England And A New Blog

Sad For England

I've read that an advertisement for a food supplement company showing a bikini-clad woman and asking is “your body beach-ready?” has attracted some 50,000 complaints at a site called change.org and some 216 to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). I find it very sad that these complainants have apparently nothing better to do with their lives and sadder still that they can attract such publicity.

Admittedly, the company concerned took a bit of risk in showing just a bikini-clad woman, and a white one (the woman not the bikini) at that. A male (black) in a swimsuit alongside might have been deemed more “correct” if the company had bothered to consult political correctness advisers. The woman is slim but not anorexic; she simply has a good body. Yet the vitriol unleashed has not been confined to a plethora of complaints but resulted in the posters being defaced, with people risking life and limb in dangerous places to deface them, and threats of violence to the company's staff and even a bomb threat. The ASA is currently pondering on whether to act on the complaints it has received. I hope it does; I hope it has the guts to tell the complainants to grow up.

Fifty thousand control freaks in a population of 60+ million is actually not too bad; there are unfortunately bound to be some. But they don't have to be taken seriously. However, the country having got its knickers in a right old twist (probably deemed an unacceptably sexist expression now) over sexism and racism seems to be leading the way internationally in taking these people seriously. Some other nations whose lack of democracy and freedom we despise have religious police to enforce their intolerance. The UK, it sometimes seems, is simply substituting them with thought police.

Website User Unfriendliness

Some time ago my son and I did a search of the internet to see if we could find a site that commented on the inadequacies of design in commercial websites. We couldn't find any. I'm not talking about aesthetic design, as that is largely a matter of personal taste, but difficulties in carrying out what should be simple transactions. So I've decided to start a blog on the subject which I shall endeavour over time to display in French as well as English.

In the first posting I've outlined my gripes and given several illustrations of what I'm on about. The reason for advertising the blog's existence here is this. I need people to join in with their own experiences of difficulties encountered trying to do something that should be simple on websites. I shall do some research myself but that won't be enough to keep the blog going. So please join in yourself if you can, tell your friends and don't let anyone tell you about difficulties experienced on a website without asking them to write to me.

I tried to register the obvious names for the blog, such as various combinations of website user (un) friendliness, ease of use, etc, without success. So I've fallen back on the ELSE clause (www.theelseclauseonline.blogspot.com). You/they can leave a comment at the bottom of the blog or write to me at hugo.ian@wanadoo.fr. For your ease of use I've copied the first posting below.

User Unfriendliness

Have you, like us, ever been left swearing and cursing when trying to do something that should be quite straightforward on a website? Have you ever had to second-guess what is required as an entry on an apparently simple field, because the obvious entry is rejected? If so, this is a blog where an account of your experiences will be warmly welcomed.

The point is this. If you have struggled so probably have many, maybe many millions, of others. By recounting experiences of user unfriendliness on websites we hope to encourage/shame the companies that own the sites to improve them. That will help everyone: users will no longer have to struggle and site owners will improve customer satisfaction and increase customer activity. It's a win-win situation. We'll relate our own experiences and be doing our own researches and, if you can add your experiences, we should quickly have a very useful amount of feedback to give to site owners. Then we can put pressure on site owners to improve their sites for the benefit of all concerned.

All software is supposed to be subjected to tests of ease of use by its intended users. If the software is a public website, then the intended user is Jo Public, perhaps nationally but more probably globally nowadays. Commentators and marketeers like to talk glibly of the global market but evidence from websites suggests that few, if any, understand the implications. The root problem is that it's all too easy to leave user testing to the people who created the site or their colleagues in the office, probably all very IT literate. The real test would be to expose the site to your 90-year old granny who's going blind, lives in Kazahkstan, got a PC for Christmas and has just learned to use a mouse. Trouble is, such grannies are not always available, although useful equivalents can usually be found if site owners want to look for them. Site owners who can't be bothered, even when it's in their own interest, need, shall we say...... prompting? Join in and we'll make life easier for everyone.

