Back to the steppe

Embarking on our first return journey to Mongolia in 21 months, our opening experience of any note in Ulaanbaatar (if you don’t count the surly border guard complaining that Altaa did not look like her passport photo) was to find that our stowed luggage was still in Beijing, one of our transit points, despite an English-speaking terminal official insisting that it would be loaded onto the onward-bound flight. A camp, courteous clerk in Frankfurt airport, another stop-off location, said that our tickets only had our suitcases destined for the Chinese capital, rather than the Mongolian one and that we were to check once on Chinese soil; that Mandarin mandarin on reflection seemed a mite too airily sure in her assertions, but then we had to take her word – what else could we do? Yet we were left with the overriding impression that our bags were having an unscheduled overnight flit in Beijing. At least we hoped they were in Beijing. When our suitcase did not appear on the carousel and the baggage handlers told Altaa the aeroplane was fully unloaded, the integrity of fellow passengers at baggage reclaim gained traction in my thought processes. If you’re one of the last off the plane and through passport control and the luggage is careening serenely around, how are you to know of some unscrupulous person making away with your packed contents. You could even be further down the conveyor belt and someone could (with difficulty, given the 20kg inside) nab it. For sure, we had put nothing of enduring value inside – clothes and presents – but these could be replaced, but still it is an unsettling idea. For both of our suitcases not to be there was a relief of sorts. Oscar Wilde’s dictum that committing a mistake once might be seen as accidental but to do so twice looks positively careless was not so disheartening in this situation. We logged our concern and made off. The bags were flown in the next day for our collection.
Altaa’s brother, Sukhee, was supposed to pick us up at Chinggis Khan International Airport. Unfortunately, a confusion meant that we had to sort out a taxi for ourselves from the vultures hovering in the arrivals hall (lucky then that Altaa had spare togrogs for the fare). Both of us noted how much English and how little Mongolian was plastered on walls and above buildings from the airport on – even energy generation was not immune with a Soviet-era construction having Power Plant #3 emblazoned across the exterior of the turbine hall (it might have been there all along but was the first time I can recollect noticing it). Aside from this observation, the return left something to be desired with Ulaanbaatar’s outskirts and indeed much of it at large being highly unprepossessing. It was ever thus though and people in general come for the countryside.
I shall write more of the these vanguard days, but Altaa has sorted out her documentation renewing her residency card to claim the 70,000 togrogs dispensed to every Mongolian adult by the government, so now it’s off to Darhan, Mongolia’s third city, en route to Eruu (pronounced Euro) district in the northern Selenge province. The journey continues.

Resist them at all costs

So the Russell Group of top univeristies thinks that paying £3,225 a year is one of the most generous settlements for students in the world and that the threshold for repaying the debt at the end should be lowered from its current £15,0000 earning a year? This is among a number of proposals which will eventually lead to only the richest and the very, very brightest (on scholarships) having a tertiary education. The great unwashed can fester as servants downstairs. The talk is that there will be a shortfall of £1 billion over the next three years, but you can be sure that after three years, anything locked into position will not be reversed. Such argument is a front for them to campaign to do what they like. Only recently Lord Patten of Minted Ivory Tower said that the cap on tuition fees should be lifted and any price should be charged. Maybe the Russell Group is right about 80% of the world in terms of its wonderfully grand largesse, but I hardly thinks it wants to compare itself with places that barely have secondary education, let alone university centres of learning. Maybe it should look closer to home to see how generous the settlement is, not just in western and central Europe, but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where not only do you not pay fees but you get grants to help you along (which is why it is such a joke that the Students Loan Company is in Glasgow). It is only the elites in Scrooge-like England that has yet to have this epiphany (or rather they've had it and then changed their minds). The Russell Group's ideas about helping the UK taxpayer is the same con about rail subsidies being phased out. If you want people to better themselves or choose the train over the car, then to retreat to bleating about taxes which affect individuals undermines in many ways the sense of a community spirit - 'it's what I can get out of it and screw everyone else'. That should be the Russell Group's motto.

