Morts Musings

So, a few weeks ago I was throwing around some ideas for possible holiday locations this year, & spain was looking like a good bet, so in the mean time I’ve been doing more thinking aout stuff I could do out there.
One of the big draws, which I mentioned before, was the country’s history, & like most old nations Spain has lots of of interesting historical sites, festivals and customs which have evolved over the centuries.

Spanish Festivals

It would be easy to point at some of the annual Spanish traditions and poke fun at their eccentricity, and I must admit I was tempted, but then I remembered that I come from the country which has brought the world Cheese Rolling and Morris Dancing; I think most countrys have their little quirks and oddities and, although from a 21_st century perspective it can be easy to be derisive of these quaint old traditions, it’s important to remember that, almost universally these strange old customs sprang up for reason, which presumably seemed good at the time, and that their preservation gives us a glimpse into a past.

Moros y Cristianos
These go back to the battles between the Christians and the Moors during the days of the reconquista, and are actually observed, in some form or another, in lots of Spanish towns. The most famous of these takes place in Alcoy, Alicante, and, from what I’ve heard, is well worth checking out. The event commemorates the Battle of Alcoy (1275) in which the Moors, led by Al Azraq, were defeated, and forced to lift their siege of Alcoy, when, according to the legends, St George miraculously appeared to aid the Christian defenders. From the research I’ve done it sounds like the best way to take in this one is to sort out a hotel and car hire in Alicante, and then travel to Alcoy rather than base oneself in the town itself.
Unfortunately it doesn’t look like I’m likely to catch it this year, what with it taking place between the 21_st & 24_th of April. Still, it’s one to put on my “one day” list.

Las Hogueras de San Juan
Although this festival’s name translates as “the Bonfires of St John”, it actually pre-dates christianty, being a celebration of the Summer Solstice. Although the festival is celebrated throughout Spain it is especially well observed in coastal regions where it is traditional to head to a beach, light a bonfire, & party through the night. Alicante is particularly well known for its lavish celebrations on St John’s day (June 24_th), which include spectacular fireworks displays followed by the burning of large, wood and paper mache, figures in the city’s main squares and plazas. Although the 24_th is the focal point of the festivities Alicante’s celebrations actually run from 20_th to the 29_th of June with drinking, dancing and fireworks forming the core of each night’s revelries. This one sounds like a huge amount of fun, and is definitely something I want to experience, if not this year then certainly before I get too much older!

La Tomatina Tomato Festival
This event which takes place in the village of Bunol, near Valancia, in the last week of August each year, is basically a massive free-for-all food fight (tomatos obviously). The tomato fight happens on the Wednesday lunch time in the town centre and surrounding streets, such are the number of revelers, but the celebrations themselves actually start several days earlier. Unlike a lot of quirky traditions this one isn’t that old, and has only been around since the 1940s, when some youngsters started throwing tomatoes during an entirely unconnected parade. The following year they repeated the tomato fight, despite the local council’s best efforts to prevent it, and over the years it became an accepted event in its own right. These days the population of Bunol swells from ~9,000 to ~30,000 each year during the festival, making it a strong contender for the title of World’s biggest food fight.

Baby Jumping Festival
Yes, really, a baby Jumping festival! this is actually the town of Castillo de Murcia’s own variation on the catholic festival of Corpus Christi. The event involves men dressed as the Devil leaping over babies which have been placed upon the ground, a process which supposedly protects the newborns from the evil. Maybe I’m not being fair, or am missing something, but this one doesn’t really appeal to me that much, and I honestly can’t see myself bothering with it, it just sounds like an extremely unpleasant accident waiting to happen, but then maybe that’s because I’m old and boring.

I have to say that the first two are the ones which most appeal to me, and as I’ve missed Moros y Cristianos (this year) it’s looking like if I do visit Spain this year it’s going to be around mid-summer to catch the Las Hogueras de San Juan, that really does sound like my kind of party, and from the sounds of it Alicante is the place to be for that one. I haven’t made any solid plans yet (I guess I should get around to doing that at some point soon or it will be a mid-winter break, rather than a summer holiday, by the time I get my act together.)

