The joys of motherhood :: 03:11 PM :: easyjetsetter

My least favourite thing about being unemployed (besides the existential terror of being a professional failure at 22), is spending most of my waking hours with my Mum. I love my Mum, and I even like her. We have things to talk about, we share interests, I think I am the only family member that respects her as an intelligent and effective person in her own right. We just shouldn't live together, and it's as much my fault as hers.

My favourite thing about being unemployed is sleeping until noon, then leisurely reading the paper with a cup of tea while my bath runs before settling down to another round of job applications.

For some reason, this offends my mother's scottish/calvinist/protestant work ethic deeply. She will exhort me daily to get up in the mornings, to which the only sensible answer is "why?" She fails to grasp that if I have a job, 7:30, 7, even 6 on a daily basis is no problem for me, I can bounce out of bed before my alarm clock eager to get going, but faced with a day of setting my own schedule, I prefer to sleep late and go to bed around 2 or 3. My natural time zone is somewhere in the middle of the atlantic. Greenland, say.

One of mum's schemes to get me moving is driving. As I have yet to sit a driving test and my theory test pass runs out in september 2006, my parents are understandably, after all the money they sunk into lessons, keen for me to keep it up and pass asap. So my test is booked for December 9th, and my mother regularly tells me I should be spending four hours a day in the car.

The problem is that the car in question was purchased for £200 to be a 'company car' for one of their employees. It's the most ungodly heap. For a start, it's red, and the door makes a hellish noise when you open it, threatening at any moment to fly off. It pops out of first gear and takes eight or nine attempts to go into reverse. The windscreen wipers have two settings: 'off' and 'wild frenzy' and as anyone who has lived on the west coast of scotland knows, we specialise in mild, constant, languorous drizzle.

But my parents are at the stage in their lives now where their insurance costs so little that adding a 22 year old learner doubles it. So I cannot drive their beautiful automated peugots.... I shall never know the joy of sixth gear, or even fifth, or what delights lurk in the world of power steering or indicators that switch themselves off, or even electric windows.

So as to avoid the school run rush, Mum is cunningly insisting that we drive between 11 and 1, thereby foxing me out of my lie-ins. Mum's idea of a lie-in is 8:30.

She has, however, found something to get me up on tuesday and thursday mornings: yoga. She has started taking me to her 9:30 yoga classes where I make myself fall over and vomit because I refuse to accept that these women, all at least 10-25 years older than me, are bendier and more balanced. It's great.

Yesterday, the instructor came around to where I was doing the cobra, and started prodding my bottom to make sure there was no tension in it and the muscles were completely loose. Since there are no muscles in my rather gargantuan derriere, which my Mum informed me last night is larger than my somewhat portly father's bottom, she was very pleased at the jelly-like quality of my buttocks.

Then she said "My God! That's frightening! Your back's like a hinge! It's a perfect right-angle! Were you a gymnast?" She was, of course, referring to how far back I was able to hinge my spine. No no, not a gymnast, mutters I. "It's a hereditary deformity!" sings out mother from two mats over.

I'm sure I'm insufferable moping around the house and generally making a nuisance of myself, opening new packets of things instead of finishing leftovers, but does she have to denounce me as quasimodo in quite such a public manner?

Vicarious living in France :: 10:19 PM :: easyjetsetter

New piece on the Paris/Dijon riots at the sharpener. I'm probably wrong, so go and tell me why I am in the comments please.

It was prompted by the discovery that I can receive France info based out of concarneau on my radio.

In other news, I just saw Mondovino and have an overwhelming urge to take the ungodly heap and tour tiny family-owned vineyards before they're all 'parkerised' or 'mondavied' or 'rollandais.'

Of course, I'll need someone over 21 who's had a driving licsense for at least three years to accompany me.

Are you in the German newspapers? :: 01:09 AM :: easyjetsetter

I am. Although I understand the gist of the article, I am too lazy to translate it myself, so I got google to do it for me, which produced some genuinely amusing results.

