Morts Musings

I asked a similar question just over a year ago, with regards to Bangladesh’s annual floods. Although Bangladesh has flooded this year, as it does most years, and caused hardship and disruption for many thousands of the nation’s poorest citizens it has gotten off relatively lightly compared to the impact that the monsoons have had on Pakistan this year.

Satellite images from last year (left) and earlier this month (right) give an indication of the extent of this year's Pakistan Floods. Terrible though they are, are they just a taste of things to come?

Really, you’d have to be living in a complete news vacuum to have missed the awful disaster which this year’s monsoon floods have caused in Pakistan; The UN has now declared that the scale of the crisis is greater than the combined effects of the Haiti earthquake (Jan ‘10), the Kashmir earthquake (Oct ‘05) & the Asian tsunami (Dec ‘04) and has left over 14,000,000 without food or shelter and at risk of falling victim to the host of diseases which commonly occur in the aftermath of major flooding.
One bright note is that this disaster has seen an unprecedented response from the public, with donations actually increasing as the crisis entered it’s second, then third week; very different from the usual pattern seen in these kinds of cases, where “donor fatigue” tends to kick in after the first week irregardless of how well the effects of the disaster are being dealt with at that stage.
However, for all that the response, both in the UK and internationally, has been amazingly generous so far there is still much work for the aid agencies to do, and many, many flood victims who still need the help of the international community if they’re to have any hope of returning to a normal way of life any time in the foreseeable future!
Unfortunately there are many despicable scammers in this world, and in particular on the internet, who’ll take any chance to profit from the misery of others, so if you’re planning on making a donation it’s best to go through the DEC, or one of their well known, reputable members such as Oxfam who, like most of the major UK charities, now have a page dedicated to the Pakistan Flood appeal.

Anyway, that was all a bit of an aside, an incredibly important aside, but a tangent none the less.
The real question I wanted to ask in this blog post was whether these floods, described as a “once in a century” event, are another sign that Climate Change is indeed a real and pressing problem which should concern the whole global community?

I understand the principle that climate is a long term pattern, and that it can’t judged by single isolated events, no matter how catastrophic, but it seems to me that we’ve been getting more and more of these “once in century” type of weather events over the past decade or so, and I truly wonder how much longer the climate change deniers will be able to keep their heads in the sand and continue to refute that there is a shift occuring in the planet’s weather patterns?
I can accept that there’s still a lot of debate to be had over the extent of anthropogenic climate change, and, in turn, how much humanity can do to mitigate the global climate change, but surely we’re now getting to a stage where denying the existance of a pattern of climate change is a thoroughly asinine position, and one which is only likely to be held by either the woefully gullible or those who are motivated by profound self-interest.

I’m sure that anyone not living in a bubble has heard about the scandels to do with the hidden charges travellers get hit with when using some of the budget airlines, but according to this piece (and the source being The Mirror I’m not going to take it as absolute gospel,) some car hire companies are renting out child car seats at prices which can only be seen as extortionate, when compared to some of their competitors prices.
Maybe I’m just old fashioned, or vaguely principled, but to me charging unnecessarily high prices for a piece of child safety equipment, which any half-thinking parent is going to want to provide for their children, just seems brazenly cynical!

Of course it does vary from company to company and while some are charging little more than a tenner a week others have cranked their car seat hire charge up to nearly £70, almost as much as it costs to hire a car in the first place!
The piece also claims that, not surprisingly, prices vary largely from location to location, with the research pointing to some prices at Majorca’s Palma airport being the highest, while it found the cheapest prices at Nice’s Cote d’Azur airport in France.

Obviously, as with any purchasing decision, the wisest course is to remember the caveat emptor principle, and always do your research thoroughly so you can ensure that you get the car hire deal which best suites your means, and your needs! Apart from anything else it looks as if taking the time to look before you book could save you up to £60 a week, which while not an earth shattering amount is still extra holiday spending money you could have in your pocket!

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?

Wrong sort of red shirts, apparently this type don't need to steal vans, what with living in space and all.

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.

Firstly, and most importantly, if you wish to make a donation to help the survivors of this terrible disaster, be careful which organisations you donate through; there have already been reports of fake web sites being set up by contemptably sick b*stards who are trying to profit from the earthquake. Well known charities, like Oxfam, have their own Haiti Earthquake pages and are probably the safest route for those who wish to help by giving an online donation.