Some Examples

Example 1: UK government

Years ago, when I had started living in France but was still subject to the UK tax system, I tried to file a tax return online only to find that the HMRC website insisted on a UK postcode for my place of residence. I had to phone HMRC to get the problem sorted. It turned out that HMRC had an artificial postcode for those not resident in the UK but hadn't bothered to put this in the website. A year later the same problem occurred; I'm mercifully out of their clutches now so have no idea whether the online problem has been fixed.

However, I recently tried to obtain card for health insurance outside my country of residence but within Europe (EHIC). I have to get this from the UK health service. I tried to apply online only to find that I can do this only if I live in the UK or Channel Islands; no other place of residence is recognised.

Example 2: SNCF

When I go to Paris I normally take the train from Avignon; it's the obvious way to make the journey and I can purchase a ticket online. The website insists on knowing my age, which I find rather strange for a train ticket booking but not in itself an apparent problem. I am over 60 and if I enter this on the website most of the trains schedules immediately disappear. Why? It's because the site assumes that I will require a reduced-price ticket because of my age and therefore only the trains on which such tickets are available will be of interest. In fact I don't care about the reduced-price tickets but in order to obtain a normal one I have to falsify my age, which is what I do. I've no idea whether SNCF keeps statistics on the age of its passengers but if it does it has ensured that they will be completely misleading.

Example 3: Air France

I recently wanted to book a ticket on an Air France flight from Paris to the Caribbean island St Martin. The Air France Home Page asks you to choose one from its several websites. That was a bad start; I didn't actually want to choose a website, I wanted to choose a plane ticket. The Air France websites are each devoted to a particular geographical area: France, Europe, North America, the Caribbean, etc. I think it must have occurred to Air France that people sometimes travel from one geographical area to another; it is, after all, what planes frequently do. In fact, this is what I was proposing to do. The problem for me was which website to choose, since I wanted to travel from France (website) to Caribbean (website). So I had a look at both websites and deduced an unstated assumption; each geographical area website apparently assumes you are starting your journey in that area. So I chose the France website. This provides a drop-down menu of possible destinations, all in France, which of course includes St Martin (it is still officially part of France). So I clicked on St Martin only to find that is is not allowed as a destination. To cut a long story short (tearing hair, gnashing teeth, etc) in despair I entered the airlines official destination code for St Martin, SXM. It worked! It wasn't in the list of possible destinations but up popped a list of possible flights. I think Air France has some work to do on its website.

Example 4: HifX

A friend of mine recently wanted to make a money transfer from the UK to France. He decided to use the HifX service, which offered the option of using a debit card to make the transfer from him to them in the UK. However, the debit card owner had to have a UK (or Channel Isles, etc) address. Since he lives in France he couldn't supply this. In the event the problem was sorted quickly and amicably by a phone call; but that shouldn't have been necessary. The website design was inadequate.

Example 5: Oxfam

At the beginning of December I usually buy Christmas cards and some small gifts from a charity and the charity I usually choose is Oxfam (Oxford Famine Relief) as I worked for them as a volunteer after my retirement. Last year I had to do it all online. I went through the Oxfam website picking what I wanted and found, only when I got to the payment page, that Christmas cards were not available to be sent outside the UK. What I then started to do was go back page by page to delete the invalid Christmas cards. However, the site was very slow in responding and so, after a couple of pages, I got fed up and scratched the whole order. It would have been simple for the site to display, at the point that the cards were chosen, that they were not available outside the UK; not doing so cost Oxfam money last year and, for all I know, may have done so in previous years and will probably do so in the future if they don't improve their website.

Rules that can be derived

Unwarranted assumptions

Commercial website owners seem to pay a lot of attention to the cosmetic appearance of their sites but frequently fail to address the logic of assumptions they make about clients. It requires only a moment's thought to discover numerous obvious if sometimes fairly trivial errors. I'm sure everyone must have encountered a website that asks you if you are male or female. However, it is very well known that some people have a mixture of physical characteristics of both genders; they are transgender, sometimes known as “shemales”. What are they supposed to put? Similarly, I have often been asked to enter my “title” (Mr, Mrs, etc) but never seen Lord, Viscount, HRH, Sir, etc, in the options offered. It doesn't affect me but some status-conscious people might resent the constraint. A simple “other” option (the ELSE clause; see below) would resolve the issue.

