Liege

Those of you that knew me back then might remember that I spent a lot of the early nineties tour managing, ie taking British groups on tours around Britain and the Continent.

For complex reasons I won’t go into here, I spent a lot (and I mean a lot) of that time staying with coach groups in the very pleasant Belgian city of Liege. So for that reason, I was especially horrified to hear today’s news story about the shootings and explosions there. I know the Place Saint Lambert, where they took place, very well indeed. In fact I often went there to visit the Christmas Market which is on at the moment.

Of course, hearing about this sort of thing is always upsetting but when you know the place well, when you can imagine exactly where the reporters and witnesses are describing, it has a particularly disturbing resonance.

For most people, tourism in Belgium follows a well trodden and highly touristy path around the Flemish cities of Bruges, Ghent and Brussels. So working in Wallonia, the French-speaking Southern part of the country, was refreshingly different and I can to some extent thank the citizens of Liege for helping me to learn and to speak French, albeit with limitations!

Thus I’ve always had a fondness for the place, despite not having been there now for the best part of a decade I should think.

Chers Liegeois, je pense a vous.

Euromania!

I've just noticed that Vicky Leandros is opening Birmingham's Frankfurt Christmas Market.

You can't beat a French-speaking Greek who represented Luxembourg in the Eurovision Song Contest and now lives in Germany to open a Christmas Market in England, can you?

Vorwärts in Einheit

So twenty years ago today, the amazing events surrounding the fall of the Berlin Wall came to pass. One of those occasions when |I have literally felt as though I was living through history.

I have treasured connections with Germany spanning four decades but for half of that time, the division of the country seemed as permanent as it was intractable. Then the era of Gorbachev, Perestroika and its now-forgotten precursor Glasnost cam along and All Things Were Possible.

The trickle of “refugees”, first via Hungary and Austria, became a torrent with West German politicians revising their “all Easterners are welcome here” in favour of “all are welcome but not all at once”!

I had gone on an organised group trip to look at the tram systems in Braunschweig and Hanover and we were staying in an hotel in Hildesheim. As the evening wore on, reports on the television in the bar gradually became a continuous news programme. Only a couple of us spoke reasonable German and as the scenes unfolded people kept asking us to explain what was going on. We could scarcely believe what we were hearing about “travel restrictions being eased”; it sounded as though the DDR government had “opened up” (as indeed they had) but so momentous was this that we weren’t sure we were understanding correctly.

The next day on the Autobahn we kept seeing little Trabants abandoned at the side of the road, where theu had run out of the two-stroke petrol we were told they needed.

Things were still in a state of flux when we left Germany a few days later. For a while , it looked as though the DDR might evolve into a democratic state but still a separate one. However, the tide of opinion and indeed of history was against this. Sentiment of Unity was unstoppable and the rest – of course – is history.

I would have loved, dearly loved, to have been in Berlin that night. But being in Germany at all was enough.

The Europe of today is not by any means perfect. But it – like Germany - is far the better for its unity.

Back Home

Well, we're back home from a lovely (and it was lovely) week in Paris.

We went there and back by Eurostar (slumming it in Standard Class this time, though; we spent the money one getting a centrally-located hotel instead). As ever for us, the journey was part of the holiday. Or rather it would have been if the handle on my suitcase hadn't broken early in the outward journey.

I might (if I ever get time) write up a fuller account of what we did. For now, though, the highlights were:

• Taking a tour of Paris in a lovely red 2CV.

• Letting Louise drag me to Disneyland and enjoying it. Mostly.

• An evening dinner cruise on the Seine that must be one of the most romantic things we've ever done.

• Meeting up with our old friend and restaurateur Patrick and reliving some memories of me working a lot in Paris in the late nineties.

However, as I'm now back, there seems to be a whole raft of things to do. There are 136 e-mails for a start, although I suspect most of those are junk. Then we have to go to the optician's, to collect a mysterious parcel at the Post Office, see the respective mothers, collect the cat and the - just possibly - start taking a proper look at how many of the 800+ photos we've taken between us are actually usable!

The holiday was supposed to be a rest before as "busy time". I think I'm already realising that it has been.......

Harry Patch and The End of an Era

I watched part of the proceedings of the funeral of Harry Patch yesterday afternoon.

The phrase “the end of an era” tends to get wheeled out too often, not least by me.

But that is what this really was. I’m sure Harry was a charming and special man to all those who knew him. But the crowds lining the streets of the lovely City of Wells today were not there just to remember him. This was our communal twenty first century goodbye to a generation whose sacrifices we grew up knowing about and who gave so very much, often the ultimate in fact, that we may enjoy the way of life which we have today.

Our country and our world is not perfect. But it is better for the sacrifice of those represented by one solitary Somerset man today.

A Load of Old Ballots

Tomorrow, we go to the polls to elect our Members of the European Parliament (and for those out in the sticks, County Councils, too).

Politicians and indeed politics have certainly been getting something of a drubbing lately but between all the talk of toilet seats, duck islands, moats and soft-porn cable downloads, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we are lucky to be able to vote at all.

In our country, over a period approaching a thousand years, there was a steady (very steady) rise to democracy. And – although our system may not be perfect – that we are able to choose who governs us and how they do it is a cherished right.

For this reason, I become very upset at people who don’t vote. It always feels to me a betrayal of the struggle by those that went before us: the Chartists meeting at the foot of Newhall Hill in Birmingham; the Suffragettes (and their many male allies) in their varied protests; the introduction of secret ballots; and not least the military and civilian sacrifices necessary in the last century to preserve our freedom and independence. The least we can do is vote to participate in the system. Voting is compulsory in Australia and Belgium and the UK would be a better place for it, too.

All this misty-eyed admiration does not absolve politicians from their wrongdoings, though, which is why I have always had a healthy disrespect for them. I never lose sight of the fact that they are there to serve us, not the other way around. I often feel the need to point this out when some puffed up little prick (sorry but they really can be) is preening himself as though he were God when in fact he is a “Cabinet Lead Member for Paper Clips” in the Metropolitan Borough of Nowhere-that-matters-very-much. And it’ll have “Beacon Status” you can be sure.

I am also a believer in single-member constituencies and first-past-the-post voting because I believe it concentrates responsibility and service in one individual. Yes, I know that the make-up of councils and indeed Parliament does not in such circumstances reflect the proportion of votes cast. I also know that the smaller parties would like PR…….basically because it makes them more powerful.

For the European elections we have these vast constituencies covering whole regions and where no-one feels that their MEP is in any way “theirs”.
But I believe that the party system is not the root of our democracy, whatever the parties like to think. Our elected members are. We should look to our individual representative, not think in terms of voting for his or her party or indeed his or her leader. This is not a Presidential country and should not be. I feel that I elect an individual to represent me, not to toe the party line. To this end, I believe that ballot papers should only list candidates’ names, not their parties. Furthermore, in exchange for forcing people to vote, I also want an additional box on the bottom of the ballot paper marked “None of the Above”.

If they did that this week, I suspect that the None of the Above Party might well have a working majority.

Happy voting.