They Do It Over There But We Don’t Do It Here

more about “How Swedish MPs handle expenses“, posted with vodpod

The Beeb looks at how Sweden, known as probably Europe’s most transparent democracy manage their own MPs expenses and accommodation needs. Whilst watching the report I kept saying to myself ‘ah but how much is their salary’ and it turns out it’s on par with our own UK politicians.So no excuses then?

OK, I’m never sure how useful it is to examine how other cultures do things especially when it would take a sea change in our own culture sometimes to achieve the same though it’s probably a useful yardstick for the ideal (wanders off to daydream of the ideal).

Related articles by Zemanta

• MPs’ expenses: ban on MPs claiming for mortgage on second home (telegraph.co.uk)
• MP mortgage claims ‘to be banned’ (news.bbc.co.uk)
• MPs prepare for combat with Kelly over reforms (guardian.co.uk)
• Peers to be banned from taking money from lobbying firms (telegraph.co.uk)

US Reporter Protests At Paris Hilton Coverage

Mika Brzezinski ,a US MSNBC reporter tries her best not to have celebrity culture as the lead news story. There may be hope for journalism yet. Miss Brzezinksi seems to be having a ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore’ moment ala the 1976 film Network which earns her some respect in my eyes. Her male colleagues seem a tad patronising.

Tape Archive:Lynne Messinger (1980?)

Lynne Messinger

I have very scant information on this and am placing it here in case anybody can add information. I believe that Lynne Messinger was part of the New York arts based music of the late 70′s and early 80′s and I believe she was later lead singer in an all girl group called Unknown Gender which were around the the mid 80′s and she possibly now owns a recording studio and may still be involved in the arts.

This track, whose title I can only assume is Who the hell want’s their picture taken? was due to be included on a forthcoming album to be titled Studio and Gidget go to Soho.

Low bandwidth alternative format (520K *AAC+) : Lynne Messinger

(*AAC+ audio files require this Plugin(Win) or a compatible player such as Songbird (Win,Mac,Linux), VLC(Win,Mac,Linux)or Winamp(Win) however Quicktime and i-Tunes will play file at half the audio bandwidth and in mono only)

Battles – Atlas

Another track that I heard in the background during a conversation conducted across 12,000 miles was this one and it really was (for both of us) a “who is that?” moment. Call me a freaky geek (not too loudly please) but I am always attracted to anything a teensy weensy bit experimental. When I looked the band details up on wikipedia it was a good start as under genre it said undefined. If they can be assigned any kind of classification at all then at a push they can be accused of a passing alliance to math rock which is, apparently a loose style defined by those using non standard time signatures. The lead vocaliser is the son of a reasonably well known avantgarde Jazz musician. Battles are a US, New York based band and their album Mirrored is out on May 14th.

:: :: :: :: :: ::
Battles – Atlas « Stuffem-Up the hill backwards

Here comes the £6.80 ($12) EU to USA air flight

The ghost of Freddie Laker may be sitting up to take notice of a possible new low cost air link between the EU and the USA as Michael O’Leary, the controversial and flamboyant boss of budget airline Ryanair announced his plans to introduce a one-way flight cost of less than £7 to the USA from the EU which he says is now possible due the the recent “open skies” agreement between the US and the EU.

Virgin Atlantic has welcomed the “open skies” agreement and have said they hope to expand the services between the EU and the US also.

British Airways have pointed out that they are unsure of Ryanair’s cost calculations due to air tax on routes to the US currently standing at around $240 (so be prepared for a bit of a shock when you finally get to checkout your future £6.80 online booking).BA are not unduly worried by Ryanair’s proposed low cost pricing as Ryanair would not be flying out of airports in the UK but from bases in continental Europe.

Ryanair’s Mr O’Leary told Flight magazine that his proposed new airline division was likely to use airports such as Baltimore, Providence in Rhode Island and Long Island Islip Macarthur.

Translations: French German Italian Spanish

Share This: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Here comes the £6.80 EU to US flight