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TALLRITE BLOG
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| July 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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ISSUE #130 - 23rd July 2006 [159+106=265]
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Hamas/Hizobllah/Syria/Iran: an Evil Continuum It is hard to see, and frightening to imagine, where the current conflict in Gaza, and especially Lebanon, might be leading.
This is the continuum that Israel has currently to contend with, with approval, advice, arms and perhaps even active servicemen flowing up the chain from Iran to Syria to the two terrorist organizations. There has also been some evidence that Iran is actively participating in the fighting in Lebanon, with suggestions that it was Iranian soldiers who launched two advanced Iranian C-807 missiles that damaged an Israeli naval ship and sank a Cambodian one several kilometres away. Indeed as Daniel Ayalon, Israel's ambassador to the US points out, Hamas and Hezbollah have access to an array of “radar-guided missiles, long-range missiles, and all kinds of sophistication that gives them really strategic capabilities. So for the first time in history, we see a terror organization with state-like capabilities, with strategic capabilities, and they, for all practical purposes, are the proxies of both Syria and Iran” All this helps both to explain the frenzy of Israel's fighting and to suggest the direction in which it might well lead. Israel's main objective is to neutralise the military capabilities of Hezbollah, and by extension Hamas. This means not only trying to kill its members and destroy its weapons, buildings and other support infrastructure - which because this is all hidden deliberately among civilians leads to dreadful civilian casualties - but also preventing their resupply. This is the reason for disabling Beirut's airport, ports, international roads and mounting a naval blockade. If Israel is successful, the war will come to a close in (hopefully) a matter of only days or weeks. But if Syria and Iran succeed in resupplying their terrorist clients, Israel will be faced with a terrible choice.
Enfeebled Syria is not the issue here, Iran is. For it raises the whole nuclear issue. None but the most blind by now doubt that Iran is hell-bent on developing nuclear weaponry. This is a hugely energy-rich country with 136 years worth of oil and gas reserves, which has absolutely no need for the hugely costly nuclear energy that it claims is the sole purpose of its nuclear activities. Rather, the theocratic leadership want to remain in unassailed charge of Iran, Iran to be the big, Shi'ite power in the region, and Israel to be “wiped off the map”. The mullahs are convinced that the only way to achieve all this is through the acquisition and use (on Israel) of nuclear bombs and missiles. And they are of course right: that is the only way. Thus the years of “negotiating” with the EU, the UN Atomic Energy Agency, the Security Council or anyone else over the curtailment of their nuclear programme have been no more than posturing, designed - most successfully - to buy time while the work continues. This awful realisation leads to only one pair of alternatives for the world to consider.
In May 1940, Winston Churchill made his famously defiant speech that the British people “will fight on the beaches ... in the fields ... in the streets ... in the hills ... we shall never surrender”. The alternative that Britain faced was the horror of Nazi subjugation, which was thus to be resisted “whatever the cost”. But he was not talking about the systematic killing of every Englishman in the land once Hitler arrived (a fate reserved only for the Jews, gays, gypsies and disabled). Israel today should be so lucky. Because defeat would not lead to subjugation but to Holocaust II - the inevitable, pre-decided death of every Israeli. So Israel's is a truly existential battle, one which no other nation on earth faces - or has faced for centuries. So if the day ever comes when it is necessary to choose between the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities or the defeat of Israel, we all know what Israel will decide. It is no coincidence that it seems for some time to have been building up a forward base in the relatively peaceful Kurdish region of northern Iraq which abuts Iran. That is why we must hope that Israel will be successful in crushing Hezbollah and Hamas and keeping Syria and Iran at bay. The need for crushing such an adversary and not merely reaching a cease-fire is eloquently illustrated in an allegorical little anecdote, “A difficult lesson”, about a bar-room brawl in Manila that I recommend you read. If Syria and Iran are not kept at bay, that epitome of evil that is the Hamas/Hezbollah/Syria/Iran continuum will inevitably lead to an Israeli bombing raid on Iran's nuclear installations, with untold results for the Middle East and the world. There are some, though, who would argue that this is would however be the lesser of two very bad outcomes. I'm not sure where I stand.
