The Way Of The World

Paranoia

I'm getting paranoid about a cricket that is using my balcony as a lunch table. This is not a small insect like its English equivalent but a locust-like monster. I have previously seen it winging its way from somewhere down by the river across to my side of the road and thought nothing about it. Now it is making its presence felt by consuming three clematis, an entire geranium and attacking the shoots on my vine and jasmine. Whist I am quite happy to let insects and animals have a share of my plants I don't count what this insect is doing as sharing; it's total destruction and therefore war. My feelings are much the same as those Americans must have had after Pearl Harbour about unprovoked aggression.

Birds come all the time to the feeders on my balcony so there is fairly constant fluttering there. But now I find myself looking each time I detect movement to see if it is a bird or something else. I've even been out on the balcony with a torch at night when I thought I saw something move. It's getting to me. I saw this grasshopper on steroids on my balcony railings a few week ago before it started its feast and stupidly just shooed it away. If I catch it again I shall scrunch it or blast it with fly killer, much as I dislike killing wild life.

I shall deal with it (if I catch it!) much in the way I deal with slugs and snails. I don't mind these creatures having a few leaves out of my garden but when they come in an army and take out whole rows of plants I resort to chemical weapons (slug pellets). War has been declared!

Common Market?

Friend Steve, a convinced free-trader, is incandescent too. The latest manifestation of the French attitude towards the common market has been revealed by an attempt by US General Electric to take over Alstom, the French engineering firm. The French minister for industrial renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, has stepped in to halt the take-over. Alstom makes the very successful TGV trains but has been burdened by debt since a multi-billion bail-out a decade ago. There is a good fit between the businesses of the two companies. However, Montebourg would rather Alstom accepted a bid by Siemens, which has guaranteed French jobs for three years, and which would create “a great Franco-German alliance”. But......there is a large overlap between the businesses of the two companies, which means that Siemens would in three years time almost inevitably hold a dagger of extensive job cuts to the throat of the French government or demand a repeated similar scale of bail-out. But, there again, it might not be the same French government then so why should Montebourg care? There are numerous previous examples of the same kind of government intervention in French industry under such pretentious pretexts as patriotism, the national interest, etc. The reason given for intervention this time though has completely changed the game.

Montebourg declared that Alstom was part of France's heritage, which he naturally was concerned to protect. Who could object to protection of heritage? By so doing, though, he has removed Alstom completely from the commercial arena and placed it in the category of historical monuments. It may indeed be a fossilised company, I don't know, but the point is that it thereby becomes subject to the laws relating to conservation rather than commercial competition and these, of course, focus on preserving the status quo. Montebourg's action also raises the question as to whether Alstom should be under his jurisdiction at all or whether it fits better under the minister for culture.

Any Brits who still hold out hopes for a common market..........dream on!

Third World Aid

I've been reading a book by Paul Theroux, the travel writer, published in 2002 and recounting a trip he made by road, rail and boat from Cairo to Cape Town. The book is entitled Dark Star Safari. I found it generally fairly interesting if repetitive (but maybe the journey was like that); what shocked me were persuasive arguments Theroux put up to stop all international aid to the third world. Having worked for several years as a volunteer in an Oxfam bookshop after my retirement and before coming to France, I have always been in favour of aid to the third world. That I should have to question this assumption now shook me. I don't buy into the guilt trips that go along the lines of, given what we former colonial powers have done to these countries, we owe them. I simply think it inhumane to hear of people starving or dying from easily preventable diseases without wanting to do something about it.

However, Theroux argues as follows. The happiest and healthiest people he met on his travels lived primarily in rural areas engaged in subsistence farming. The most wretched were those in towns trying to make a (mostly dishonest) buck any way they could. In the towns were also the rich and powerful, many of whom were “managing” aid funds which had become a significant part of the countries' economy. I know from acquaintances on the aid front line that if 60% of an aid grant actually gets to the people and projects intended then that is a good result. We all know that corruption is rife in the third world but what actually happens to the residue? OK, a lot of it goes into individuals pockets (that we all know) but a lot also goes to buy weapons to keep the rich and powerful in power, thus preserving the status quo. Theroux argues that change is needed (who would dispute that?) but that aid programmes actually militate against change; they actually reinforce the reliance on repression and corruption.

We all also know of schools built that serve no purpose because there is no money to pay teachers or buy books and equipment or infrastructure that quickly becomes useless because it is not maintained. I am also aware that saving people with easily curable diseases may simply swell the numbers that die of starvation. It seems obvious (to me) that a great deal of coordination is required in aid projects, if for no other reason than to prevent this problem, but also that the only people who could do this are the very “elites” who have no interest in doing it. So what is the solution?

Theroux argues that Africa should be left alone for a while to find its own solution. The implication is that a whole lot more would have to be done manually, thereby creating employment, albeit of a subsistence variety. Locally obtainable materials would have to be used, helping sustainability. But there again, slave labour is not beyond the bounds of possibility. My awful conclusion is that Theroux may be right but that what would ensue might be unthinkable. I really don't know enough and I can' get my mind round it. The awful thought remains that aid might actually be a hindrance. I would like to help in some very small way but don't want to be a well-meaning, misguided fuddy-duddy.