"I always felt a little guilty about living in Drafi"

Yearning burning earning

4 November 2007. I recognise, as should all who think they can watch this wicked problem from some position of moral safety, that these problems are inflamed - literally - by desire for Greek land that exists among Greek citizens but starts far beyond Greece, in internationally stirred yearning for Greece, in a global market for an idea of place that feeds on and desires to consume Greece. Every commodifying exercise, internal and external, every sexy landscape image in glossy spreads, the posters and pamphlets at conference stands and, of course, on the web, enlivens the market for matches and turns the gaze of the profiteer towards the temptations of dry tinder. Yearning leads to burning leads to earning. This is a problem for me, for everyone. If Greece finds solutions, the world finds solutions. Hurling imprecations at the corrupt may be personal therapy. It's not politics.

Parnitha 2007

Malcolm Brabant has just confessed on BBC Radio 4 that he "always felt a little guilty about living in Drafi." In July 2007, after fires had devastated the Parnitha forests, a cartoon was drawn by the foremost Greek cartoonist Yannis Kalaitzis - Γιάννης Καλαϊτζής - in Ελευθεροτυπία Eleftherotypia - and see Ab Irato.

The problem is relatively simple but politically and administratively complex. Forests are protected in the Hellenic Constitution. But the land on which they grow is not legally protected by strict zoning laws of the kind that exist, for instance, in the UK and older European countries.

The Greek government is introducing a cadastral system, but until it's completed, Greek forests are only forests while they have trees. Burn them down; avoid getting caught; let a carelessly discarded cigarette-end do its work. The land ceases - effectively - to be forested. In the UK, if a forest burns the land remains zoned as 'forest'. It must be recovered as forest; a tradition of government land-use law that goes back nine centuries to the Domesday Book.

Land registration incorporated into Regional Spatial Strategies, succeeding Structure Plans, involving prolonged consultation, won't stop the persistent land profiteer but it forces them to work harder than in Greece, where they get further help from the weather.

The goals of the forthcoming Greek equivalent - the Hellenic Cadastre - are listed below. The ones that matter in challenging yearning-burning-earning are in italics.

To secure the real property of citizens

To adjudicate, irrevocably, state and municipal property, forests and coastal zones

To limit bureaucracy and simplify real property transactions

To improve protection of the environment by limiting encroachment and unauthorized development of land

To establish an absolutely secure environment for investments in the real estate market

Forcing through the Hellenic cadastral will require great political will and greater probity among Greek planning professionals and greater opportunities for inspecting the public sector - more figures like Leandros Rakintzis, General Inspector for Public Administration whose website encourages citizens to report corruption.

* * * Betty at Walsall Road Allotments who wrote to Cllr Martin Mullaney on our behalf, has just copied me this email from Adrian Stagg:

Betty, the Cabinet Member for Leisure Sport and Culture has asked me to reply to your email about the Victoria Jubilee site. When Allotment Officers visited the site in May, we were told that the scheme would be completed by the end of July. There have been delays due to bad weather and there have been problems regarding the boundaries between the allotments and the adjoining sports pitches which are at different levels.

The developer has presented a revised programme of works that suggests completion by the end of September, though there is likely to be a further delay before the pavilion is installed - once that is done we can inspect the works, identify any snagging problems and eventually accept handover. There is also a legal matter involving the land transfer to the City Council and whilst we have urged priority, this will take as long as it takes and I have no real idea of timescale. We cannot therefore occupy the allotments until we are legally entitled to do so (my italics).

Allotment Officers can only do so much and delivery remains in the hands of the developer and other City Officers. There are still plots available if people want to go on the waiting list. Adrian Stagg, Allotments Finance & Records Officer Parks & Nature Conservation 303 3038

Watching PMQ and George Soros

"...if we do the wrong things, it will be more painful; if we do the right things, it will be less painful."

Government and the crisis - a sober American discussion between Bill Moyers and George Soros (transcript extract):

BILL MOYERS:So let's think about those people down at Neely's Barbecue going home tonight having heard you. What they've heard you say is the system is really disfunctioning right now. It's out of control. Nobody's in charge. They've heard you express your own worry that in the next three months it could get much, much worse. And they've heard you say that you don't see much good news immediately on the horizon. So let's leave them something to think about as they go home. Let them go home and say, "Mr. Soros said here are three things we can do, simply." One?

GEORGE SOROS:Well, deal with the mortgage problem. Reduce foreclosures. Recapitalize the banks. And then work on a better world order where we work together to resolve problems that confront humanity like global warming. And I think that dealing with global warming will require a lot of investment. You see, for the last 25 years the world economy, the motor of the world economy that has been driving it was consumption by the American consumer who has been spending more than he has been saving, all right? Than he's been producing. So that motor is now switched off. It's finished. It's run out of — can't continue. You need a new motor. And we have a big problem. Global warming. It requires big investment. And that could be the motor of the world economy in the years to come.

