De epistola papae – concerning the Pope’s letter
xD.
PS – a little while ago, I celebrated my fifth anniversary of blogging. This is my one thousandth post.
Parliamentary salary number crunching
An advert in the London Evening Standard catches my eye.
Lift attendant
You will need:
- Experience of operating a passenger lift in a working environment.
- Experience of working in a large building operating a passenger lift.
- To have a good understanding of customer care.
- To be smart and articulate.
Job description:
- To operate lifts throughout the Palace on a roster basis.
- To provide a service for clients and customers.
- To provide escort for non security cleared contractors, clients and staff when required (this may be for extended periods.
For this, the princely sum of £17,277 a year (plus excellent benefits) is on offer.
I understand that there will shortly be vacancies for around six hundred and fifty members of parliament, for which no experience is necessary, at a salary of £64776 a year plus excellent benefits.
xD.
Requiem for Detroit, elegy for Barking?
Last night I watched Julien Temple’s excellent Requiem for Detroit? on BBC2. It is, after a fashion, a beautiful film: a harsh beauty, but a beauty nonetheless.
The skill is in the storytelling, so I recommend watching it, but the story itself is simple. Overdependence on the motor industry set the stage for economic disaster if anything happened to the car industry; white flight to the suburbs, possible because many people could afford cars, hollowed out the city centre and the loss of a tax base turned it into a ghetto; the oil shock of the 70’s accelerated everything; racial tensions worsened as people moved from the South in search of jobs. The motor industry and the city recovered as oil prices fell, but the motor industry relied on SUVs and Detroit on the motor industry. The recent economic turmoil has dealt a hammer-blow to the city.
Barking is not a direct match for Detroit, but the closure of Dagenham Ford was a similar economic disaster. This was similarly coupled with bad social planning – specifically, right-to-buy (or, rather, the effects when the tenants who became owners moved out) – and now we have a situation in which the BNP can do well.
Perhaps some of the northern cities of England would be a better match, but Barking seems to be the focus, given that Nick Griffin is standing there and the BNP hope to take the council at the next election.
xD.
The greatest film scenes every shot
The Observer had a feature today on the greatest film scenes ever shot; here’s my take, in no particular order.
I’m fairly new to YouTube, but you can see some more of my videos, if you’re interested, at youtube.com/DLandonCole. I’d appreciate any comment or criticism.
xD.
Five years of blogging
At 2144 on Friday, March 11th, 2005 – exactly five years ago – I published my first blog post.
xD.