I first caught news of the Haiti Earthquake late on Tuesday night while catching some headlines on the BBC before going to bed. Even at those early stages it seemed clear that the damage caused by it, and it’s aftershocks, was going to be immense, but over the last couple of days, as more and more news has filtered out of the impoverished Caribbean nation, the true scale of the devastation has started to become clear. It beggars belief.

The quake itself measured 7.0 on the Richter Scale, and as such is classified as a “Major” earthquake, while even the aftershocks measured 5.5. and 5.9 on the scale, making them significant earthquakes in their own right. To put things a little more in perspective, a magnitude 7 earthquake is the equivalent of a 32 megaton nuke, 1000 times more powerful than the Nagasaki atomic bomb. In addition, the quake was relatively shallow occurring only 10km below the surface. Shallow quakes are less likely to trigger tsunamis, but also tend to cause more damage in their immediate area, as we’re seeing in Haiti at the moment.
Even in a developed nation, with well constructed structures, a magnitude 7 earthquake would be a serious event, but in a nation like Haiti, the poorest country in the western hemisphere, the level of destruction is almost unimaginable! That the quake’s epicentre was only 15km from the densely populated capital, Port-au-Prince, has only exacerbated the situation.
Many of the city’s buildings were poorly constructed leaving them especially vulnerable to the quake, and it appears that many of those killed or injured were indoors at the time of the quake, or close to buildings which collapsed. Even so the death toll is staggering. So far it’s reckoned that 50,000 have died although there are fears that this could rise to as much as 500,000. Half a million people, it’s a simply stunning figure!

In many ways though the quake was only the beginning of the disaster, and looking after the survivors is now the main priority. Many Haitians live on less than a dollar a day, & even in normal times the country is heavily reliant on foreign food aid, but providing clean water, food & shelter for the thousands of, now homeless, survivors is going to be a huge task. Also, with so many dead to recover from the rubble, there’s a massive risk of disease.
Offers of aid and support have been flooding in pretty much since the quake struck, but even so, given the Herculean scale of the task, more help is needed. Most major charities have started appeals, for example Oxfam’s Haiti Earthquake donation page.

The news from Dubai World, last Wedsnesday, that they were seeking to delay the repayments on £36bn worth of loans, has raised anxieties both in the Middle East’s financial markets and around the world. Many investors had assumed that, because the investment company was run by the Dubai Govt, any debts which Dubai World accrued would be secured. However todays announcement by the Dubai Finance Minister made the position, that the Dubai Govt wouldn’t be guaranteeing these debts, absolutely clear.

To try and stem the fears of a new global financial crisis becoming a reality, the UAE’s central bank has announced the implementation of a fund to provide extra liquidity to both UAE based banks, & foreign banks which operate in the country; a move which appears to have calmed the fears of the financial markets somewhat, at least based on the performance of the Asian markets today.

Closer to home Dubai’s financial woes are cause for concern for a number of UK banks, including HSBC, RBS, Barclays & Lloyds, who viewed the Emirate as a safe financial bet & invested heavily; RBS is the biggest underwriter of Dubai Worlds’ loans, so nervous times in Gogarburn no doubt. Whether they’ll be covered by the UAE Central Bank’s bail out fund, and if so, to what extent, is unclear at the moment, but these must be worrying times for a few big wigs in the British financial sector. (Unless, of course, they’re expecting that they’ll just get bailed out by the British tax payer, again.)

Flight from Dubai?

Still, in the longer term, the decision by the Dubai Govt not to back Dubai World’s debts may come back to haunt them. Although they insist that the company has always been a seperate entity, many investors assumed that, because it’s state run, it would be bailed out by Govt if there were any problems. Many investors may feel that they’ve been mislead, and, if so, it could make it significantly more difficult for Dubai to attract investors in future; at the very least future investors will want to know exactly what terms they’re lending on.

Well, the above was written yesterday, but it seems the story has moved on overnight, so no need to cancel your flights to Dubai just yet!
Dubai world is now in talks with its creditors and is seeking to restructure just £26bn of its total (£59bn) liabilities. Although that still sounds like a huge sum to the average person, apparently the move has greatly calmed fears in the banking world. I guess it sends signals that the company isn’t on the verge of collapse, and with the economic system being so reliant on the confidence, it might be enough to prevent Dubai Worlds’ problems spreading & precipitating another dip in the world’s, still recovering, financial markets.