Those examples may not be considered of much consequence but epitomise the lack of rigorous thought applied to (usually unstated) assumptions. A global economy requires that any assumptions made should be tested in that context, not simply a local one.

The ElSE clause

When I was young and green in the computer industry, in the 1960s, I was taught that any conditional (make a choice) statement in code should always be ended with an ELSE clause. Even when choices were apparently all inclusive as in, for instance, true or false, an ElSE clause should be added. Maybe that was simply an acknowledgement that you are not God or that even Homer can nod but it was extremely important as a discipline. It seems to have gone out of fashion and it needs to come back into fashion as it would have prevented a number of the inadequacies I have observed in websites.

What Do You Want To Do?

I've never yet seen a website with a home page asking: what do you want to do on this website? Maybe it conflicts too much with cosmetic layout concerns yet it seems to me the most obvious question to ask. Forget the winsome models (I nearly wrote bikini-clad girls; Oh sexist me!) dancing across the screen, the most important point is what you, the surfer, want to do. A drop-down menu of suggestions such as browse, search (for what), purchase, enter an inquiry, etc, would be enormously helpful in most cases and would avoid the site owner having to make unwarranted assumptions. That, of course, would conflict with sites wanting to lead you along to what they want you to do but where is customer friendliness in all this?

Contact us

Another common mistake (in my view) is that many sites make it very difficult for users to contact the site owners. For them, this is presumably a cost issue; they don't want staff to have to spend time answering queries from clients or potential clients yet the same organisations probably spend a great deal of money trying to foster “relationships” with their clients or trying to entice potential clients. Using “contact us” is an obvious way to do this and since websites are essentially an online medium an email address (with a guaranteed response!) has to be the best way. Yet many sites give just a HQ address with, maybe, a telephone number. That's just crazy.

Anyway, I want you to contact me and I want to hear of any difficulties you have had in doing what should be simple on websites and wasn't. You can do that in one of two ways: you can leave a comment in the space allowed for it at the bottom of this blog or you can write to me directly at hugo.ian@wanadoo.fr. I don't have a HQ address and you have to be online to read this so you shouldn't need a telephone number.

Blooming English

Anglophobia

It seems that despite my efforts at entente cordiale by getting popular as a boules player in Buis as well as Mollans, a bout of anglophobia is around. According to the press, the French are in the throes of a hate spell in the long-running Anglo-French love-hate relationship. A discernible rise in the number of French youths indulging in binge drinking, a term taken directly into French but now outlawed by the Académie Française and replaced by beuverie express, is being blamed on the Anglo-saxons. Undeniably, if regrettably, it has become a feature of UK youth culture but did the UK do anything to get the French to adopt it or did it migrate simply as a lot of UK fashion has, somewhat paradoxically, been adopted by the French of their own volition? Anyway, no such prevarication prevented a French minister from blaming the phenomenon on the British.

The French are also blaming the British for the problem of illegal immigrants amassing in Calais in the hope of reaching the UK. They blame Britain's apparently more generous welfare scheme for the problem. If that is true, from what I know of the UK welfare system I hesitate to contemplate what welfare systems in other European countries are like. I don't know of any job seekers in the UK having an easy time of it. It may be that child support systems in the UK are more generous, but that would appeal only to large immigrant families and they are not evident in the immigrant crowds in Calais. Besides which an even more desperate immigrant problem is showing up in the Mediterranean and Heaven knows what the answer to that is.