Listing in the right-hand border of this page the books that I am reading reveals how slowly I read them. Trying to summarise them before I have finished them also shows how I can get the wrong end of the stick. So in future, no substantive comment until I've finished the book. I've just finished Matt Simmons' “Twilight in the Desert”. It's somewhat scary thesis is
Since Saudi Arabia is the world's biggest producer, and also its so-called swing producer, the collapse of its oilfields would have enormous repercussions for the world's economy. The Saudis have always been notoriously secretive about their oil producing industry, a trait they inherited from Aramco. This company was the consortium of Exxon, Mobil, Chevron and Texaco which ran the oil business until it was fully nationalised in 1980, when the name was changed to Saudi Aramco, the original partners remaining as technical advisers. Aramco had an incentive to hide reservoir data so that they could produce as much oil as possible, without regard to good reservoir management, prior to getting nationalised. Since then, Saudi Aramco and the Saudi government have had no wish for outsiders to learn that perhaps the health of their industry is by no means as robust as they have been telling everybody for decades. Thus, only the most bland, reassuring, unverified data is conveyed to the outside world, via occasional glossy brochures or stage-managed press conferences.
However, Saudi Aramco engineers and scientists have long published information about solely technical matters, once all the identifying data has been removed, and many of these papers are permanently available via the Society of Petroleum Engineers. The author's clever trick has been to analyse over 200 purely technical papers over the past 40 years, and from these to “join the dots” between diverse field data, production information and challenges encountered, in a manner that was never intended when the papers were approved for publication by Saudi Aramco management. For example,
The author learns that 84% of Saudi's oil comes from just three so-called “super-giant” fields, Ghawar, Safaniya and Abqaiq, that no other super-giants have been discovered since the 1960s, and that their performance is measurably deteriorating in exactly the same manner that all ageing fields degrade. He claims the effect of this will be a sudden, precipitous - and imminent - drop in production rather than a steady, manageable decline. Moreover, the hundred or so other oilfields discovered since the 1940s can by no means fill the shoes of the three super-giants. He points out that as an oil producing province, the USA was on a par with Saudi Arabia, in that at its peak it produced around nine million barrels a day in 1970-85 (since declined to six million). Saudi Arabia reached nine million just as the US began to decline, and various sources estimate it remained at this level until recently when it exceeded ten million barrels a day. (Because you cannot believe production figures provided by the Saudi government, a bizarre method of estimating them is to secretly count the tankers that leave Ras Tanura, its main export terminal). Meanwhile, claims that reserves have kept up with production are preposterous in light of the many technical problems being consistently reported in those engineering and scientific papers, coupled with the lack of big new discoveries (that the Saudis would surely brag about). He believes - and I would agree - that the Saudis are seriously remiss in keeping secret such information about a resource that is so vital to the welfare of the world. A pessimist, he also believes that no amount of today's enhanced technologies and efficiencies, from seismic to drilling to production to computer modelling, will ever be able to compensate for the production crash that is coming, spearheaded by the three super-giants. He is right to a degree, but misses two important points. Firstly, for all its talk and technical papers about embracing - if not leading - new oilfield technology, Saudi Aramco is still addicted to easy oil. It has simply not yet had to apply the latest advanced seismic, precision drilling and sophisticated production techniques to seek out and produce tiny pockets of hidden oil, one by one by one, barrel by barrel, at an economic cost. This is a whole new world of which it is largely ignorant. Matt Simmons has greatly overestimated Saudi Aramco's embrace of new technology. I know this because I recently worked for several years in next-door Oman, whose oil production is perhaps 6% of Saudi Arabia's, yet from a greater number (120) of oilfields. Its