Englishwoman in Paris. An Englishwoman in Paris makes the French policy responsible in a Web log entry "laiecité" for the road battles in France. "laiecité" - the radical separation from state and religion - to the fact it led that it does not give reliable numbers over religion and ethnical affiliation, since Frenchmen of Arab origin would be considered simply as Frenchmen. Thus also no reliable data concerning discriminations could be given. The Bloggerin told by a friend, a native Frenchman, in France grown up and educated, with that it over French grammar conversed - sometime he had rolled with the eyes and had said: "what do I already know? I only am in, beur "." This word, which is a racistic expression for "Arabs", is felt as completely acceptable. This form of racingism, so the Weblog Schreiberin, is an indirect result "laiecité". The separation from state and church is felt in the Banlieues particularly as anti-Islamic. Thus again once is the western society at all debt? Surprisingly that Englishwoman seems to then be into of Paris nevertheless no left one. It gives itself to recognize just as a follower of the French Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy: It am right, if it legend that where at the police it is shot no more of disadvantaged young people, but of criminals be spoken must. "the riots may be overpowered not waited, but must, and the CRS will do that despite its terriblly brutal call (or straight therefore) exactly." In summary the Bloggerin does not hold, it knows not all facts, anybody knows: "however if integration in the name of the equality looks, can it in such a way it kept."

I mean, I could have done better, but then you would have missed such gems as racingism and Thus again once is the western society at all debt. I particularly liked the yoda-esque: if it legend that where at the police it is shot no more of disadvantaged young people, but of criminals be spoken must. Of course, I am nevertheless no left one and an unthinking droid of the right. Since when was ending lawlessness right-wing?

Year of the Volunteer :: 08:06 PM :: easyjetsetter

"Could you help me out for a couple of hours?"

Never, ever say 'yes' to this question. Especially not if you have a parent whose soul has been eaten by the behemoth that is a major children's charity.

You will find yourself sweating into surgeon's gloves, pouring old people's leftover tea and dribble into a slopbucket, or wrestling from their veined, arthritic hands the ziploc baggy that their sandwich came in because they want to "keep it and reuse it, eh hen?"

It is useless to resist though, you already learned your lesson 24 hours before when you were asked to make gingerbread. "I'd rather make brownies" you said. Your parent will pointedly buy a tin of treacle for the gingerbread you will make.

Any attempt at sabotage by 'mistaking' fluid ounces for ounces will only result in tastier, fluffier gingerbread, and you are not sufficiently in the doghouse to avoid a day in city chambers at the voluntary organisations' christmas card fair.

Old men with tattoos and bottle-bottom glasses will tell you bad jokes and when you don't laugh say "Was that a bad joke? Sorry, I can't tell you any of the others I know - they're all dirty" and then slowly wink, but you can barely tell from all the facial tics spasming across their sweaty brows.

And what will you have to show for it at the end of the day? A full slopbucket, £750 in tea-takings, a ginormous orange lump of leftover cheddar and a strange white residue all over your hands.

£750 is barely enough to buy a uniform for a child to wear to private school, let alone pay for it to go there so it can get a decent education.

The Government calculates that formal volunteers add £22 billion to the economy. However, since they calculate this a) using average earnings, not minimum wage and b) assume that everyone who says they have volunteered in the past year did so 40 hours a week, I would take it with a large pinch of salt and a shot of vodka.

Fucking philanthropy. Bollocks to it.

Solidarite numerique :: 03:47 PM :: easyjetsetter

Having read everything else on the internet for that day and being done with the job applications for the next week or so, I discovered something new on the internetweb: Charles Bremner's Paris blog for the Times. He's that newspaper's Paris correspondent, but his blog is far more personal and anecdotal and therefore more interesting than his other writing.

He discusses such gems as the national fascination with Johnny Halladay, plotless films and inviting international correspondents at times of national crisis to criticise their country in the national media, a habit not replicated in the anglo-saxon world. Can you imagine the Today programme interviewing a French journalist about our civil liberties, for example?