Blooming Well

It is blooming well blooming all around here now. Despite the fact that the last vestiges of snow cab still be seen at the top of Mont Ventoux, the sunny weather below seems to have sparked the area into what is arguably its best display of bloom in the year. The roadside between here and Buis is ablaze with coronilla, against a background of irises and thyme. The fruit trees in the many orchards around, cherry, apricot, peach, plum, are all in bloom too. Along the wayside the judas trees, tamarisk and lilac are covered in flowers, above roadsides resplendent with poppies, euphorbia, white campion and a purple salvia (salvia praetensis) which grows wild here. It really is a joy just to drive round the area. Sadly but understandably, most plants here seem to get their blooming done before the heat of late July and August kick in, which means high summer looks nowhere near as good.

English Conversation

As I said seemed certain a few weeks ago, the first English conversation “rencontre” took place last Tuesday evening. Steve and I had a class of ten and it all seemed to go well. Steve and I introduced ourselves and got each attendee to introduce themselves by means of answering a list of suggested questions: where do you live, do you have children, what do you/did you do for work, what are your hobbies, etc. Steve and I then enacted a scene in a café and then asked them to do the same. As one should, we planned time at the end of the session to take stock with the attendees to see what had worked (for them) and what hadn't. Everyone seemed happy with just one comment, that maybe they could have more time to chat among themselves. The session had certainly had a kind of “Steve/me to attendee and back” format; but we asked the class at the end to prepare a 4-5 minute talk on any subject of their choice so maybe we will start with that next time and try to get a flow of questions going between the presenter and the others. One of the attendees asked if she could bring some friends next time so I think we can expect a class of at least the same size next Tuesday.

What I found most difficult was deciding when to correct an attendee and when to let them talk on. Our objective is to get the attendees confident in speaking English and reasonably fluent, grammatically or not. Increases in vocabulary will come naturally from what we do but Steve and I both agree that correct grammar must take a back seat. However, sometimes some intervention on that score seems inevitable. I guess we'll work it out as we go along but our emphasis is on conversation rather than English per se and pronunciation often needs to be corrected. I think the main criterion for intervention is probably whether what is said will be understood or not. Confidence in speaking English is certainly a problem but it was probably accentuated by the class members not yet knowing each other, or not that well. Anyway, everybody seemed to enjoy themselves, which is also an important objective. Progress reports will follow!

Update

Update

Spring is supposed to be a time when life starts anew and things are certainly happening here. One thing I've noticed when buying bread in the morning is that the bakers' shops are full of chocolate rabbits. Chocolate rabbits (Easter bunnies) are traditional in the UK too which makes me wonder exactly what the connection is between Easter and rabbits. Maybe rabbits start breeding again at Easter, if they ever stopped, but so too do sheep for instance and no doubt many other animals and there is no tradition of chocolate Easter lambs. I'll have to do a Google search. It also makes me wonder whether Christ's alleged resurrection at Easter is at the origin of the idea of life restarting then or vice versa; anyway, I'm not sure there is a spring season in Jerusalem.

It was Steve and Jo's 48^th wedding anniversary today and they invited me to have lunch with them, I having been an usher at their wedding all those years ago. We went to a restaurant just outside Vaison, L'Epicurien, and had a superbly cooked and presented three-course meal for well under 20 euros a head. It made me realise how lucky we are here to have a number of very good and very reasonably priced restaurants.

We now have about 15 potential candidates for our English conversation courses and, given that an initial 4 or 5 would make them viable, it looks as though we will be going ahead. Steve and I have each completed a script for half of the first session and Steve has a script for the second so we are well on the way. Today we set a date and time for the start, 22nd April at 18.15, so we will inform all the enquirers and see what drop-out rate we get. Initially we had a problem with deciding what to call the sessions as we didn't want them to appear at all formal and want to make each session independent so that participants could miss one without falling behind. We eventually came up with “rencontres” rather than “cours”. In our search for dialogues I discovered that I had a book of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore's down-and-out dialogues from the TV programmes of the 1970s. I doubt we'll be able to use them but I'm making a point of rereading them as I found them hilarious at the time (“I could have been a judge, you know, but I didn't have the Latin”).

