool, not an explosion ?

This morning it's not looking too good :

A rise in radiation levels at Japan's stricken Fukushima nuclear plant has forced workers to suspend operations, a government spokesman says. He was speaking after smoke was seen billowing from reactor three. Earlier, a blaze struck reactor four for the second time in two days.

Reactor 3 has uranium/plutonium fuel - you really don't want bits of plutonium in the air.

There are a lot of things that don't make a huge amount of sense to ignorant me :

1) how's the hydrogen being created for these explosions ? Is it created by the fuel's cladding reacting with steam or boiling water, which will create hydrogen only, or is it as some are saying thermal decomposition of water, which requires a temperature of 2000C and which will create hydrogen and oxygen (which are likely IMHO to recombine explosively the moment temperature or pressure drops - like when the core is vented) ?

2) where's the hydrogen coming from ? In #1 and #3 we know they were venting the pressure, so that's a source of H2 - although you'd think they'd put a hole in the roof of #3 to let it escape, following the bang at #1. But I'm not sure about #2 - did it ever get vented ? Yet it went pop all the same.

3) what's with 4, 5 and 6 needing more cooling? Presumably the residual heat is the problem.

4) so why are the pumps proving such an issue (other than that they've been subject to frequent explosions) - what's been the problem with getting more pumps and more power supplies on site? I presume they're pretty specialist beasts and you can't buy them at Machine Mart - but there are aircraft to collect them and helicopters to deliver, along with the fuel. Is there not enough of that specialist deionised, ultra-pure cooling water available ? Obviously not.

It would be nice if the reactor company could keep the Japanese people (and the rest of the world) updated, but I guess it's not exactly a priority. In a situation like this, when there's big trouble and it needs to be fixed fast if at all possible, the role of management is to keep everyone off the backs of the people doing the work, so that they don't have to waste time and mental energy on anything but what's in front of them.

UPDATE - if this is true, it's not looking good. Let's hope it isn't.

At the plant, desperate and improvisational measures have become the rule. Japanese Self-Defense Forces helicopters took off from a nearby base Wednesday afternoon carrying giant red buckets on a line used to scoop up seawater to douse the plant's Unit 3 reactor building. Tepco told nuclear safety officials they had no other way of cooling the reactor's fuel rods. Kyodo later reported that the helicopters were unable to drop water due to high levels of radiation.

"there seems to be something wrong with our bloody reactors today"

Reactor 3 carries out uncontrolled venting.

OK, so thanks to the commenters I grasped why the Japanese reactors were still hot despite having control rods. When you shut down, or SCRAM, a Boiling Water Reactor of the sort you find at Fukushima, there's still residual heat - because nuclear reaction products are in the fuel. These typically have short half-lives, which means they give off a lot of heat as they (quickly) decay.

When a nuclear reactor has been shut down, and nuclear fission is not occurring at a large scale, the major source of heat production will be due to the beta decay of these fission fragments. For this reason, at the moment of reactor shutdown, decay heat will be about 7% of the previous core power if the reactor has had a long and steady power history. About 1 hour after shutdown, the decay heat will be about 1.5% of the previous core power. After a day, the decay heat falls to 0.4%, and after a week it will be only 0.2%. The decay heat production rate will continue to slowly decrease over time; the decay curve depends upon the proportions of the various fission products in the core and upon their respective half-lives.

Sounds like they should cool down pretty quickly, I thought. I just hadn't realised how very powerful these beasts are. Fukushima reactor 1 (the one that went bang first) generates 439MW of electricity, and let's say it's 45% efficient (I gather that's on the high side, but it makes the mental arithmetic easier) - in other words only 45% of the heat produced gets turned into electricity, and our reactor is producing 1GW of heat.

"For this reason, at the moment of reactor shutdown, decay heat will be about 7% of the previous core power" - blimey, that's 70 megawatts. You'll burn your hand on that for sure !

