Faith and belief are marvellous things, aren’t they? I’ve never been one
for millenarianism or doomsday predictions. I never doubted for a moment that
my Apple Mac would see me through to the 21st century. I’m content to meet my Maker
when He (or She) decides the time has come, and I’d sooner not know the date in
advance, though I can see how some might want to. I don’t have a great deal of
faith in politicians – but I do have some sympathy for the impossible
situations democracy puts them in. They have to promise heaven and earth to get
elected, then have to back-pedal rapidly when post-election reality bites.
Hands up who really thought Barack Obama would be allowed to close Guantanamo
and stop the water-boarding.
So I’m not generally one to point the finger at politicians and accuse
them of breaking promises. I was pretty sceptical in the first place. And I’m
certainly not generally given to laughing at the misfortunes of others. Those
recent riots in cities across the UK looked pretty scary, and nothing can
excuse the burning of property and looting of businesses large or small. David
Cameron’s government re-established the rule of law, and good on him, you have
to say. However, I couldn’t help noticing that he pre-empted criticism by
referring to his own pre-election promise to mend Britain’s ‘broken society’.
It seems that ‘There are pockets of . . . society that are not just broken
but frankly sick’ which seemed to suggest that mending society might be
just a tad trickier than British voters had been led to believe. We need a
medical professional rather than a simple repairman. But then most of us knew
that already, right?
I’m not going to join the ranks of those who suggest that inequalities
of wealth distribution are the root cause of these riots, and other forms of
violent social unrest. I certainly do not intend to suggest that burning and
looting are understandable or acceptable responses to social injustice. In
fact, I want to agree 100% with Dave Cameron in his belief that pockets of
modern society are sick. On the other hand, I’m not sure he and I would agree
totally on which ‘pockets’.
 |
| Istanbul Park - former home of Turkey's Grand Prix |
My work-place is located on the southern outskirts of Istanbul, on the
Asian side of the city. It’s a pleasantly green spot still, despite the
building of airports, industrial complexes, monstrous shopping centres and
acres of two-storey villas with private swimming pools. A kilometre or so
across the fields from our campus stands Istanbul Park, the venue for the
Turkish Formula One Grand Prix. Most of the time it sits there, in patient
torpor, waiting for the one weekend a year when it will spring to life, and the
hills will echo to the whine of high performance engines operating at rpms that
would cause our Honda Jazz to melt down to a blob of metal and plastic.
I couldn’t help wondering what sort of money went into this project, so
I checked it out, and I can tell you that Istanbul Park was built in 2005 at a
cost of €80 million (about 200 million Turkish Liras at today’s rates). I went
to the Grand Prix in Auckland once. We didn’t see any spectacular crashes, and
we weren’t sitting in a corporate box being served chilled Dom Perignon and
crab claws, so maybe I didn’t get the full effect, but honestly, I couldn’t see
what all the fuss was about. Still, I’m not one to spoil other people’s fun.
Sadly for those other people, however, it seems that the 2011 Turkish Grand
Prix may actually be the last one to take place at Istanbul Park. Apparently
Bernie Ecclestone, head honcho of international Formula One racing, decided
to double the fees Turkey would be charged for hosting the race. The Turks said ‘%&$#?@ off!’ or
words to that effect, and that, it seems, is that.
Well, of course, running a business like Formula One racing costs money,
and no one would begrudge Bernie his right to make a living – but this spat did
come to mind when I saw a news item in July that the most expensive house in
the USA had just been sold to . . . Bernie’s 22-year-old daughter Petra.
Reports say the 5600 m2 house
in Bel Air, Los Angeles had been on the market for two years for $150 million,
but some tough negotiating got the sellers down to $85 million. I just hope
Petra’s making a generous donation to help those starving kids in Somalia. By
the way, for the sake of comparison, I read that Mr and Mrs Brad Pitt have just
put their California mansion on the market for a relatively modest $13.75
million. I guess at that level, the 0.75 is still important.