And it's all happening on the gardening front. I had originally hoped that the bulbs out front might all bloom at the same time but what has happened is probably better. After the initial very early couple of blooms they have bloomed in waves of a couple of dozen at a time over succeeding weeks and are still going strong. They've made a good display with the pansies and rosemary to complement them so that has turned out as I had hoped. At the back I've cut out the dead wood and tied the jasmine, climbing roses and clematises to the high wall and one of the early clematises is showing some buds. About half the coronilla bush is in bloom, complemented by aubretia and a scrambling plant, also with blue flowers, that friend June gave me a root of last year and whose name I can't remember. I'll have to ask June. I also found some dipladenia in the local supermarket which I bought to replace the ones on my bedroom windowsill that haven't survived the winter; they looked good climbing around my bedroom window last year. The birds that feed on my balcony have dropped the usual lot of sunflower seeds so I have a crop of sunflower seedlings in various pots that I'll have to transplant somewhere. A couple at least will go in the large pots on my balcony and, if they don't grow too tall, will bloom under the grapevine that forms a canopy. And the valerian at the back, which I'm severely curtailing, has produced seedlings that I'll give to Steve and Jo to plant down their drive. Also I've decided that now that we are in April we won't have any more severe frosts (fingers crossed) so the small lemon tree and geraniums that have over-wintered in my terrace room can go outside on the terrace. Finally, I've bought packets of climbing nasturtium and morning glory seeds that will go in various pots or wherever I can find a space later.

It's all looking good for the early summer.

Politics

Capitalism

Friend Steve and I often discuss politics and, although there are many things we agree on, sometimes find ourselves at odds over capitalism. What we both agree on is that capitalism is the only viable economic framework. Small enterprises can be capitalised on sweat, an approach I have sometimes taken in my working life. Any large enterprise, however, will need funding and that can come only from private investors or the state. If all funding comes from the state the state necessarily controls all related projects, an approach that has been demonstrated not to work, for whatever reasons, countless times. So the role of private investment, and capitalism, seems to be crucial, irrespective of one's political views.

Steve and I also agree that unfettered capitalism, “red in tooth and claw”, is not desirable. The CEO of Unilever has been cited as echoing Winston Churchill's comment that democracy was the least bad system of government that has been devised: words to the effect that capitalism is the least bad economic framework that has been devised. Where Steve and I sometimes diverge is on the nature and placement of the restraints that should be put on capitalism. However, a recent article I read (in which the Unilever CEO was quoted and which I can no longer find and therefore attribute) could have a basis to reconcile our views.

The article was primarily arguing against companies buying back their own shares, on the basis that that was the company “eating itself”. Share buy-backs are a way of keeping a share price artificially high, in line with the prevalent business view that a company's first duty is to its shareholders, but essentially just move money between the company and its shareholders. They do nothing for the economy at large and it is economies at large that are the major concern now. The article argues that this is not only bad for economies but also for the company itself in the longer term. Most interestingly, the article argued that concerns about unemployment, the level of the minimum wage and the growing wealth inequality gap might all be resolved by a rather different economic view.

The basis of the difference was the assertion that a company's first duty should be to its clients and not its shareholders. By focussing on clients as its primary duty it would be in a position to create more income and, incidentally, more value to its shareholders. More income means the possibility of expansion and more jobs and raising the level of the minimum wage would mean more disposable income for employees to spend; since a percentage of employees might well also be customers, the additional wage cost was not simply a cost drain; moreover, it would serve to put a brake on the wealth gap.

Other large-company CEOs echoing this view were cited in the article. An intriguing point about this is that if this view comes to prevail and it is accepted that shareholders are best served in the medium to long term not by focussing on them but on the company's clients, then this is capitalism reforming itself from within rather than by any state instigated legislation. So an army of civil servants wouldn't be needed to enforce it. In a sense, it would be a return of the great industrialist philanthropists of the Victorian era. And arguments on minimum living standards and the wealth gap could move from the moral realm to the economic one, with potential benefit for all concerned; that is, all stakeholders in society.