Stories, brimming with righteous outrage and indignation, about foreign immigrants “coming over here and stealing British jobs, and/or just generally scrounging and making the place look untidy” seem to be standard fare for much of the right leaning press.
However this piece from the Telegraph is (to my mind) a slightly more whimsical variation on that theme, or at least it’s not spewing xenophobic bile, which is always a plus.

It concerns a Danish invasion of our green & pleasant land, the likes of which we’ve not seen since 1013, when some bloke called Sweyn Forkbeard turned up with his son Cnut, & a bunch of mates, to ruin King Ethelred the Unready’s day.
Fear not though, this isn’t news of some recent influx of Scandinavians looking to plunder our currently shaky economy; this threat is altogether far more floral in nature!
Yes, this is the news that Danish Scurvy Grass, a small plant with white flowers, that’s usually found in coastal salt marshes, is outcompeting native British flowers & apparently taking over the verges of our nations motorways!
The Danish plant actually arrived in the UK during the middle ages, and as its name suggests was quite welcome at the time, being used by sailors to stave off Scurvy, a condition caused by vitamin C deficiency. However, many native British plants find the conditions next to major roads less than ideal, whereas the hardy marsh flower has evolved to thrive in harsh conditions & is now out-competing native wild flowers; Years like this, where snow fall has lead to wide scale salting of roads, are even better for the invader, since most plants don’t deal with salty conditions at all well.
Even the ever tenacious dandelion appears is losing out to the Scurvy grass! and if I’m honest I’m actually rooting for the Scurvy grass on that one, but then my battle with the dandelions in my garden has been a frustratingly long running conflict; my enemy’s enemy is my friend, and all that.

Still, with most of the countryside given over to agriculture, the nation’s verges are one of the more common refuges left for the Britain’s wildflowers, and there are concerns that we may see some species disappear altogether if the Danish rampage continues.

If it was just the dandelion I doubt anyone would mind, but it would be a shame if, in the future, the only way to see some of the nation’s flowers was to order them from a florist.

Was my first thought when I saw the news headline “Red shirts accuse reporters of bias, seize broadcast vans”.
In the pleasant little world of my imagined flights of fancy I had visions of hoards of angry trekkies, frothing with geekish fury & dressed in costume of course, storming the news vans of a bunch of bewildered reporters. Maybe they had a large consignment of valuable memorabilia to shift and couldn’t afford van hire? or possibly the red shirts might have been attracted to the van’s dish & other high tech kit, maybe some sort of effort to make a life size model of one of the Enterprise’s shuttles was afoot?

Sadly, as is so often the way with my inane day dreams, the truth turned out to be not nearly so fun or frivolous.

The news piece is actually about Thailand’s United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship (UDD) movement, who are known as red shirts. It would seem that things are quite tense over there at the moment, with recent clashes between UDD protestors and soldiers at rallies held by the movement.
This obviously begs the question of why UDD members would be hassling reporters, generally, if you’re trying to be a popular movement you’d think it might be wise not to antagonise the media too much.
Actually though, that is exactly the source of some UDD members’ anger, claims that major news stations are being biased in their reporting of the UDD’s activities & heavily favouring the Thai govt’s position.

Anyway things boiled over at a UDD protest on Saturday and the media were asked to leave, but some of the protestors followed the media, and forced at least one crew to abandon their van.
However it seems that no-one was too badly hurt, and calmer heads soon prevailed amongst the UDD, with one of the movement’s leaders asking the media to continue covering UDD events, & urging UDD members to let the media get on with their jobs in peace.

So, sadly, there’s no point running to the Thai version of the Exchange and Mart to look for high tech bargains in the Used Vans section.

Given how fundamental an aspect of life internet access apparently is these days, and that we’re approaching a general election, I guess it’s not too surprising that politicians have been talking a lot about it, and in particular their plans for updating the UK’s broadband infrastructure, lately.

There certainly doesn’t seem to be any doubt as to the need to role out 4G mobile access as soon as possible; there are plenty of articles around which are talking about how the popularity of both smart phones and dongles are putting strains on the country’s current mobile broadband capacity! And although deals like being able to get hold of free sims, which themselves allow unlimited free Skype conversations, are absolutely great for consumers looking to save on call charges, it would appear that the popularity of the new technology has wrong footed some providers.