Nevertheless, one swallow doesn’t make a summer – and one sick
billionaire doesn’t make a sick society, right? But did you see that film,
‘Inside Job’ that won the 2010 Oscar for best documentary? As the Time
reviewers said: ‘If you’re not enraged by the end of the movie, you weren’t
paying attention.’ I’ve read a number of articles about a gentleman by the name
of Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group. Most sources agree that he
is a major player in the world of finance, and he has been quoted as saying in
a speech in March 2009, that 45% of the world’s wealth had been destroyed by
the global credit crisis. However, he took heart that the US government was
committed to the preservation of financial institutions (like his, one assumes)
and would do whatever it took to restart the economy. It’s hard to establish
exactly how much money Mr Schwarzman earns. Some sources say he made $5.1
billion in 2007, down to $702.4 million in 2008. Some say he took a 99% pay cut
in 2009 down to a paltry $350,000. Whatever the truth of it, it’s a fair bet
that a good chunk of that missing wealth ended up in his pocket. But somehow, I
suspect that’s not one of the ‘pockets’ David Cameron was referring to.
Getting back to Petra Ecclestone, and her generosity to the kids in
Somalia, don’t you find it interesting how a girl (or a guy) can make
mega-tanker-loads of money from some dodgy enterprise, then, at some later
date, donate large sums to a pet charity, and suddenly she’s on the fast track
to benefactor’s heaven? Back in 1992 a Hungarian born gentleman of Jewish
parentage by the name of George Soros achieved fame (or notoriety) as ‘the Man
who broke the Bank of England.’ Surprisingly, the ‘breakage’ didn’t involve
safe-cracking, ripping ATM machines from walls, armed holdups, or, in fact, any
violence at all. The technique is known in the trade as ‘short-selling’, and,
according to well-informed sources, it allowed George to pocket a cool $1.1
billion (whatever that was in sterling at the time).
Well, Wikipedia tells me that Mr Soros is ‘a financier,
businessman and notable philanthropist focused on supporting liberal ideals and
causes’, but it hasn’t always been so. Back in 1997, when Asian economies
suddenly began to crash, the Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir bin Mohamad,
went public with his opinion that the crash of Asian currencies had in fact
been caused by Mr Soros and his short-selling ilk. To be fair, it seems George
didn’t actually invent this dubious financial activity. That honour goes to a Dutch
merchant named Isaac le Maire, who, it seems, came up with the scheme in 1609.
Subsequently, the British Government banned it totally in the 18th century, but
more recently un-banned it. Some economists blame short-sellers for the Wall
Street Crash of 1929, and the US Government passed regulations controlling it –
which, apparently, were also repealed in July 2007. Any significance in that
date, I wonder? Still, you can’t blame a guy for making a buck any way he can –
but again, I feel pretty sure that Dave Cameron wasn’t referring to George
Soros’s pockets when he sought the cause of the UK riots. Interestingly, one of
united Europe’s attempts to save their common currency has recently involved
the banning of short-selling in Belgium, France, Italy and Spain.
If you don’t live in the Southern Hemisphere, you probably don’t care
overmuch, but New Zealand is about to play host to the 2011 Rugby World Cup
Tournament. Old guys like me can actually remember when rugby was still an
amateur sport, but these days, it sure as hell isn’t. Professionalism, as you
know, means a whole lot more than merely paying the players to play. Commercial
sponsors are the life-blood of professional sport – but there are times when
they seem to lose sight of the fact that, without the nameless millions of
supporters, blood wouldn’t flow. Sportswear giant Adidas is one of the
major sponsors of the Rugby World Cup, and they have recently upset rugby fans
in New Zealand by offering to sell replica ‘All Black’ uniform jerseys for $NZ220.
Quite steep, you might think, especially with the current strength of the NZ
dollar – and most NZ rugby fans thought so too, more so when they found the
jerseys were available online for about half the price . . . until, that is, Adidas
managed to close the sites to purchasers in New Zealand.