I think that this is a view on which friend Steve and I, despite our slightly different starting positions, might quietly agree.

Cuba

The alternative to capitalism can be seen in Cuba. I have tended to regard Cuba with some sympathy, since I believe overthrow of the Batista regime benefited the large majority of Cubans. True, in return for the improvements Cubans received, in terms of healthcare and education for instance, they had to accept restrictions on many personal liberties (and listen to exceedingly long and boring speeches). Economic sanctions imposed by the USA were and remain a heavy burden, although that aspect may be changing. However, I have friends who know Cuba and have suggested to me that the country is now in an extremely parlous state, only marginally attributable to the USA's foreign (economic) policy. Shortages of essentials in the country can only partially be attributed to sanctions; the state-run economy has failed and the country is kept afloat only by tourism. To aggravate matters, interference with personal liberties has reached an intolerable level, unsustainable outside a dictatorship and police state. That is what I have been told and I have no reason to doubt the truth of it; and tourists are mostly kept in enclaves and can have little contact with local inhabitants.

I knew that some other friends of mine would be visiting Cuba shortly tourists and I knew that they, as well as wanting to enjoy their holiday, would be interested in meeting and knowing about the lives of the local inhabitants. I was going to prime them but was too late; they had already been and, anyway, apparently found no way to escape their enclave.

Implications of the Euro

I have a good life here in Mollans. I Like the place and most of the people in it; I garden, play boules, join in and promote village activities, eat frequently with friends, go shopping and do very many other satisfying but unremarkable things. And living here is well within my very reasonable financial means. I estimate the cost of living as similar to that in the UK, probably slightly less as a retired person, and there is not a lot to spend money on here. In short, I can live well here, quietly, and within my means. A significant factor though is the pound-euro exchange rate, since my income is in pounds which I have to convert to euros. In my time here I've seen the exchange rate swing by about 25% one way or the other but it has been easy to even out that effect on my income. What though if the euro or even the EU itself were to implode?

To my mind, the euro has been a big mistake. There was huge political backing for it at its inception, as a means to achieve financial integration in the EU. Financial integration and the euro are interdependent; you can't have one without the other. At the euro's inception financial homogeny didn't exist between EU countries and a nod to its necessity was made through financial requirements for joining the eurozone. These were widely and blatantly flouted though, particularly by Greece and Italy; only political wish-fulfilment saw them and a few other countries through. The result is a currency that is currently unsustainable. Of the major eurozone economies only Germany's is healthy. The second most important economy, that of France, now seems to be in serious trouble; if that continues to fail, questions about the economies of countries such as Ireland, Spain and Italy will become irrelevant. In fact, the financial crisis of the past few years has seen European economies diverge rather than converge, the opposite result to that desired. As in individual internal economies, the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. The euro will collapse, at least in some countries, unless Germany agrees to underwrite all eurozone debt.

The popular reaction to that possibility in Germany has been a swing to nationalism; why should Germany underwrite other countries' debts? That is the reaction not only in the most powerful country in the eurozone but also in the weakest: Greece. And similar rises in nationalism can be seen in Spain and France and even outside the eurozone, in the UK. When times are hard for most people, a rise in nationalism is normal and it generally subsides when a solution to the problems causing the hard times is found. In the current context the situation is serious because the only available solution could be disappearance or retrenchment of the euro and a fundamental rethink of the EU. We can probably dismiss the prospect of a Europe-wide war, a reaction to these circumstances in former times, but withdrawal of some countries from the eurozone and severe curbing of the power of Brussels are distinct possibilities. Certainly, global currency speculators will continue to attack the euro until its weaknesses are resolved; and they are currently being exacerbated rather than resolved. And, with the rise of nationalism, the idea of devolving more power to Brussels to achieve greater financial integration must be a forlorn prospect.