Although it does definitely have its uses, both business and pleasure, mobile broadband is only part of the country’s broadband dilemma, some would say that the establishment of decent high speed internet infrastructure is a bigger and more important challenge for the future, and that’s possibly why we’ve recently seen all the main parties come out with their ideas for how this can be achieved.
This article gives a pretty good overview of the positions of the main parties, and in my opinion is well worth a look if you want to get a quick, at a glance, summary of what each is proposing.
Of course, promises are easily made, and all the more so in the run up to an election, but are not always so easy to deliver on. There’s also the chance that they may suddenly become less urgent in the minds of our political masters once the next Govt is securely in power, and doesn’t have to bother with annoying little details like serving the electorate, or keeping election pledges, but we’ll see.
They certainly all seem to have plenty of ideas of how to skim more money out of us to fund these changes. The Tories would like to take BBC funding to bank roll their super fast broadband plans, while Labour and the Lib Dems are behind the idea of a land line tax, although it seems that the Lib Dems have thought a little more about the equitability of such a levy.
There are also differing approaches as to how to get the more remote areas of the country hooked up with super fast broadband; here the problem is that everyone’s agreed that it’s a good idea but no one really wants to pay for laying the cables.
Personally I’m not sure why the whole country should be clubbing together to pay for people who live in the arse end of nowhere to get a fast internet connection; If it was likely to make a significant impact on the country’s economy I’d understand, but if that were the case it would also likely follow that it would be a viable business move for some comms company to lay the pipes.
As it is, it seems to me that the whole country is going to be left subsidising a few, for no real good reason. Living anywhere has its plusses and negatives, that’s the nature of life; in the countryside you get clean air, beautiful views, less idiots and what would generally be considered a better, and more peaceful, quality of life compared to city dwellers. If people want to live there that’s great, good luck to them (I’m kind of jealous) but they should also accept that their choice to live in such a locale is also going to have downsides, like they might not have such a great internet connection, or may have to pay more to obtain one; I don’t see why that’s such a big deal, & I certainly don’t buy into this ridiculous idea that highspeed internet is now an essential utility, Christ! how soft is this country becoming?

In any case, although all the parties seem dead set on wasting an absolute fortune laying cables to the boondocks, it may be that decent 4G mobile broadband is actually a far more sensible option for the more remote regions of the country; sure it still requires its own infrastructure, and the speed aren’t likely to match the super fast connections which the politicians currently aspire to provide, but it’s surely going to be a hell of a lot cheaper for everyone, and perfectly sufficient for most home use. Ok, so maybe high tech businesses might not be able to operate out of remote areas, but maybe that should just be one of those facts of life, like inner cities not being the best site for a farm, or the Pennines not being such a great place to base a fishing fleet.

I saw this article the other day, and although it’s a few weeks old, and made me think back to all the news articles, which were about this time last year, claiming that there would be a shortage of hire vehicles during the summer season due to the rental companies not being able to afford new vehicles for their fleets.

So, with the news that one of the UK’s largest van hire firms is set to renew 20,000 vans, a third of its fleet, in the expectation that the economy has/will pick up to an extent where the expense is justified, one has to feel that, assuming the money men at Northgate have done their jobs right, this has to be a good sign for the wider economy. Afterall, 20,000 vans are not going to come cheap and, even if the vehicles which are being replaced are so clapped out that they can’t be rented anymore, the implication has to be that the firm thinks it will need a capacity significantly greater than the 40,000 vans which it would have left.

A lot of Northgate’s business traditionally comes from businesses in construction and manufacturing, as opposed to private customers, so the firm’s commitment to renew their fleet strongly suggests that they have confidence in these sectors to flourish over the next twelve months, and if that’s the case then that would certainly be a good sign for the wider economy; particularly when one considers that the construction industry was one of the areas hit hardest by the recession, and the resulting crash in house prices.

Only time will tell whether or not it’s an astute move which will leave them well placed to profit from any recovery we see this year, but they’re by no means the only company to demonstrate optimism over the economy’s near future, and quite often the economy seems to function as much according to expectations as because of any real monetary factors, so, although my tendancy is to be wary, overall I’m thinking that the signs for recovery are looking hopeful.