relatively meagre production is desperately dependent on just such technologies, and it was apparent from brotherly visits to and from the Saudis that this is an area far removed from their own necessities and experience. Secondly, and related to Saudi's history of easy oil, is the issue of number of wells. The Saudis have drilled just 8,700 wells, as we have seen. For comparable oil quantities, America had no fewer than 600,000 oil wells producing in 1996, which if you include abandoned wells implies that a considerably higher total number had been drilled over the hundred preceding years. This means that with perhaps 1% of the well count, Saudi Arabia has roughly matched, if not exceeded, America's oil production. Each Saudi well is averaging 1,149 bbl/day, compared with barely 10 bbl/day in the US. Turn that round the other way: Saudi Arabia should be planning on increasing its well count by a factor of a hundred, in order to find and squeeze out every last drop of oil under the sand. It can be done; the technology is there. But it will represent a massive investment, which however will yield a massively miserable return, by the crazy standards the Saudis have become accustomed to. Will the spoiled princes bring themselves to spend “their” money on anything like the scale required? I very much doubt it. But if and when they choose to open up their fields to the international private sector on sensible terms, there will be hundreds of willing and canny investors out there only too happy to work for a return that is only 1% of what a Saudi oil well yields today. The more so at $70+ a barrel. And it will happen. Just as soon as the super-giant production levels start dropping off the edge of that precipice just ahead, and the princes start to panic. Matt Simmons is too gloomy. He fails to take account of human ingenuity coupled with human greed. At the end of the day, oil is found not in the ground but in that unfathomable, inexhaustible reserve, the human mind. The book itself is over 400 pages long, poorly structured, riddled with repetition and has too sketchy an index. Had it been edited properly, it could have been a hundred pages shorter and with a much easier-to-follow, more punchy narrative. These complaints notwithstanding, it undoubtedly breaks new and valuable ground. It has apparently already upset the Saudis a lot, which is a good sign. You might also like to have a look at an
earlier post,
I've had duels this past week with a couple of Ireland's revered, Left-leaning Senators, Brendan Ryan and David Norris, whose writings I objected to (as they, no doubt, to mine!).
However he then wandered on to the legality of Hamas's and Hezbollah's activities, Israel's “occupation” and settlements, Palestinian prisoners and - bizarrely - Rachel Corrie. My letter disabusing him of this rubbish went unpublished, so I sent it directly to him. No reply yet. Then it was the turn of the revered Senator Norris, who is openly gay and a wonderfully articulate Joycean scholar. He wrote, sarcastically,
I pointed out his incoherence in apparently absolving of responsibility the governments of Palestine and Lebanon who openly allowed the militants of Hezbollah and Hamas to train, get armed and attack Israel's sovereign territory. With Islamism unresisted, as he would advocate, what, I asked him, does he think will happen to gays, for example, when the Caliphate eventually stretches to Dublin? Again, this normally voluble senator remains silent. Details in Week 130's Letters to the Press below.
A couple of week back, a young Italian woman in her early 30s was raped in a Berlin field by a 1.85m (6ft 1in) grim-looking older Frenchman, in front of countless witnesses. Everyone saw what happened, and it wasn't a pretty sight seeing the poor girl lying there helpless, writhing in pain as her assailant, his malign deed done, walked smugly away. In due course the Frenchman received his punishment which included a fine of 7,500 Swiss francs. And I am glad to note that the Italian girl was also fined, albeit a lesser amount of 5,000 Swiss francs. Serves her right. You see she was wearing a pair of cute blue hot-pants with matching skin-tight T-shirt and, as we all know, men become seized by uncontrollable lust when they see this kind of wanton provocation. So such women must at least share the blame for getting themselves raped in such a cavalier fashion. Provocation deserves rape. Oh, oh, I'm getting mixed up. It appears the Italian woman was in fact an Italian man, the provocation was some insulting words, and the assault wasn't a rape, it was a head-butt. Still, same principle. ... ... ... ...
