Interesting article from Victor Keegan on making the web pay. Dispiriting article from Seumas Milne on the dangers of the USA's global power reach.

Adventures in Euroland by Jonathan Friedland

All the euro coins are here. Even Monaco, San Marino and The Vatican have their own, presumably legal, tender. That makes 120 different coins to contend with! If I felt uncomfortable with a Luxemborgoise coin, a San Marino will be worse. Anyway, enough Numismatismness.

Got a French and a Luxembourgoise 20 cent coin this weekend. So the novelty has worn off then.

Martin Woollacott on some of the problematic limitations of free-market liberalism.

Searching for my own blogspot, I found only one blog from www.daypop.com - it was a guy in the US of the libertarian persuasion - that is a born again free market conservative. It was an interesting read, well written. It's hard to keep in mind that other people's worldview or meaning construct is different to one's own and read their views without feeling attacked. I always would like to have a trusted relationship with someone of a right-wing persuasion, where differences could be expressed without defensiveness or agressiveness. I hate a group of left people getting together and putting the world to rights, as this just means agreeing and reinforcing one anothers' opinions. Unfortuately most of my trusted friends are of the same centre-left ground as myself. Pity.

Why doesn't this work in Opera 6.0? I get a tinsy, tiny window to write in. Grrr!

Reading about the Enron collapse and the culture in the company before the fall reminds me of a burnt out ex-Adobe American guy I met on holiday a few years ago. The 'Sunday is for catching up on emails' culture. The 'rank and yank' culture, where the bottom 10% performing (by whatever criteria) are fired each year. The naked greed. Can't anyone see that totally unrestricted capitalism means slavery. Of course it is more efficient to pay people nothing for working as many hours as possible. Nazi concentration camp factories were free market capitalism in action. People are a resource, and if they are incarcerated then they are expendible. Extract as much energy as possible from the being. Optimum conversion of food to work. Under free market capitalism, no-one has an identity except for being a spending resource. I read also about how in the states almost the only way of expressing oneself is through what one buys. Last weekend in the Galleries St Hubert I saw American businessmen on a day off, near-identically dressed in beige mackintoshes, stone-washed denim jeans and Nike sneakers.

And the story of Charles Bishop (inadequate and miss-the-point rebuttals here) that affected me so much, if for no other reason that the smiling boy in his photograph. What people seem to miss is that to be invisible is worse than being hated. Being bullied is better than being shunned. I remember at school I used to encourage bullying as I was so scared of being ignored, as my family moved from place to place and I from school to school. A class system where working people are looked down on creates pride in being working class. Being classless means having no identity - identity forged by knowing that one is different to someone else, reinforced sometimes by being despised. And so identity comes from Nike or Reebok, Ford or Dodge truck. Advertising creates the identity choice.

I recall the picture in the National Geographic of identical houses for as far as the Nevada horizon near Las Vegas. Wise people say that the Euro is doomed through lack of a mobile workforce - the US workforce that produces the ghost steel-towns and hugely overpopulated cities, both burdening people with intolerable social costs. These wise people doubtless the same sages that applauded Enron.

And yet life in Belgium, is far from perfect not to mention the driving and the shit on the streets.

Perhaps it's the weather this monday morning affecting my mood.

Finally my first non-Belgian Euro coin! I now have an Italian 2 Euro!!

Wish I could remember what I read this morning - some enlightening stuff by Dorothy Rowe. Of course everything makes sense when you read these books, but stuck in a noisy office unable to concentrate on anything, it's so hard to remember.

I think it was something like letting events happen as if I cannot affect them. That includes my response to events. In effect it is all about me not taking responsibility for things. When the office is noisy I just go web surfing because I devolve myself of responsibility of doing my job because I cannot concentrate. I refuse to take responsibility as it is not my fault if I am distracted. I tell myself it's not my colleagues fault for talking or gathering round the coffee machine strategically placed 3m from my desk. I blame the people who decided that we are the only group with open plan offices. Just because we are technical staff and not sales. It's true that this person is stupid and has no idea about efficient working. However, I use this to absolve myself of having to do my work.

The problem is not doing my work, not claiming responsibility makes me unhappy and tired. So I obtain no benefit from my web surfing. Quite the opposite. But to take responsibility is so difficult.

I have this huge and depressing wave of anti-Americanism at the moment. A few months ago I was defending the Land of the Free to my mother, who has always been dismissively anti. The whole Camp X-Ray thing is a PR disaster, but the US just doesn't care. Europe seems to have the moral high ground here, which is what we are fighting for after all. It;s a war of morality.

I do believe islam can be moral, though being an evangelical atheist I would prefer islam to go away. Idem christianity. In my American company's newsletter this month an article about two colleagues in the US who are currently being treated for cancer made me throw the newsletter in the bin. Apparently god has saved them, prayer has delivered them from death. God had a purpose for them in carrying on their working life! Jesus - no mention of healthcare, or just plain luck. I commented today that God didn't seem to be doing much for the share price of the company, still on the floor. Only it's gone up 20% today. Well, that may have something to do with yesterday's announcement that the company is turning a profit for the first time in a year.

Anyway mention of a christian god in such glowing terms is definitely out of order in the company newsletter, especially as perhaps the biggest religious grouping is Hindi.

Radio comedy: I'm sorry I haven't a clue / Humphrey Littleton, The News Quiz / Barry Took

Listening to Cocteau Twins and Harlod Budd at Surprise View near Sheffield. My green Lada "Boris". The distant trains and the similarity with the landscape of the Thomas the Tank Engine bed cover. The Moonlight and the Melodies and Lovely Thunder.

Memories of radio and tv from the 70s:
The Burkiss Way
The Radiophonic Workshop
line 625
Charley says
Crystal Tips and Alistair
Roobarb (roobarf?)

Really must try and find a recording of the Burkiss Way - I remember the Lady Marquisssssssssssssssss Belby(?) sketch. Listening to an episode in the 1999 driving south down the A1 from Teeside to Cambridge.

What is this for? I have no idea now but I guess that in time it will grow into something or perhaps wither away like leaves on an abandoned warehouse.