Where is Harry Hill when you need him with his TV Burp? Firstly, Dr Who. If it was not bad enough in Flesh and Stone being a throwback to the 1970s/80s when The Doctor pressed against a supposedly metal wall and it did its best impression of bending like plywood, but further on, we witnessed the dangers of not filming episodes in sequential order. Late in the drama, The Doctor loses his distinctive tweed, brown jacket. But at one point in a close-up and then another close-up and then a further close-up, although it is visible only in the corner, his jacket forms a considerable part of that corner. When the action resumes, hey presto, his blazer has disappeared again. Continuity errors bring one back to the surface after being immersed in the drama. The Vampires of Venice avoided anything too obviously askew, but one of the male villains pretending to be a Venetian was given the name Francesca. One doesn’t need to be Italian to recognise that is a woman’s designation; it is the suffix ‘-a’, for a man would be Francesco as ‘-o’.
Luther is ridiculous, despite a performance so towering from Idris Elba that it could glance at the Burj Khalifa without feeling inadequate. Aside from murders being pretty rare in Europe making it hard for a detective series to remain credible – productions like Poirot can be conceived as stand-alone stories in themselves – what is it with BBC cop dramas of recent years operating in a London that is like it has stumbled onto a set for 28 Days Later. The bridge scene at the end of episode one was unbelievably deserted for somewhere in central London, with nary a passer-by or vehicle. You may have the budget to close off a bridge over the Thames, but it could be at least populated with some extras. Probably mulling over this, the writers reprised the bridge scene following the conclusion of episode two and then at the very, very end had an artic rumble along – laughable partly because it rams home how artificial it all is, partly because you can see the production crew, director and so forth, all ready to let this lorry rip and none can see that the emperor has no clothes.

Oh and we have a new British prime minister. Congratulations David Cameron, who, like Tony Blair and barring any swift elections will have a child born in the purple (and I’m not talking about Sam Cam’s dresses here. Well done too, to the Lib Dems for the first taste of power in nearly 70 years. I just hope electoral reform with at least AV Plus on the referendum is to be followed through.

I wish I was a betting man (but not an addict, of course), for Chelsea are champions of England's top flight, my pick before the season had started. Deservedly so, taken maximum points off all their rivals in the so-called Big Four (though Liverpool's membership has now been revoked), having scored more than a hundred goals over the course of the season. Even when they bumbled to a point against Blackburn and were torpedoed by Tottenham, I just thought they would have the edge over Man Utd and Arsenal - the former losing maybe a few percentage points of desire after three straight title wins and the latter not having the experience of having won anything for five years (even though a League Cup triumph set Man Utd on their way to those three Premier League titles; note Mr Wenger). People don't like moneyed Chelsea, but at least they don't hail from Old Trafford. Well done, you Blues.

This was the first time I had stayed up throughout the night to watch the election results and I never realised how stultifying the whole process is. I made it to 5.55 am to see Gillingham and Rainham fall, given that it was the Tories' no. 1 target, but most importantly it was the seat where I cast my vote for the Lib Dems (though I knew they had no real chance, it was a point of principle). The Third Party had a disappointing night, with the Clegg effect virtually evaporating and Lib Dem support as soft as predicted, but they are with the number of seats thay had hoped to be with before the TV debates began. Just a little ahead of them in their melancholy are the Conservatives who seemed to believe they really would achieve a majority. If they don't offer electoral reform to the Lib Dems, it would be foolish for Clegg to pass up the opportunity of a generation to get such a measure. A majority could be formed with Labour, Lib Dems, Green Party, Alliance Party (who are aligned with the Lib Dems and deposed the DUP leader Peter Robinson from his Westminster seat), SNP and Plaid Cymru. It may be unwieldy, but they are all of the centre-left. The nest few days could be interesting but I won't be glued to it.

Judgement Day

If you go down to the polls today you're sure of a big surprise/
If you go down to vote today you'd better go in disguise/
For every journo that ever there was/
Will pester you endlessly whilst on the sauce/
Today's the day the British peeps choose a new government.