Week 130's Letters to the Press Two unpublished letters this week, which I talked about in my above post, the one with the dreadful pun, Duels with Dual Senators. I hope - but doubt - they will lead to further dialogue with the senators concerned.
- - - - - - - - - - I S R A E L I N L E B A N O N ---------- Quote: “The irony is, what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over ... I felt like telling Kofi to get on the phone with Assad (Syria's President-for-life), make something happen.” President Bush,
caught by an open microphone chatting to Tony Blair Mr Putin was filmed
smirking. Quote: “The first thing that must be addressed is cessation of terror before we even talk about cessation of hostilities. When you operate on a cancerous growth, you do not stop in the middle, sew the patient up and tell him ‘keep living with that growth until it kills you’. You make sure it is totally removed.” Dan Gillerman,
Israel's ambassador to the UN, Quote: “These have not been surgical strikes. It's very, very difficult to understand the kind of military tactics that have been used ... You know, if they're chasing Hezbollah, then go for Hezbollah. You don't go for the entire Lebanese nation.” Suddenly Britain's
Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells, He later sought
discussions with Israel aimed at finding a diplomatic solution. - - - - - - - - - - N O R T H K O R E A - - - - - - - - - - Quote: “The firing of the Taepodong-2 constituted no crisis, because it was not aimed at any particular party ... There is no reason to fuss over this from the break of dawn like Japan, but every reason to do the opposite.” The official
website of
Roh Moo-hyun, the president of South Korea,
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ISSUE #129 - 16th July 2006 [233]
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Ireland's About-to-Crash Housing Boom Property prices are mad in Ireland
and Dublin.
What is being demanded bears little or no relation to the intrinsic value of
what is being offered. A tiny two-bedroom flat? €600,000.
A larger two-bedroom apartment which d Until a decade or so ago, a family's home could be bought and the mortgage paid out of one salary, typically the father's, and this more or less set a yardstick for house prices. But many things have changed in Ireland's boom years, which have combined to increase almost exponentially the amount of capital that a family can now raise to buy its home. And the amount of capital needed to buy a home has risen in concert, by almost 250% according to this chart from The Economist. Firstly, average incomes have raced ahead and Ireland's economy has blossomed. Using real GDP per head as an indicator, they have nearly doubled in real terms from $18,500 in 1996 to $27,200 in 2000 to $34,300 in 2004. Secondly, it is increasingly common that both partners work, which means there are now two salaries to meet the monthly payments. Thirdly, parents, sitting smugly in houses that have soared in value, are releasing some of this new found wealth to help their children buy homes, Fourthly, people have had to shrink their aspirations - they are now prepared to live in pokey flats rather than comfortably sized semi-detached houses with gardens, Fifthly, in search of affordable housing, they are moving out further and further from the cities where they work, accepting commutes of up to three hours in some cases. And sixthly, there is financing. A large deposit, a 20-year mortgage and a bad-tempered bank manager are now a thing of the past. To encourage buyers, the newly friendly banks will now provide mortgages that feature
On top of all that, interest rates have been at historic lows for the past decade, ranging between 2 and 4%, which in real terms is barely above zero. But this cannot continue. All homes are ultimately bought out of people's incomes. Squeezing out ever more cash at a rate faster than your salary increases cannot go on forever. We're reaching the end of the road. You have only one spouse, your parents have only one house, you can't shrink your living space to nil, you cannot commute for ten hours a day. Interest rates cannot sink below zero, and a 100-year mortgage, that you bequeath to your children, is not something many banks are going to offer you. About the only step-change left is to reduce the per-unit price by building skyscraper apartment blocks like you see in Hong Kong or New York. But the city-planning bureaucrats in Ireland are so ultra-conservative, that hell will freeze over before they permit that. So an Irish housing crash is undoubtedly just round the corner. I would estimate by the end of this year. It may or may not be part of a global crash, because prices in the US, Australia, Britain and parts of Europe are likewise overpriced, though perhaps not to the same degree. Of course, everything here still looks rosy on the housing market - but that is the distinguishing feature of every boom. A boom always looks like it will never end, so people keep on investing heavily, whether in Wall Street in 1928 or in oil in 1984 or in dot-coms in 1999. Because the moment that a few people begin to feel that there might just be a little bit of a wobble, everyone suddenly wants to get out while the going is good, and the boom turns abruptly into a crash. (Similarly, a depression always looks never-ending when you're in one. You can never see the recovery coming, which is always gradual, with no upward crash. Hence those bumper stickers, “Oh Lord, give me just one more boom, and I promise not to piss it all away this time”.) So if you're reading this and need a house - DON'T BUY! Wait a few months for the market to collapse and meantime rent a place instead (rents are cheap) - you won't need to sign up for more than a year. And if you're thinking of selling? Do it NOW. You won't regret it.