BILL MOYERS:Putting more money in, building infrastructure, converting to green technology.

GEORGE SOROS:Instead of consuming, building an electricity grid, saving on energy, rewiring the houses, adjusting your lifestyle where energy has got to cost more until it you introduce those new things. So it will be painful. But at least we will survive and not cook.

* * * [Back to the future - Obama's 'rescue plan' 13 Oct '08] * * * We've switched - from lecture and discussion at Hornton Grange at the University Conference Park with my Japanese students and friend and colleague Chris Game - to watching the BBC live feed from the House of Commons - a wide screen image, with good sound, of PMQ - Prime Minister's Questions. (YouTube extract) It's an especially useful example of being able to watching significant political moments, as the House considers the government's decision to spend even more money than was approved by Congress on Friday, in the form of a 'rescue package' - £250 billion in the hope of improving the 'general liquidity' - about £4000 per person across the UK - to give a feel for scale. In the States it was $70 billion (£394 billion) for a population of 301 million. Technology having become more versatile in the last year, we watched the Diet of Japan and other political forums - as three years ago I sat at the kitchen table in Birmingham watching Katrina - in repetitive stills - hitting the coast of New Orleans, ravaging the city and the lives of those unable to drive to safety, marking the start of European familiarity with the phrase 'sub-prime lending'. [Back to the future 2/11/08: on this matter of using WiFi in the classroom I know it's only the start of something quite different whose form is still unclear 'where the teacher can respond quickly and flexibly to students by tapping into a rich repository of learning gadgets relevant to the class and the syllabus to build a classroom experience that changes as fast as the students inquisitive minds.'] * * * Last night I had supper at Henry's in St.Pauls Square with my old friends, Kim and Tanya. It was so good to be together again after so long a break in our 8 or 9 month reunions. This time it was over a year so we had lots of chat about families, friends and the state of the world as it seemed from our homes and our different institutions, Birmingham University, Cranfield University Business School and private consultancy. "This is such a mess. It's so depressing. People are getting hurt or expecting to be. I cheered myself" said K " by thinking this may at least kick us into saving the globe" "And it may stop banks forcing loans down my kids' eager throats and then short-selling their debt to your eager kids as real money" I said. Didn't someone say "We're leaving Planet Finance: returning to Planet Earth; Wall Street becoming like Venice from the 19th century on - primarily for tourists...." * * * A rather astonishing and quite pleasing thing has happened. Out of the blue someone I've not met for half a century has e-mailed me suggesting a visit next month to the grounds of Ashfold School - where I was between 1949 and 1954, from age 7 to 12. Shortly after I left, the school moved to a place near Aylesbury. The old school was demolished. I've not been much interested in school reunions, but I know I'm not gold glazing my childhood in affirming that Ashfold was a happy place - liberal without ideology. I'm sneezing from dust raised sifting through unvisited files, digging out black and white images long unseen. The astonishing thing about the part of my brain that stores my past is that so much has lain there, as untapped as my old school photos. Unlike ones of me as a baby or toddler - in the secret garden of infancy - these photos record a time when I was poised between haloed clouds and common day. While the photos are faded, memories surface with astounding freshness, in colour with echoes; faces, words including school slang, (a sacred stubby - a pencil sharpened, at both ends, to the last syllable of available lead, respecting habits of scarcity from the war) events, personalities and now, in a trickle, stories of long ago - as others begin to chat via e-mail with images shared on the web about our forthcoming get-together. In the school photo from 1953 I'm eighth from the right, third row up. * * * Pushbikes arranged a public meeting with Birmingham City Council on 9th October at the Birmingham and Midland Institute to discuss cycling issues. I couldn't go. The photo shows the start of what became a standing room only event. Centre foreground is Howard Boyd, who's quietly done more for cycling in this city than anyone, and whose research - 12 years ago - into the health benefits of cycling got me taking up cycle commuting, and - last October - to divorcing my car. * * * The court case over the deaths in October 2006 of two children at the Louis Corcyra Hotel is due in November on the island. There's another worrying piece of news from the 'freelance one man band' Brabant on local concern about the EU subsidised landfill at Lefkimi - in this case a film on YouTube about its effect on the local water table.

From Corfu Malcolm Brabant reports: Environmental campaigners -Spiros Pantis, taverna owner, Dimitris Fanariotis, Eco Corfu and Stephanos Kouris, Environmentalist - on Corfu accuse the EU of wasting subsidies on a new rubbish dump that, they allege, fails to meet waste disposal standards laid down by Brussels. The campaigners claim the landfill site, near one of Corfu's most popular tourist beaches, is going to cause serious pollution because Brussels does not monitor how its money is spent.