(Cos it will either be a Conservative or hung parliament forming the executive Judgement Day for the Labour Party could only be postponed - it is inevitable. I was lucky, voting early, to avoid the scribblers and microphone hoggers. If you do go in disguise, impersonate a piece of innocuous shrubbery rather than anyone real - we are not a banana republic or any other republic whose primary export is fruit).

Decision time

Voting commences tomorrow in the Great British General Election. If you think voting is a waste of time, I recommend the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (AKA North Korea) as a place of residence for it is a democracy where you don’t need to vote – ever.
These TV debates have ‘energised’ the election it is claimed; rather it has saved the campaign from being as gruelling and turgid as a World Championship Snooker Final between Neil Robertson and Graeme Dott. It was during the first of the debates, that people found that the Liberal Democrats actually exist. Having voted for them in 2001 and 2005, I felt a little vindicated that a large swathe realised that the Lib Dems were not part of the loony fringe but a respectable party which is regularly cheated of its rightful share of parliamentary seats compared with the percentage of people who mark their cross for it.
‘I agree with Nick’ became a catchphrase, as the polls rocketed for the ‘third party’ to something like 33%. It was conveniently overlooked that another, more odious ‘Nick’ who has been in Nick, garnered 20% of voting interests after a bad-tempered Question Time appearance, whose cause was vastly helped by all the other guests ganging up on him – understandable, but unfortunately playing into his hands. No-one was printing T-shirts claiming ‘I agree with Nick’ then (thankfully). And I’m not referring to Nick Robinson here!
When Jimmy Carter was challenged in his presidency from within his own party by Edward Kennedy, he played it smart. He knew Kennedy’s support was wide but not deep and he won the areas he needed to see of his rival. Didn’t help when Ronald Reagan turfed him out of the White House by a landslide though. The worry is the Lib Dem support is similarly wide but not deep enough to win a number of constituencies to match the turnout. Most of the support is amongst the young who don’t have an impressive record when it comes to tootling down to their local polling station.
I’ve voted for the Lib Dems, not out of tribal reasons - for given their fissiparous past, they are the least of the big three capable of drawing on that characteristic – but because I’ve agreed with their policies. They’ve opposed the Iraq war from the outset and they continue to oppose Trident nuclear defence (when we have a far cheaper option that Germany, Italy and Spain subscribe to – it’s called the American nuclear umbrella). Just as importantly as what they are against is what they are for – voting reform. Not the Johnny-come latelies of the Labour Party, this has been a long-cherished goal. The Guardian, piqued that Labour chose not to indulge in regicide and kept Gordon Brown against their strong lobbying, have swung their support behind the Lib Dems – unprecedented for the house paper of the Labour movement – and it because of the Lib Dems commitment to proportionality, so that votes matter when cast, rather than an MP winning 34% (or even less) of all the votes in their area. It is still scandalous that in 1983 Labour won 27% of the popular vote and finished with 32% of the seats in parliament and the Liberal/SDP Alliance won 25% and got only 2% of the MPs. Such a system as first-past-the post (as it is commonly referred to) is inherently unfair – maybe suitable for less mature democracies but a festering sore on the Mother of Parliaments. I am dearly hoping for a hung parliament come Friday morning.

Making your choice

Choose life. Choose a job. Choose a career. Choose a family. Choose a f**king big television. Choose washing machines, cars, compact disc players and electrical tin openers. Choose a three-piece suite on higher purchase and a range of f**king fabrics. Choose watching mind-numbing, spirit-crushing game shows as you shovel junk food into your mouth. Choose DIY and not knowing who the f**k you are on a Sunday morning. Choose Cameron. Choose Brown. Choose rotting away at the end of it all, sitting in your own shite, being nothing but an embarrassment to the selfish f**ked up brtas that you sponsor to replace yourself. Choose your future. Choose life. I chose not to choose life. I chose something else(namely, the Lib Dems).