Why Won't Feminists Fight Islam? Sex-obsessed Islamism encourages a lot of unpleasant behaviour against women, largely underwritten by the Koran's stricture that they're worth only half a man (2:282). In strongly Islamic regimes, women have to go around in a shroud from head to toe, chaperoned by a male relative, unable to look at - much less shake the hand of - a male, not allowed to drive. As young girls, they undergo the torture of female genital mutilation solely to prevent them enjoying sex in later life and thus wandering off to find some. Most marriages are arranged and woe betide the girl who objects. In Iran little girls can be wedded and bedded at just thirteen; and polygamy is fine too (4:3) - for men only of course. Husbands are allowed under the Koran to beat their wives at will (4:38) and to divorce them unilaterally (2:230). All these rules boil down to one thing: Sex. Males can have it as much as they want; females only to the extent their menfolk choose. Men seem to be so utterly insecure and overridingly preoccupied with sex, that they are convinced that without stern oversight their women will stray at the slightest opportunity - a coup d'oeil towards or from a boy is enough. So everything is geared to prevent this. There is just one punishment for a woman's sex offence, whether it be a glance, a kiss, a refusal to marry, an elopement, a willing fornication, or indeed being raped, or indeed being merely suspected of any of these things. That punishment is death, a so-called honour killing, usually administered proudly by a close male relative such as her father or brother; or occasionally the woman is persuaded to purge herself by becoming a suicide bomberess instead. If the state itself is involved, public stoning or beheading are the norm, or flogging if the Sharia judge is feeling merciful. Oh, and of course there is no question of abortion, that icon of Western feminism. Islam abhors abortion, and will thus impose the usual sanction on a woman who so indulges. In strong contrast, Feminists in the West have made fantastic advances for the lot of women in the past forty years or so. Freed by the pill and abortion from obligatory multiple child-rearing, women have been able to secure education, personal development and all the material benefits, such as work advancement, that follow from it, along with sexual freedom to match men's. They are no longer second-class citizens; they have equal rights that they could not have dreamed of in earlier times. The Feminists' victory on behalf of all women has been so complete that most men utterly concur that they deserve those equal rights and it is inconceivable that the gains could be reversed. But it has created a dilemma. Having won total victory, what are Feminists for any more? They no longer have a real cause, so they tend to waste their time on all kinds of trivial and politically correct pursuits and trouble-making. After victory in conventional war, both sides generally demobilise their armies - but not it seems the Feminists. Yet they won't touch Islamism. They won't acknowledge
If you want a flagrant example of their disdain for the fight against Islamism, look how the Dutch establishment has hounded out of the country the Somali-born, Dutch-naturalised member of the Netherlands parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, with nary a whimper from the Netherlands' strong feminist movement. Her crime? Exposing Islamism as a woman-oppressing ideology and campaigning to defeat it. She was the lady who wrote the script for “Submission”, the movie that resulted in the brutal assassination of its director Theo van Gogh. Instead, under the rubric of relativism, Feminists in the West think that Islam is merely part of a different culture worthy of the same respect as any other culture, and certainly no worse than the Western culture they despise. As a result, they tend to align themselves with Muslims, as if Muslims and women are all part of one community singularly victimised by the white Judeo-Christian male establishment. Instead, Feminists should be in the vanguard of the war on terror, which is in practice a war against Islamic fundamentalism. There is no activity on earth that is likely to improve the lot of women more than the defeat of Islamism and its replacement by a more enlightened, interpretative, tolerant Islam operating freely, like Christianity, within secular states. Earlier in the year, I wrote about the Islamicist “Elephant in the Feminists' Room”, and I intended this to be a follow-up post. But in researching it, I came across a magnificent piece by “Feminism is AWOL on Islam”, which expresses everything I wanted to say but so much better. So if this subject has caught your imagination, I strongly recommend you read Ms Hymowitz's article in full. So why won't feminists fight Islamism, even just with words? I truly cannot understand.