So what is to happen and how will it affect my quietly happy life? Accounting has always been a moveable feast, a game of smoke and mirrors, so I expect attempts to salvage the euro to continue, whatever fudges are involved, until or unless a total impasse is reached. That won't affect me greatly although, one way or another; I expect the cost of living here to rise sharply in the future, though hopefully still within my means. The rise in nationalism is unlikely to affect me nearly as much as it may other immigrant communities. But I think it may well produce radical changes in Brussels. If these include transference of power from the European Commission to the European Parliament, so much the better because that would apply a brake to the grand designers in favour of the pragmatists. And Brussels has always suffered from a lack of the latter. Such a change also could preserve the good work that the EU has done whilst eliminating its wildest flights of fantasy.

So I don't see any great threat to my quiet life but I do see some changes which, hopefully, won't be too disruptive.

St Martin

St Martin

I have not long returned from a fortnight in St Martin. A friend from my days at Bristol university, Kay, found me via the internet and invited me for a holiday at her house there. It was good to meet her again, after almost 50 years, and also to have a break from the winter in Mollans. It's not that often that I get the chance to swim in a warm sea and acquire a tan in February.

I found St Martin to be a beautiful island but strange in many ways. Not least of its many quirks is that despite being very small it is split into two distinct territories. About two thirds of the island is still officially part of France; the other third is an autonomous region within the Netherlands. Moreover, the official currency for the Dutch area is still the guilder, which exists only as a virtual currency. Dutch functionaries apparently have their salaries denominated in guilders but actually receive American dollars at a fixed exchange rate between the guilder and the dollar. So the physical currency is the American dollar.

The island has little history and what there is is recent, dating from European occupation. Arawak indians from South America landed on the island from time to time but it appears to have been uninhabited when Europeans arrived to fight over it. Ownership switched between the usual suspects, the English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and French before ending up in the hands of the last two. What they fought for, apart from their natural inclination in past centuries to fight one another anyway, was salt. St Martin had, and still has, large expanses of salt lagoons.

But possibly the most defining characteristic of St Martin is that it has no natural fresh water supply. Clean water is provided nowadays by means of desalination plant and the houses mostly have roofs designed to enable rain water to be collected and used as a secondary supply. This probably explains why the island was rarely inhabited until European colonisation and also explains something else I found strange: the striking lack of cultivation. I saw no fields of crops or garden vegetable plots and most plants in gardens seemed to be trees or bushes. Irrigation by desalinated water is clearly uneconomic resulting, although there was some grazing by goats and cattle, in almost all food apart from fish being imported.

Despite this handicap, St Martin is a genuinely beautiful island. It's highest point is only 455 metres but it is far from flat, unlike it's near neighbour Anguilla; hills abound. Its most appealing features are the many spacious beaches, most fringed by restaurants and cafés serving quality meals. The fish in particular is excellent. There are also many restaurants offering creole dishes, which is what passes for “native” cuisine. Whether this is accurate or a delusion is a matter for debate as most of the indigenous population would seem to have its origins in the slave trade under colonisation. However beaches and food are what attracts the tourists, primarily from North America, who underpin its economy. The fact that the island is duty free no doubt helps too. And St Martin is famous also for Juliana Airport, the runway of which is no more than 50 metres from a beach on which sunbathers seem to risk getting a haircut from the wheels of landing jets.

Apart from the beaches and restaurants there is not a great deal to occupy tourists. There is a small but interesting museum in Philipsburg, a butterfly farm by the Le Galion beach and abundant bird life. The pelican is the islands national icon; I saw egrets, many varieties of sea birds and others I could not name but what particularly caught my eye were the humming birds, which seemed completely unafraid by my presence.

My friend Kay's beautifully designed house overlooks the Grand Case bay with what must be one of the best views on the island. It was a real pleasure to have a morning coffee and evening G&T (Kay makes a superb one) whilst admiring the view below. So I returned having renewed acquaintance with a good friend, eaten some very good meals, bathed on some spectacular beaches and with a tan. Moreover, I returned in time to witness the early days of spring here in Mollans. To compensate for a very noticeable drop in temperature I can start on my gardening.

