Bonfire Night (remember, remember, the 5th November) is England’s one genuine nationally-observed folk festival, and even then we are in danger of letting it be usurped by Halloween, which is (in its commercial form) an alien import. But let’s face it, it’s just fun to burn big piles of flammable things. There’ll be a guard on this to make sure it doesn’t get lit tonight, I bet.
I know if I keep repeating it too long this ‘golden light, golden colours’ theme might start to get a little wearing. But surely we can’t sustain this for much longer, so let’s make the most of it while it lasts.
What irritates me most about the public transport in this country is not the unpunctuality (which tends to be concentrated on certain lines at certain times of the day, and after a while you just learn to avoid them – if you can, of course). No, the thing that gets me the most is the stupid ‘no growth in numbers’ contracts which the train operating companies have signed.As a result, public transport is an utterly backwards industry in which there is actually no business incentive to increase custom. (Undergraduate education is becoming another one.)
There is one, and only one, reason why such a state of affairs is tolerated: it’s because every journey by public transport represents a little redistribution of tax income. The government like collecting tax, so encourage us to use cars, which are enormous sources of tax revenue. They don’t like paying tax back out. so don’t want us to use public transport, which is ‘subsidised’ (I call it ‘invested in’). As a result Britain has the highest public transport costs of almost any country in the world.
But despite everything, it’s still a damn sight better than using a car.
Hebden Bridge in autumn plumage. Definitely a good time of year to be here.
The Whitworth Hall (named after engineer Sir Joseph Whitworth) is the ceremonial hall for the University of Manchester. People say you end up working somewhere appropriate for your name. Well, not only is my family name Whitworth, but my mother’s maiden name is Hall, so I guess that does it for me.
I use this today not because it’s a particularly great photo (although it’s not bad) but because the story behind it amuses me.
The place where I’m working this week rents space on the campus of this big university in Moscow, the Academy of National Economy (ANE), on Prospekt Vernadskovo to the south of the city centre. In the early-to-mid 1990s, after the fall of Communism, the World Bank and IMF tried a dose of ‘instant capitalism’ on Russia, demanding the country liberalise its whole economy almost overnight. The ANE had, and still has, one of the best campuses in the country, but an Italian company wanted to profit through this spanking new building, and under the new rules, it was virtually impossible to refuse them. So this vast glass palace was built – what you see here is barely a quarter of the whole.
However, there were two big problems. First, no one was allowed to question whether the new building was needed. Second, no one was allowed to establish whether the Italian company actually had the money and expertise to complete the job. Neither of these two things turned out to be true. The shell was finished, but nothing inside, and because the space was never actually needed, there was no revenue which then accrued to the developers in order to financially support them to finish it. They therefore went bankrupt before the job was done.
What makes it worse is that no one can now establish who owns this building. Until they do, it cannot be demolished. So there it has stood for 15 years, rotting away, a monument to corporate failure on this otherwise reasonably well-appointed campus, a huge carbuncle of glass, while the campus built by the Reds surrounds it and does its job quite happily, thank you very much.
Propaganda cuts both ways. I can’t be the only person who grew up in the ‘West’ in the 1970s/1980s who became conditioned to think of the Kremlin as some gloomy, grey, dark castle of ill-omen. What we were never told is that, particularly at this time of year, when the trees have turned, it is all white, gold and beautiful.
The Arbat is like Hebden Bridge. You can amble around and pick up art or second-hand books or jewelry, but nothing very practical like medicine. But it is laid-back, which is unusual for Moscow.
Looking out over the Moscow River (unseen in this shot) – this is the Hotel Ukrainia, one of the ‘Seven Sisters’, gothic skyscrapers built by Stalin (well, not personally) in the 40s and 50s. I’m in the Hotel Belgrad.
I always wanted a job where I could travel, right from being 16 or so. And now I have one, I’m glad enough, even if sometimes it seems a little excessive – I have 7 work trips abroad planned between now and mid-February (plus one personal one), and that does not even include trips within the UK.
But I think the chance to see how other cultures live, and realise that – unlike what the Daily Mail says, in its xenophobic little hate-fuelled way – Britain is not the centre of the world, are good things and has made me a better person, though others should be the real judge of that. Do I worry about the environmental impact? Yes… but I don’t own a car, so feel at least that I compensate in one way. Again, let others judge.
Why do I have the sinking feeling that I am going to be getting up in the dark for most of the next six months?