The Redoubtable Madame Tussaud Hardly anyone has not been to Madame Tussaud's waxworks in London, and the few who haven't have nearly all been to waxworks elsewhere that seek to emulate the illustrious lady. But who was Mme Tussaud? Born Marie Gosoltz in Strasbourg in 1761 into straitened circumstances, the Madame was a very flinty, hard nosed woman who really deserves our admiration because, against many personal, commercial and cultural setbacks, she arguably established one of the biggest brands in the world, if not the first brand. Her life is the ultimate grand scale success story. She did not invent the idea of a waxworks exhibition; she got this from a very charismatic showman, Philippe Curtius, for whom her mother worked as a cook in Paris. Her soldier-father had been killed two months before her birth, in the disastrous (for France) Seven Years War. Curtius was first a doctor and then later became a highly skilled wax-modeller. He acquired this craftsmanship because at that time, anatomical wax models were very much in demand at medical schools for research and to explain the intricacies of the human body to medical students. There were also other markets for wax models.
However, at the urging of a wealthy patron who said the doctor could make a fortune applying his wax modelling skills in a more worldly direction, Curtius began to look for a more lucrative outlet and hit upon the idea of a waxworks exhibition. His “Salon de Cire” at the Palais Royale in Paris turned out to be a roaring success. The 1870s and 80s were an extraordinary time in France's capital: a vibrant, colourful, exciting world. There was a real buzz about the place, a passion for fashion and a fascination with the famous and infamous, full of advertising and shopping and designers and lionised hairdressers. Wonderful shows and weird entertainments were all the rage, replete with marionettes, strange animals, freaks, frauds, fakes and frog-eaters. And there was nothing the punters liked more than a good model of a well-known bloodthirsty murder or execution, at which Curtius excelled. People were entranced by the duality of glamour and gore in a kind of proto-tabloid frenzy. In its own way, Paris in the 70s and 80s was not unlike swinging London in the 1960s. Moreover, wax effigies in 18th century Paris were the first opportunity for many members of the public to study likenesses of the monarchy and other powerful figures in detail. This set in motion the process by which royalty became regarded increasingly as ‘normal’ people and celebrities became the new objects of admiration. For their part, the celebrities themselves – and others – began to see wax modelling as a way of preserving their own mortality, an alternative or complement to portraiture, which only added to the popularity of waxworks. Young Marie grew up in the middle of this environment, soaking it all up, for Curtius took her under his wing, teaching her everything he knew about wax-modelling and running a successful exhibition. A speciality was models of bloodied heads fresh from the guillotine during the French Revolution. Once she grew up, Marie continued to work closely with him. When the doctor died in 1795, he generously left Marie his entire “Salon de Cire”, which by then had become quite famous in France. Not long after, she married an engineer, François Tussaud, who however remains something of a mystery. She continued to run the Salon in Paris for the next few years, but in 1802 decided leave France - and her hapless husband - behind. She brought the exhibition to England where she quickly began to replicate its French success. People’s fascination for glamour and gore was, it seemed (and seems), universal. She had by then developed a most extraordinary gift for public relations and advertising, and one of the first self-publicity things she did in England was to reinvent and upgrade her background and status. She let it be known that she was of aristocratic stock, had lived at Versailles and was once private art tutor to the sister of Louis XVI. As well as relentless name-dropping, she also cleverly let drop that she was personally present at the guillotining of fellow aristocrats during the French revolution, which added authenticity