"About 1 hour after shutdown, the decay heat will be about 1.5% of the previous core power." - it was I gather about 1 hour after shutdown that the tsunami struck and knocked out the cooling. Power would be 15 megawatts - or the same heat as 150,000 hundred-watt bulbs, or a 15,000-bar electric fire. Still pretty warm - you can see why the cooling would be missed.

"After a day, the decay heat falls to 0.4%" - 4 megawatts, not by any means cool.

"and after a week it will be only 0.2%" - "only" 2 million watts after a week !

Hmm. I don't know how much fuel is in the reactor, but at present, 3 days after shutdown, you've got say 3 megawatts of heat still being produced - and presumably, given the hefty shielding around the core, not being lost easily.

Uranium at 25C has a specific heat capacity of 27.665 J·mol⁻¹·K⁻¹ - in other words, it takes 27 joules of energy to raise the temperature of 1 mole of uranium atoms (say 238 grams) by one degree. Uranium melts at 1132 degrees C.

A watt = 1 joule per second.

OK, given no heat losses and a starting temperature of 132C, how much uranium could you melt in a day with 3 megawatts ?

3000000 x 24 x 60 x 60 = 2.592 x 10¹¹ joules in a day.

27,665 joules approx to raise 238 grams of uranium from 132C to melting point 1132C. Note that this assumes the heat capacity stays the same over that 1,000 degree temperature range. It probably doesn't, but we're just doing some rough approximations.

27665/238 = 116 joules to raise 1 gram of uranium by 1,000 degrees.

1.16 * x 10⁸ joules to raise a (metric) tonne of uranium to melting point.

Hmm. Given no heat losses and only uranium to melt, that looks like more than 2,000 tonnes a day ! I think a reactor has more like 50 tonnes in it. My maths may be awry, but if it ain't it certainly looks as if sans cooling a meltdown is not only possible, but likely.

UPDATE - apparently (thanks dearieme) the fuel is uranium dioxide, which has a higher MP (2865C) and a higher heat capacity of (approx - see above, the capacity varies with temperature) 85 joules per mole per degree. 270 grams per mole, 85*2600/270 to raise 1g from 265C to melting point. That's about 8.18 * x 10² joules to melt a gram, 8.18 * x 10⁸ joules for a metric tonne. One day's heat output at 3 Mw is still enough to melt about 250 tonnes of fuel.


UPDATE - reactor 2 goes pop. That's 1, 2 and 3 all had explosions. Those poor engineers must be sweating. Where's the nuclear Red Adair ?


UPDATE2 - the title is of course from Admiral David Beatty -

"It was at Jutland, after two British battlecruisers had blown up, that Beatty made his famous remark, 'There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatfield'"

Don't These Reactors Have Control Rods ?

Apparently the Japanese reactors are BWR reactors, where the control rods have to be inserted into the reactor from beneath rather than dropped in from the top. Wiki :

In most reactor designs, as a safety measure, control rods are attached to the lifting machinery by electromagnets, rather than direct mechanical linkage. This means that automatically in the event of power failure, or if manually invoked due to failure of the lifting machinery, the control rods will fall, under gravity, fully into the pile to stop the reaction. A notable exception to this fail-safe mode of operation is the BWR which requires the hydraulical insertion of control rods in the event of an emergency shut-down, using water from a special tank that is under high nitrogen pressure.

Did the earthquake damage the insertion mechanism or rupture the nitrogen pressure tank ? Or is it that even after full insertion of the control rods the beast needs continuous cooling ?

Anyone know ? Call me naive, but I assumed in the event of trouble you dropped the rods in (or in this case shoved them up) and that was that.

UPDATE - "is it that even after full insertion of the control rods the beast needs continuous cooling ?" is indeed the answer. As laid out in the post above, there's still residual heat - because nuclear reaction products are in the fuel. These typically have short half-lives, which means they give off a lot of heat as they (quickly) decay - but not quickly enough in the absence of cooling water flow.

The estimated death-toll seems to be rising rapidly. The images of the water rolling towards people and vehicles looked very nasty, and gave the impression of potential casualties in the thousands or tens of thousands. I've not been able to gather from the news how much time the people of Sendai and the north-east coast had to flee in between the earthquake and the tsunami.