Doom And Gloom

.Financial Gloom And Doom

For me personally the recent financial climate has been good in as far as the pound has been relatively strong against the euro. Financial news in all the press and reasonable deductions that can be made from incidental news, however, I find very worrying. And this not about the euro per se, which I expect will stagger along from mini crisis to mini crisis until EU mandarins find the courage to take some really unpalatable decisions. It is about finance more generally, political stability and the conjunction of some rather alarming straws in the wind.

The gap between the very rich and the poor seems to be widening, even disregarding some very dubious use of statistics in some quarters. It may well still not be as great as it has been in previous centuries but previous centuries sorted that out by means of some rather bloody revolutions which it would probably be best not to repeat. Such revolutions may not be obviously on the cards yet but protests are widespread in the developed world and large protests can easily turn violent and get out of hand, with unforeseen consequences.

The protests in the developed world are easily understandable. Levels of unemployment in Greece, Spain and Italy, for example, that would have been inconceivable a decade ago look set to endure for quite a while longer and can only contribute to political instability in those countries. Claims made that pulling out of the recession imposed by the last financial crisis meant we're all in this together are clearly false. The net result of measures taken is that the rich have got richer and the poor have got poorer. That simply exacerbates political instability.

Reduction of the price of oil to unforeseen levels points to a shrinking global economy. When, for reasons I'm only vaguely aware of, it was deemed necessary to raise the GDP of western economies, it seems that the addition of trade in illegal drugs and prostitution was the only means that could be found. And it seems that one of the few, maybe only consistently profitable lines of business is hedge funds: essentially a gambling casino for the very rich with odds stacked in favour of the punter and, generally, bets on share prices falling (and, effectively, economies shrinking). It's difficult to avoid the conclusion that capitalism is running out of control and, unless the major powers of the world find a way of reining it in, then revolutions of sorts, quite possibly counter-productive, will occur.

None of these points in isolation is necessarily that significant. Put together they paint an alarming picture of the future. And I haven't even mentioned terrorism.

The National Health Service

I occasionally watch BBC Question Time and every time I do I vow never to watch it again. It is simply too frustrating seeing obvious questions not asked, politicians dodging and resorting to point scoring rather than dealing with issues and unincisive chairmanship. My last viewing, a couple of weeks ago, was no exception.

The subject was the NHS and the question asked was whether it could remain free at point of delivery and affordable by the government in the future. The question was admittedly rather badly phrased but no one on the panel or the chairman sought to rephrase it and so everyone just passed the time throwing bread rolls and dodging. The question should have been what is the minimum acceptable level of service by the NHS and can that be afforded by the government in the future. Of course the NHS can remain both affordable and free in the future; you simply cut the level of service, time after time.

If people are prepared to accept weeks' delays in getting a GP appointment, 6 hour delays in getting an ambulance and 12 hours delays in being seen in A&E, then that can probably be provided for free into the foreseeable future. If they want a better service, it will cost more and may not be affordable by the government alone for free delivery. It is almost axiomatic that better service costs more.

Lots of bread rolls were thrown regarding private/public involvement in provision, private medical insurance and comparisons with other countries, all without a semblance of accurate aim. The facts are that the UK population is growing, people are living longer and thus requiring more professional care and medical attention and advances in medicine are providing solutions to previously insoluble medical problems. All those factors imply increased cost. At some point, for even the most caring of governments, these rising costs must raise questions as to what level of service can be delivered for free. That is the real question: what level of service is acceptable and how should that be funded. Personally, I think that any acceptable level of service described by Everyman will at some point become unaffordable for free delivery by government funding alone.

Weather

The weather has been significantly colder over the last month, the first sign of real winter that we have had at this year-end. The most noticeable aspect has been the top of Mt Ventoux, which normally has an enduring covering of snow between mid-December and March but has had that this year only in the past month, during which time also snow has been visible on the hills around down to about 1000ft. That must mean the skiing season on Mt Serein started late and could well finish early. So, unless the weather changes drastically over the next month we will again have had an unusually clement winter.