and spice to her wax models of the unfortunate victims and their severed heads. She was brilliant at understanding what people were willing to pay to see and a tough manager when it came to parting them from their money. But for 33 years, she lived an exhausting and precarious life as a travelling showman, moving from town to town with her caravans, organising, advertising, and encouraging newspaper anecdotes, or setting up charity benefits to bring in useful patrons. She suffered shipwreck in the Irish Sea, and fire during riots in Bristol. Yet, throughout the travelling years, she constantly introduced new figures and scenes. A big hit was her travelling tableaux, in which she recorded newsworthy events, at a time when few people had access to newspapers and newspapers anyway were virtually without illustration. These included an especially popular array of criminals, murder victims and tortured wretches in the exhibit hall that Punch dubbed the “Chamber of Horrors” (a powerful magnet - especially for small boys). Most people in the early nineteenth century were habitually deprived of visual information and had no chance of proximity to famous people and events. For them, therefore, Madame Tussaud’s three-dimensional full-colour lifelike lifesize models represented an absolutely stunning innovation for the senses. Tableau journalism indeed. It was very compelling to be able to see what people actually looked like, warts and all, both past and present. She did however acquire something of a reputation – to this day – for liking blood and guts, and many people still form a mental image of her sitting primly with a bloody head on her lap. In 1835, she finally stopped travelling and acquired permanent premises in Baker Street, London. (Fifty years later her grandson moved the exhibition to its current address in Marylebone Road). Her enduring exhibition in
England, and its imitators, helped to spawn the concept of the household
name and the adoring fan. The renown of Madame Tussaud's Waxworks spread,
and the masses began to demand more and more information Her exhibition went on and on; nobody tired of it; and it still endures more than a century and a half beyond the redoubtable lady's death in 1850, in her ninetieth year. Today, of course, Madame Tussaud's is a worldwide brand, with five different exhibitions on three continents, including North America. And its Chamber of Horrors is still a star attraction - and not just for small boys.
I can't believe it is four long years since I started blogging on 14th July 2002 - but it is. Probably like most bloggers, I found it a lot easier in the beginning. I had a pile of issues that had been building up inside me over many years (if not decades), so blogging was a great way to get them off my chest. It's harder now, though, because the original reservoir has largely dried up, so I have to keep thinking up new stuff. I guess professional writers are faced with this all the time - but then they get paid for it! Meanwhile, onwards and upwards.
Late Note (19th July):
Week 129's Letters to the Press A reliable way of getting letters published - even when they ran contrary to a newspapers' party line - has in the past been to quote reliable, verifiable facts and figures. That no longer seems to cut any ice with the Irish Times when I'm on their blacklist. The Civilian Deaths letter below is a case in point, as were my recent letters on Iran's nuclear threat and Castro's killings.
Correction: I judged the Irish
Times too harshly.
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Senator
Ryan, a big friend of Fidel Castro, had a letter published in which he
condemned Israel's 
oesn't
get the sun? €2 million. A modest four bedroom house? €3½
million. 
about public
figures, gradually changing from a posture of deference to one of
entitlement. As they
got physically closer to the famous, so pedestals got shorter and shorter
until eventually disappearing. By making their images realistic and
accessible, she also did much to bring royalty – French and British – down
to earth. The very last tableau of her life was of Victoria and Albert at
home on the sofa - a typical cover for the Hello! Magazine of today, and it
attracted a million visitors a year.