Social solidarity seems to have been magnificent. I heard a TV report that supermarkets were cutting food prices, and couldn't but wonder if in similar case they'd be raised over here. I bet there's either none or very little looting. In the July 2007 UK floods, not only were many abandoned cars broken into, but when free packs of bottled water were left on the pavement for those who needed it there were reports of people loading hundreds of bottles into vans - presumably to sell.

Libyan Policy

If, as looks increasingly likely, Gaddafi wins the civil war in Libya, then the grovelling of the previous Blair/Brown administration will all have been wasted. I would tend to assume that BP's Libyan assets will be a a write-off - after all that sucking up, after the Megrahi release, after sending the SAS to train the Libyan army.

The attitude of the Cameron administration is just anti-Gaddafi enough to annoy him (and we saw from the Swiss affair that he will up the stakes when annoyed) but not anti-Gaddafi enough to damage him. He'll get the worst of both worlds. As Machiavelli put it :

"Men avenge slight injuries, but not grave ones"

The above analysis is based on the fact that Cameron's anti-Gaddafi moves (freezing assets, stopping arms sales, verbal condemnation) were all carried out in those days a few weeks back when bien-pensant opinion was that Gaddafi was doomed. Therefore he was jumping the gun, it's another Cameronian cock-up by a man better at posturing than governing, and BP and BAE (along with innumerable Libyans) will pay the price. Not only that, but he's sold off Ark Royal and scrapped the Harriers. If we did want to play rough with him, we haven't many options beyond a strongly worded diplomatic note other than a thermonuclear strike, a possibility which I think we can thankfully ignore.

But ho ! What is this ? By financial blogger John Hempton, a man with penetrating analysis when it comes to following the money. Total is the French oil company with close links to the French state.

"...it comes as a big surprise to see Total (ahem the French Government) recognizing the Libyan rebels as a legitimate nation and exchanging ambassadors. France does not sell arms to rebels or terrorists. Recognition of the rebels as a nation is a basis for supplying them weapons. France has gone further and is the major proponent of a no-fly zone. It has also advocated bombing Libya.

Given the very substantial French oil interests in Libya it is absurd to think that Sarkozy (first and foremost a French Nationalist) did this without either the tacit acceptance of Total or without Total's interests in mind. France is not keen to go to war (even with jets and no casualties) in support of American oil companies. They think differently about their own oil companies."

And, as Mr Hempton points out, British policy is not so far away from French.

Now he's making me think again. Could it be that Cameron and Sarkozy have a cunning plan ? It would run contrary to Cameron's current performance, but the past is not necessarily a guide to the future and I suppose it's just theoretically possible. I'd like it to be true, but I think I'm entering into the realms of fantasy, as Captain Mainwaring would say. I think Mr Hempton and I differ on what a "French nationalist" might look like, too - I'm not at all sure Sarko falls into that category.

UPDATE - if it's a cunning plan, it doesn't seem to have persuaded any of "our European allies".

Cameron tried and failed to have an explicit reference to no-fly zones and Nato in the summit statement... Merkel said Germany would not become "a party to a civil war in North Africa" and refused the British wording.

The disputes also involved the French president, who sounded defensive afterwards. Sarkozy's decision on Thursday to recognise the rebel leadership unilaterally was especially contentious, heavily criticised by east Europeans and by Merkel.

I suppose Sarkozy could always go it alone, arming the rebels and taking out a lot of Gaddafi's hardware. France probably has the military muscle. It would look somewhat obviously like an oil grab, though - and what of the currently out-of-the-news banlieus ? World opinion wouldn't like it either, though I'd discount Merkel's protests. After all, what can she do - invade Belgium ?

Libya Tribes

Useful Reuters breakdown of the tribes of Libya.

Egypt Goes A Tad Pyriform

Only a month ago it was all going so well.

I am watching wonderful and optimistic scenes on television of brave and cheering Egyptians in Tahrir Square. Eighteen days that shook the world where ordinary Egyptians faced down oppression and now Mubarak has GONE….. scuttled off to Sharm el-Sheikh. The Egyptian people have come so far and are an example for us all! Never give up!!