He also touches on the interesting development that is the digital solidarity fund, wherein, it seems, France wishes to prevent the internet from being an entity entirely based and managed in America. He delves nicely into other places where France tries to fight anglo-saxon superiority, such as broadcasting, with the much anticipated CFII, an entity that is not expected to make any money or do a good job, just exist and make sure France has a cable news channel too, dammit!

This follows on the frankly welcome news coming out of the conclusion of WSIS in Geneva that the so-called "backbone of the internet," ICANN, will not be run by the UN as was suggested over the summer. Apparently the US is just not playing dice.

I don't know about you, or him, but I don't actually trust the UN to run something without trying to make it "better" or "more worthy" and in so doing, frankly, ruining it. Since the Register reports that such trustworthy countries as Iran and China are arguing for other governments to be given control, you know it's a bad idea.

Also in that report is this little snippet: "The United States, which currently has overall control of the internet, is refusing to allow other governments to take the lead role, arguing instead that companies, organisations and individuals made the Internet what it is today and they should continue to have the biggest say." (emphasis mine)

I can't help but feel that America, with its tradition of libertarian freedom of speech, even if that means copious amounts of porn, spam, britney spears and suchlike, is more likely to leave the internet alone. It works because it's flexible and free (ish).

I'm not sure a French internet would be much better. It's not exactly a country renowned for freedom of the press, as Bremner notes in the post about Sarkozy suppressing the publication of his wife's book, despite it being vetted by lawyers, and he mentions in passing the general squeamishness of the papers in reporting on "delicate" matters.

Then of course, bear in mind that in February, France will be the first democratic country to prosecute a blogger, following on from 2005's success of being the first democratic country to imprison a blogger. Nice summing up of the whole situation here.

Of course, the UK, acting for the EU in what I am enjoying calling the Worst. EU Presidency. Ever., proposed in Geneva a nice solution: have an entirely non-authoritative advisory arm to ICANN set up employing lots and lots of UN civil servants. Creation of jobsforlife with ridiculous pensions AND a panacea for sulky nations. Hoorah!

A change is gonna come :: 01:48 AM :: easyjetsetter

In the words of Sam Cooke.

Please note that despite making ambivalent noises about rebates and CAP, and despite making her first foreign visit as chancellorette to France, Merkel and Chirac vousvoie while Sarko and Merkel use tu and du in both private and, more importantly, public conversations.

I was particularly heartened by this statement: "On the financial perspective, we have to look at all the issues, those of the net contributors as well as beneficiaries and we can't reduce it to one point," In other words, Merkel is more worried about the larger problems in the EU budget than petty franco-british squabbling over their favourite toys.

See, the "British-led" push for "anglo saxon liberalism" isn't that at all. As Chirac is watching over his manche for the country trying to ruin his social market baby, he's forgetting that the East has seen what a sham economic prosperity in Western Europe in the 60s and 70s was, and wants proper free markets and trade liberalisation....

It's been said before, but it's worth repeating: the real pressure for change in the EU will come from new, former communist, member states who are rampantly low tax, free trade, free movement of labour etc.

More important, in terms of implications for governance, than her genitalia is Merkel's upbringing: an ex Ossie, you can bet your bottom deutschmark that Merkel wants, well, a lot more deutschmarks.

No zealot like a convert I tell you.

My claim to fame :: 08:59 PM :: easyjetsetter

Nice bit from the New Yorker about why it is that French and German unemployment is quite so high. Yes, it's the usual story about labour regulation, but James Surowiecki of 'wisdom of the crowds' fame links it to attitudes to leisure time. Very neat. I love this guy.

I recently found out that he went to my university on the same scholarship as me, and since my scholarship foundation is this odd, mafia-like family where you always take a call from a fellow scholar, I have access to his home address and phone number.

If I feel like it, I could stalk him.