If You Thought Khruschev's Shoe Banging Was Crude, Wait Till You Hear Lyndon Johnson's Sartorial Requirements...

If we can enjoy listening to conversations like this then the Soviets no doubt were doing so at the time, in which case I think they could be forgiven for thinking that they were winning the cold war..

On This Day 342 Years Ago..

...London diarist..

Wednesday 12th December, 1668

 I hear this day that there is fallen down a new house not quite finished in Lumbard-Street, and that there have been several so, they making use of bad mortar and bricks; but no hurt yet, as God hath ordered it. This day was brought home my pair of black coach-horses the first I ever was master of, a fine pair.

...it's snakes and ladders then!

Inflation Rate Is Above The Maastricht Criteria - Adopt The Euro Before Anyone Notices!

Just in time for joining the Euro zone, at arguably the worst time ever to have joined (I personally trust that things will be fine in the end, however) Estonia has an inflation rate somewhat in excess of that which was required by the Maastricht criteria for membership.

The current rate is 4.5% - joining the Euro in itself is an inflationary pressure, as people will be rounding up prices rather than charging 27 Euros and 49.5 Cents for things, and there has certainly been something of a rise in activity in the real estate market, though again this is probably trying to get in ahead of the Euro adoption. Compare this with the Maastricht criteria of 3 point something per cent.

This must grate in Lithuania in particular, rejected a few years ago, ostensibly for having a rate that was a couple of fractions of a per cent higher than it should have been or something miniscule (in fact there may have been more to the story - maybe being a part of the 'new' Europe that had backed the 'wrong' side during the 2003 Iraq invasion and needing bringing to heel).

Nevertheless we're in, or nearly in, the Euro, and in these days of turmoil I don't think a 4.5 per cent rate of inflation is anything to be reprimanded for; I am sure that many of the other countries missed some of the criteria in one way or another.

Furthermore, a little inflation can be a good thing (remember it was running at nearly 12 per cent in Estonia in 2008!), for instance as a sign of recovery.

There's a little discussion on this, more or less saying the same thing, on Edward Hugh's Facebook page which I won't post a link to, you can go and find it yourself if you're interested, but in any event here's a chart (which is from the Eurostat site) charting inflation in Estonia over recent years...

Thoughts For The Day No. 48 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

...psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste..

Imagination rules the world.

Napoleon Bonaparte

Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life's coming attractions.

Albert Einstein

Imagination Imagination Imagination! Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imagination Imaginatiooooooooooon! 

Song from 'South Park', season 11, episode 10.

Another Crap Lesson - Tim Flowers

Tim Flowers is an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher based in the capital city of one of the baltic states. He is 42 years old. His previous job was working for the Post Office (main sorting office - as a superintendent) and this excellent and relevant background has given him a good grasp of the fundamentals of the English language, and the art of teaching it to others. He hails, as he likes to say, from Northamptonshire in England, a very glamorous part of the world indeed, and so is not at all out of place mingling with the glitterati of the Old Town where he hangs out on a Friday or Saturday night. He likes beer.

..well that was a wasted lesson I have to say. Amongst the top 10 (or so) wasted lessons I've ever taught. They just simply weren't getting it. I hardly got a chance to get any reading in, only about 25 pages of the Social Contract by Rousseau which I've been holding up in the trolleybus so people can see the cover these past days, and the thickos already started having problems with dependent prepoisitions. You'd have thought that by elementary level that would have sunk in by now, particularly as I gave a 25 minute explanation on the topic, and was even good enough to intersperse this with my views on the US political landscape, all for nothing.

Since the previous lesson, when I just decided to rest my eyes for a couple of minutes whilst said group were working through a badly photocopied set of exercises I'd taken from a book I randomly grabbed 5 minutes before the class, I'm sure they have all decided to be dead set against me. It's because they're evil capitalists, I can see it now. One of them, some 20 something blonde whose daddy works in a bank or something unforgiveable like that, had the gall to suggest I was anything other than a resounding success for renting at an overpriced rate off of an old lady in Kopli. What does she know? I remember watching the Tiananmen square massacre (on a black and white TV in a bedsit in Lewisham) probably a bit before some of these people were born.

Then when we went into my special quick fire period of asking questions, somebody didn't laugh at my witticism about Stalin sounding a bit like 'starling'. And to cap it off, somebody's mobile went off despite the fact that I vaguely gestured towards the 'switch mobiles off' sign, three months ago at the beginning of the course.

Now I hear one of them is off to Thailand. I'm sure they won't give it the respect it's due, merely coming back with talk of temples and lady boys instead of the real Thailand, that I saw, on the inside of a police cell having had the strength of character to have got drunk on Guiness.

Oh well, it's nearly the Christmas break soon, when I won't have to interrupt my day of sitting on wikipedia and facebook and cutting out bits of paper to attend to these sheep. Happy days are coming.

The Economist On Estonia

Estonia has made it on to the home page of the Economist no less, albeit in an obscure way (they could just as easily have made it a Latvian/Lithuanian/Finnish/Russian exchange student) and not particularly flattering either, but we take everything we can in this part of the world!

Don't Be Too Quiet - The Pete Best Story

Something that's occured to me a lot living here is that, whilst there is a lot to be said for modesty and reserve in all things (and am I missing London gob-shitedness?, er no, not one little bit!) it can be eminently possible to go too far the other way, in other words to miss out on what is rightfully yours and let some other, lesser person take it instead. Indeed there are foreign nationals here in Tallinn who have cut out little niches for themselves doing just that, exploiting the local taciturnity and finding a way to be a middling sized fish in a puddle. Can't say I blame them.

But for a real life example of how keeping one's mouth shut can get one, if not into trouble, then away from success, you could do worse than to look at the Beatles' original drummer, Pete Best. As this TV spot shows, some sort of 'what's my job' panel game in the States, he was even prepared to be flown halfway across the globe to speak in monosyllables, and 20 years later it was no better, as this pitiful early (I presume) Letterman interview demonstrates. True to his local roots, Pete looks more like he'd be more at home playing football at Anfield rather than the drums at Shea Stadium.

Now, there is a valid argument held by many that it was in fact Pete's drumming style, or lack of it, which kept him out of the group, and a quick listen to parts of the notorious Decca audition can confirm this, even to someone like myself, who thinks of the drums as a kind of asylum for failed musicians. However, there is such a thing as practice, it was a pop group not a modern jazz quartet, if he'd really wanted to nail it, he could have. No, he just didn't say anything interesting - even Ringo managed to do that.

I don't feel sorry for Pete; he brought it all on himself and no doubt has managed to make a reasonable living on the 'I used to be in the Beatles you know' circuit. But as a salutary lesson in under-fulfilling one's potential I think there are few paralells, in the public eye anyway.

By the way I'm not for a moment saying that Ringo shouldn't have been the drummer for the band, he absolutely should, but ultimately benefitted from someone else's misplaced meekness. They shall not inherit the earth..

Thought For The Day No. 47 - With The Rabbi Anders Weiss

..psychologist, spiritual guru and arbiter of good taste...

If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less than excellent work.

Thomas Watson, founder of IBM