It marks the arrival onto the stage of history of the Arab masses as an actor rather than the passive and infantilised observers they had been for generations. The stranglehold of dictatorship has been broken from below. The Arab world shall never be the same.

I am writing this Sunday morning, February 6. For 12 days and nights now, millions of Egyptian women and men, Muslims and Christians, people of all ideologies and beliefs–the Egyptian people—have continued to unite under the banner of spontaneous popular revolution.

What particularly chuffed lefties over here was the apparent anti-Mubarak unity between Muslim and Christian, as well as the women protesters on the streets of Cairo.

The first little unpleasantness - the attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan in Tahrir Square on the evening of Mubarak's resignation. Then last Friday a Coptic Christian church was burned down after rioting over "a romantic relationship between a Christian man and a Muslim woman" - and local Muslims held prayers on the burned-out site.

The mob allegedly prevented the local fire brigade from entering the village. The priest of the small parish, and three deacons have been reported missing.

“Some of the Muslim mobs in the area took the land … and put a sign that it’s now a mosque,” Michael Meunier, President of the U.S. Copts Association, told Vatican Radio on March 8.

Christians protested at the attack in Cairo yesterday - and fighting broke out with Muslims in which 11 have died.

Meanwhile, in the centre of Cairo, at Tahrir Square they were celebrating International Women's Day.

More than 200 men charged on the women – forcing some to the ground, dragging others out of the crowd, groping and sexually harassing them as police and military figures stood by and failed to act.

Now one mustn't get too downhearted, early days yet and all that. But although Mubarak is gone and Cairo is off the front (and inside) pages, I don't get the impression that the power structures in Egypt have changed dramatically. The Army and police, secret and not so secret, haven't gone away AFAIK. And most importantly, I don't see anything telling me that the discontents so bravely voiced on the Cairo streets are likely to be satisfied soon. Young Egyptians remain over-educated and under-employed, a situation we're likely to see in the UK soon. I'm not sure that Mubarak's solution - "tight control, and tell them Israel is to blame for everything" will necessarily fly here, although it did well over 30 years for Mubarak.

It all feels a bit April 1917-ish from here. What rough beast or beasts (one is already resident) are yet to slouch their way to the Land of the Pharaohs ?

Sunday Sadness

Left, the monstrous East Stand, an Eighties addition to a previously open terrace which ruined the view of the pitch from the landings of Swansea Prison, seen in background. Front, a gaping void in the North Bank, the large terrace which could hold 10,000-plus fans in pre-Taylor Report days.

They're finally demolishing the Vetch Field, former home of Swansea Town, which has been standing empty for six years. The turf trodden by Ivor and Len Allchurch, John and Mel Charles, Terry Medwin, Cliff Jones (not to mention Dave Gwyther and Tony Millington), will become a 'landscaped area'.

Someone's pinched the clock.

There's something awfully sad about an abandoned football ground. I felt the same about Park Avenue, which for years remained empty in Bradford 7, the posts gone and the grass growing a yard high.



















Photo by ronaldaroo on flickr.

"Where now are the coaches and people ? where is the rattle a'rattling?
Where are the shirts and the scarves and the two sides battling?
Where is the roar and the chant, and the toilet roll throwing?
Where is the hand round the pint, and the cigarette glowing?"

The sporting landscape of a Swansea childhood is vanishing - at neighbouring St Helen's, the disappearance of the Mound Stand destroyed one of cricket's great pleasures - the ability to watch the sea and the shipping between deliveries. Then the old East Stand, recipient of a couple of Gary Sobers' six sixes, was demolished and replaced by what looks like an aluminium bus shelter. The stand overhung the Mumbles Road and was supported by pillars on the pavement, giving a cloister effect and shelter from rain. During the early Sixties wave of Welsh nationalism, the letters F R E E W A L E S ! were painted on the pillars. Within weeks some wag had painted out the W, and the pillars advertised free ales until demolition.