Cuttings: Favourite Press of 2009 [part 2] - 24th Dec 2009
Posted by John McKenna on Thursday, December 24, 2009
Under: Year In Review - 2009
barefootbandit
Right. The Guardian is still my preferred daily though I see it much less frequently. I truly enjoyed a recent report (15 Dec) from the US by Ed Pilkington on the “barefoot bandit,” Colton (great name) Harris-Moore. Eighteen years old and somewhere between 6’2” and 6’5”, this young scofflaw steals anything from credit cards to Cessnas, having apparently learned to fly from the internet and manuals purchased using the pinched plastic. Though this is probably old news to those in America, it fascinated me.
“He usually breaks into uninhabited holiday houses, cracking open rooftop skylights and dropping down into the living rooms, and them proceeds to squat in the houses for a while before moving on, staling only the necessities he needs to survive. Investigators have likened it to a sort of Goldilocks syndrome. Or as one of his friends put it in the Seattle Weekly: ‘He stared breaking into people’s homes because he wanted to see what it was like to live a normal life’.”
A consistently left-leaning rag, the paper highlights the efforts of fellow fuzzy headed travellers. Eg, Lynsey Hanley’s review of “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better” (Christ, did the publisher not want this book to sell? What a title!).
The authors use a raft of data to show that countries such as the US and Britain, which make such a fuss over economic expansion, are much worse off than places such as Scandinavia. In a nutshell, stop worrying about business growth (and presumably that hilarious explanation of greed -- “wealth creation”). Focus on equality, instead. Equal incomes in the UK should mean “seven extra weeks’ holiday a year; we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we’d trust each other more,” Hanley writes.
“A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued – such as low wages, low benefits, and low public spending on education for instance, – will allow a flourishing of human potential.”
Back to the New Yorker and “Shouts and Murmurs”. Andy Borowitz in the 1 June 2009 edition had a good time with a quote from a so-called captain of industry. Well, Disney CEO Robert Iger, at least, who gets up at 4.30am for “quiet time” that includes the papers, exercise, checking emails, web surfing, and even “a little TV, all at the same time.” Oh yes, and then there is some music added to the mix. Up at 1am, Borowitz riffs nicely:
“There’s no end to the things I can accomplish during my quite time. I have a fairly nimble contralto voice, and after I pop an amphetamine or two, I’ll work my way through the Metropolitan Opera repertoire, taking breaks to revise my will or maybe buy a fishing lodge. One think I like to do is a controlled burn of dried twigs in the woods behind my house. I’ll do the elliptical for twenty minutes, set fire to the woods, sing an aria from ‘The Magic Flute,’ then jump back on the elliptical.”
Right. The Guardian is still my preferred daily though I see it much less frequently. I truly enjoyed a recent report (15 Dec) from the US by Ed Pilkington on the “barefoot bandit,” Colton (great name) Harris-Moore. Eighteen years old and somewhere between 6’2” and 6’5”, this young scofflaw steals anything from credit cards to Cessnas, having apparently learned to fly from the internet and manuals purchased using the pinched plastic. Though this is probably old news to those in America, it fascinated me.
“He usually breaks into uninhabited holiday houses, cracking open rooftop skylights and dropping down into the living rooms, and them proceeds to squat in the houses for a while before moving on, staling only the necessities he needs to survive. Investigators have likened it to a sort of Goldilocks syndrome. Or as one of his friends put it in the Seattle Weekly: ‘He stared breaking into people’s homes because he wanted to see what it was like to live a normal life’.”
A consistently left-leaning rag, the paper highlights the efforts of fellow fuzzy headed travellers. Eg, Lynsey Hanley’s review of “The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always do Better” (Christ, did the publisher not want this book to sell? What a title!).
The authors use a raft of data to show that countries such as the US and Britain, which make such a fuss over economic expansion, are much worse off than places such as Scandinavia. In a nutshell, stop worrying about business growth (and presumably that hilarious explanation of greed -- “wealth creation”). Focus on equality, instead. Equal incomes in the UK should mean “seven extra weeks’ holiday a year; we would be thinner, we would each live a year or so longer, and we’d trust each other more,” Hanley writes.
“A society in which all citizens feel free to look each other in the eye can only come into being once those in the lower echelons feel more valued than at present. The authors argue that removal of economic impediments to feeling valued – such as low wages, low benefits, and low public spending on education for instance, – will allow a flourishing of human potential.”
Back to the New Yorker and “Shouts and Murmurs”. Andy Borowitz in the 1 June 2009 edition had a good time with a quote from a so-called captain of industry. Well, Disney CEO Robert Iger, at least, who gets up at 4.30am for “quiet time” that includes the papers, exercise, checking emails, web surfing, and even “a little TV, all at the same time.” Oh yes, and then there is some music added to the mix. Up at 1am, Borowitz riffs nicely:
“There’s no end to the things I can accomplish during my quite time. I have a fairly nimble contralto voice, and after I pop an amphetamine or two, I’ll work my way through the Metropolitan Opera repertoire, taking breaks to revise my will or maybe buy a fishing lodge. One think I like to do is a controlled burn of dried twigs in the woods behind my house. I’ll do the elliptical for twenty minutes, set fire to the woods, sing an aria from ‘The Magic Flute,’ then jump back on the elliptical.”
Tags: barefoot fbi guardian
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Barry Shelby, American-gone-native-Scotsperson, Journalist , Photographer, Author and....Crofter located now at Earshader on the Isle of Lewis, Scotland. Barry, based for years in Glasgow, is now with his wife Elizabeth on the Islands off the North-West Coast of Scotland.