Still, manufacturers are entitled to earn a fair living too, and, as the
Adidas people have pointed out, they invest a good deal of money in New
Zealand rugby. On the other hand, most Adidas products are produced in
Asian factories where workers typically earn around $1 an hour. It’s been
estimated that the cost of producing the replica All Black jerseys in a Chinese
factory is approximately $8 – which leaves a tidy profit for the owners and
shareholders of Adidas to pocket. But I don’t suppose David Cameron was
referring to those ‘pockets’ either.
Back when I was a lad, science fiction was a popular literary genre.
There were some prophets of doom, but, on the whole, there was a strong feeling
around in those days that science had, or would soon have, the answers to most
of the world’s problems. Labour-saving devices would remove the drudgery from
human existence, the green revolution would do away with famine and starvation,
and anyway, if by chance we weren’t able to solve all the problems on earth,
such as over-population, it wouldn’t be long before we set up colonies on the
Moon, Mars, or other extra-terrestrial real estate. The future was generally
expected to be Utopian.
Well, somehow, it doesn’t seem to have worked out that way. A recent Time
magazine article[1] on rapidly increasing global food
prices suggests that the only way for prices from here is further up.
Increasing population, climate change, the channeling of food-growing land to
bio-fuel production and falling water tables will all contribute to a
continuing rise of demand over supply. ‘Enjoy your dinner tonight,’ the writer
concludes. ‘While you can still afford it.’
So it seems that technology isn't going to save us after all, and you’d
have to think that most of the major techno-companies in the world have figured
that out. Make your buck while you still can, they seem to have decided. Get
cell phones into the hands of the Somalian public, and at least they’ll be able
to keep in touch while they’re dying of starvation. I guess it’ll be a while
before they can afford self-driving cars, but the rest of us have that to look
forward to – once the automobile industry gets the bugs ironed out. Despite the
entry of Google into the market, I’m backing the Germans to sort out
that technology first. Apparently Google’s self-drivers are still
tail-ending each other on the testing circuit.
Well, if technology hasn’t got the answers after all, what’s a person to
do? Surely there must be hope somewhere. Luckily, there is, and, according to
another recent Time article [2], a lady by the name of Michele Bachmann
has the matter in hand. Michele has stormed on to the scene as the possible
Republican nominee to contest the US Presidency, and she’s hot! Apparently God
Himself thinks so, because, so she says, ‘She’s hot for Jesus Christ.’ This
divine support has clearly struck a chord with Middle America – probably some
of those recently disappointed by the failed doomsday predictions of Harold
Camping. The Time writer quotes one of Ms Bachmann’s supporters, a
certain Becky Magee, as saying, ‘I think Jesus is coming to get us. I think
we’ll be raptured soon.’
Now I’m going to make a confession here, and confide in you that, until
May 22, the day after Harold Camping and his flock attracted media attention
because the world didn’t end as they had expected, I had always thought rapture
had something to do with sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. But the world has changed
in many ways, and even my MS Word dictionary hasn’t caught up with the
new usage, as evidenced by the squiggly red line underneath the word when I
typed it. Microsoft’s best suggestion was, in fact ‘ruptured’, which may
not be far from the truth. My trusty old Chambers lexicon at least
provided a range of options:
Rapture: a seizing and carrying away [it says], extreme delight,
transport, ecstasy, a paroxysm (a fit of extreme pain, laughter, passion,
coughing, etc)
From Latin – to seize and carry off [3]
Well, much as I’d like to think Jesus or some other omnipotent immortal
would come and save the world from the consequences of our greed and stupidity,
I just can’t seem to get my head around the concept. I have to say, it seems
more likely to me that we’ve had the ‘Rapture’; the good old days are over, and
we’d better start figuring out ways to save ourselves and Planet Earth, because
time, I reckon, is running out.
_____________________________________________
No comments:
Post a Comment