Breast-ironing classed as crime

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A form of abuse where a young woman’s chest is seared with hot stones, supposedly to delay breast development, is to be prosecuted in Britain with offenders facing prison time. There is anecdotal evidence of dozens of British cases of breast-ironing, which is most commonplace in Africa. Activists say it may have happened to more than 1,000 women and girls in the UK.

The Crown Prosecution Service says it will issue guidance making it “quite clear [that] breast-ironing is child abuse.  We hope this new guidance will give victims, police and prosecutors the confidence they need to bring perpetrators of this cruelty to justice,” said Jaswant Narwal, a chief prosecutor who specialises in so-called “honour” abuse.

My comment:  As poor people flee the climate change and political instability in Africa, they bring with them age-old cultural habits we have never heard of.  This one is particularly weird.  But the government is quite right to ban it.  Migrants are welcome, but they should conform to the norms and laws of their new country and respect the individual rights of young girls.  This is just common sense.

Only in France?

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Meung-sur-Loire

A court has ruled that a French man who suffered a fatal heart attack while having adulterous sex on a business trip was the victim of a workplace accident. The engineer, identified only as Xavier X., died in his hotel in the Loire in 2013. In a long-running legal case, his employer argued that although the man was staying at the hotel as part of a business trip, he was not in the course of his professional duties when he joined a “complete stranger” in her room, and that it was therefore not obliged to compensate his family over his death.

But last week, it emerged that earlier this year, an appeals court in Paris had agreed with the state insurance provider, that the sex was “an act of normal life, like taking a shower or eating a meal”, and that the man had been entitled to protection over the course of the “whole mission”.  (reported in The Week, 21 September 2019).

I have an idea for the US House of Representatives that would give us a rest from the endless angst and horrible news of the past months:  pass a law that compensates American families for the deaths of husbands and fathers while caught in flagrante delicto on official trips in business hotels.  It could be a wake-up call, especially for the more sanctimonious people claiming to be christians, and who, I suspect ( but can’t prove) partake like other types.  Epicureans, of course, wouldn’t dream of such goings- on, but most of them are out of a job, so they don’t stay in business hotels where ladies of dubious virtue hang out. (just joking!)

Genesis of the EU

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Forty-three years ago the Second World War ended. Europe was devastated, its major cities in chaos, millions of its citizens dead. The bitterness between ancient foes, particularly France and Germany, was deeper than ever.

If in that bleak landscape someone had forecast the Europe of the Eighties, he would have been described as a fool or a dreamer. Yet it happened – because leaders had the vision to suggest new ways. They recognised that if the peoples of Western Europe, with their deep differences and fears for their survival, had chosen the wrong path to protect these differences, the results would have been ruinous for Europe as a whole.

After 1945, men of vision tried a new way. They sat down with former enemies to hammer out agreed institutions which settled relationships and preserved differences . One thing is certain: they would never have achieved it had they continued to dwell on the past and call up the ghosts of the past. That approach would have led, as it always had done, and as it does in Ireland, to conflict in every generation.  (The Week, 8 Oct)

This piece of statesmanship, imperfect though it is (as are most of the constructs of mankind), can be interpreted as a truly Epicurean move, giving peace of mind and better lives to most Europeans, including the poorest and most historically oppressed.  Unfortunately, the fact of the millions dead and the suffering caused by European divisions, is barely, if at all, understood by a large number of European citizens, for whom Facebook and Twitter are more relevant than learning history at school.  We reap what we sow.  If you don’t like how an institution is run, reform it, don’t try to wreck it.

A poem to relieve the gloom

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   Kefalonia

We came, we saw, we sunbathed

Odysseus, who came from Ithaca, just next door,
Found Kefalonia a bore.
No dragons, no beasties, no Charybdis or Scyllas,
Just a load of young Brits drinking beer in their villas.
From the earliest moment when he was a boy,
He wanted adventures, like leveling Troy.
But although he had traveled quite a lot,
He seemed to ignore this particular spot.

Here people are friendly, the climate sublime,
The countryside scented with sage and with thyme.
The olives are ancient, the beaches are sandy,
The food is so-so, but the markets are handy.
But except for Corelli and his mandolin,
There is little to stimulate adrenaline.
It’s an excellent place to just lie in the sun,
But nothing occurs here, when all’s said and done.

No, history’s passed by this particular isle – –
A backwater now, as it’s been for a while.
Top Romans arrived, found the island quite pleasant,
But generally gave it away as a present.
The Venetians came by and proved a mild menace,
But the wine wasn’t good, so they went back to Venice.
The odd conqueror conquered, but promptly departed;
The British came too, but were rather half-hearted.

No sign of a palace of mythical kings,
No civilizations or mystical springs.
No rivers to hell and no acropoli
To attract foreign visitors happening by.
The hire cars are hired, but most sit in the sun,
For where would they go if they went for a run?

No wonder the Italians and British all choose
The beach and the poolside, banter and booze.

How BA fell from grace

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Recently  90% of British Airways’ 4,300 pilots started a long-threatened strike. Almost all of BA’s 1,700 flights had to be cancelled and around 200,000 people had their travel plans disrupted. The first pilots’ strike in BA’s 45-year history has arisen over a dispute about pay: BA had offered its pilots an increase of 11.5% over three years – but their union is holding out for a slice of company profits. Although BA pilots are already paid up to £167,000 a year (plus allowances), they reckon their remuneration is “out of kilter” with other big European airlines such as Air France-KLM and Lufthansa. (Daily Mail)

This dispute is a symptom of a wider malaise afflicting BA.   Under CEO Álex Cruz there have been a string of tech-related disasters: a power cut in 2017 left 75,000 passengers stranded; a data hack in 2018 leaked 380,000 customers’ details; a check-in failure in August resulted in 130 flights being cancelled and 300 others delayed. As a result, BA’s share price is down 40% since January last year – and its reputation is in free fall: according to one report, it is now the world’s 55th favourite airline, out of 65; another put it 27th out of 28 for value, ahead only of Ryanair. It all confirms “what many BA travellers know already”, said Simon Kelner in the I newspaper – that “the service, reliability and public image” of the UK’s flagship airline have all been “steadily degraded”. (Graeme Paton in The Times).

 Ten years ago, when BA was loss-making, pilots allowed the airline to recalibrate their pay scale: partly as a result, most pilots earn way below the much-quoted £167,000pa. Add in the fact that many have training debts of up to £100,000 to pay off, and you see why they now feel entitled to a share of the record pre-tax profit of close to £2.5bn that BA made last year. Moreover, Cruz, the Spanish CEO, gets a handsome £1.3m which somewhat dwarfs their own. But if IAG, which owns not only BA but Iberia, Vueling and Aer Lingus, gives BA gives its pilots a profit share, pilots from those other airlines will want one too.  But at this rate, if passengers are daily alienated,  there’ll be no profits to argue about.  (The Week,14 September 2019)

My comment:  at one time British Airways was effectively owned by the public, and operated as both a national flagship and an agency of public service, like the railways and the mail service, albeit not particularly profitably.   BA is just another example of the reduction in government involvement in the economy and the use of the proceeds to reduce taxes on the rich.   I believe it is part of the Epicurean ethos that government should operate for the benefit of all the people.   At any rate, this drive to privatise everything in sight has been. disaster, like the trains.  I can personally attest to the fact that BA is breathtakingly badly (privately) managed, has no clue as to how to treat customers, and seems to have a staff morale that cannot sink any lower.  Are there still any apologists for privatisation?