Goodwin pension scandal

I do not get what this Goodwin pension scandal is about. The dude has fucked it up to the tune of 2.4 billion pounds just this year and you want his 16 million back? How will that help now?

How to best enjoy the sauna and steambath

"Dude, my head is killing me!" my Dutch friend Jitte winces in pain. We are at a swimming pool in Amsterdam. Last hour I saw his blurred figure popping in and out of the sauna and steam rooms like Woody Woodpecker. I nip my urge to preach in the bud and just rub his shiatsu points with some Tiger Balm.

See, I was brought up with saunas and steam baths. In Russia it is a natural place to get warm and socialise when it's cold and snowing out there. You grow up with the whole "banya" ritual and you take it seriously. There are ground rules that you obey for a good reason.

1. Take it slow.

The temperature in the sauna is 90 degrees, your blood curdles at 45. Your body goes through a massive shock and goes into an emergency mode. It starts sweating profusely trying to prevent your blood from turning into black pudding. The situation is a bit extreme but it is a calculated risk. This is how we trick our body into sweating out the toxins that normally would just stay trapped inside.

Give your body ample time to come around. Just like working out shocks your muscles to grow later when you eat and rest, sauna heat triggers your body to purge when you lie around sweating afterwards. Running out straight from the sauna to a dinner appointment without cooling down properly is equal to depriving yourself of food after a workout.

2. Drink

As you sweat, you get dehydrated, depleted of liquid. Replenish it generously. Sip, don't gulp: otherwise your kidneys will just evacuate the excess that was meant for your sweat glands.

Drink hot or warm tea, not cold water from the cooler. Cold bacteria and flu virus sit in your throat. When it is weakened by cold water, you catch the nasty illness that will plague you weeks afterwards.

Alcohol dehydrates and toxifies you so it defeats the whole purpose even if it gives you the kick.

3. Keep yourself warm.

Dousing yourself with ice-cold water or diving into a cool pool is fine but stay away from the air-conditioning and drafts at all cost. The are the short cut to flus and colds . Ideally, wrap yourself up in a bathrobe or a thick body-length towel.

In Ancient Rome public baths were a social institution. Romans would go there daily and spend hours scrubbing and bathing. They would enter through the atrium, undress in the apodyterium, warm up in the tepidarium, get hot in the caldarium, even hotter in the sudatorium, then plunge into cold water in the frigidarium. Then they would go in reverse and hang out in the warm tepidarium to ease the transition to the cooler air of apodyterium where they would put their clothes back on. That was a practice tested over centuries.

Unfortunately, most people who install saunas and steambaths in our gyms these days had neither tepidarium nor sudatorium on the council estates where they grew up. So we are forced to bend to their idea of how to enjoy bathing. We are this close to being limited to a weekly sponge rub.

In a certain chain health club in Brixton where I live, the relaxation area consists of a narrow walkway between the shower cubicles where two people can barely pass each other. I had to cool myself down standing for half an hour in the shower, whilst gradually reducing the water temperature.

After our Clean Body Sunday ended up in a severe migraine, Jitte swore to never enter a sauna again. It is a shame so I am going send him this article. I hope he will change his mind!

Hot Air Fails To Lift US Economy

Surprise, surprise: perfectly crafted and inspiringly delivered appeals to "revitalise the economy" and make "America lead the world again" failed to accomplish both. Even worse, the stocks have actually fallen after President Obama's as usual toe-twirlingly amazing speech.

Perhaps, it is time Barack realised that it takes more than Magic Negro chanting to do his job.

Caste in Britain: Shops, Parks and Classes

Britain has a special relationship with the USA. But it has an even more special relationship with India, a love-hate relationship of mutual fascination and irritation. Those two are like two sisters who can't seem to live with each other but equally can't without.

One of the major factors in this bond must be the caste/class system. Despite the claim to the contrary it is alive and well in both countries. In Britain class mentality permeates the very grain of society and manifests itself in a multitude of things, events and phenomena.

I love parks. They are the closest approximation to nature an urbanite can find without driving too far. I love to sit on a bench and gather my thoughts together while watching the sun going down or ducks swimming in the pond. When I moved to London from Amsterdam, I right away went to look for such a place of peace and contemplation.

We all know - first-hand or from books - about London's magnificent parks: Kensington and Kew, Regent and Greenwich. But they all are situated in so called posh areas. My first encounter with a working class park left me bewildered. Straight from Amsterdam, where green spaces are meticulously planned an maintained no matter what neighbourhood they are in, I could not believe Wyck Gardens is actually a park. A rundown area with a football gate half-blocked by a graffiti-plastered concrete wall. Random, I thought. Next park I explored in the neighbourhood, Brockwell Park was just a notch better: a rather large green hill with randomly planted trees and a football gate. It looked unloved and desolate.It seemed the only purpose of its layout was to make sure that there is nowhere to lurk around unnoticed.

I tried to maxmise my chances. I googled for success. My search came up with Ruskin Park: "a large and popular Edwardian park full of heritage features". When arrived I found a huge lawn with two perfectly straight strings of trees (8 in each). So much for vegetation. The heritage features turned out a paddling pool and a gazebo. Yes, and a football gate. I guess like a hotel needs a swimming pool and a beauty parlour to qualify for extra stars, a park in Britain is only park when there is a football gate in it. The only Edwardian feature was the row houses that surrounded the park on all sides making it look like a condominium's patio.

And then it dawned on me. Parks in England are also subject to the class system. I live in Brixton, an ethnic working class neighbourhood. Even Tesco here is so depressing that I refuse to go there. Parks here are made according to the idea that working masses deserve their squalor. Anaemic unhealthy edibles in the poor people's supermarkets are what their customers deserve. The gap between more and less affluent areas in one of world's richest cities can be shocking. Some parts look straight out of documentaries about Third World misery. Council housing has despair and destitution built in from the planning stage.

When you are poor in the UK, you are constantly reminded of your ungainly status. Just like workhouses in Victorian times were made to "scare people out of poverty", proletarian areas in London are designed to look and feel horrible. Poor people are supposed to live in rabbit holes, eat junk, have bad teeth and smell funny, well, because they are poor and deserve it.

Britain escaped Enlightenment-inspired revolutions. It emerged into capitalism and further into post-modern society with the feudal mentality intact. Derelict institutions and antiquated customs are being proudly giving lease of life because the mentality that created them is alive and well.

UK ID card proof of address

I knew that Britain cherishes its traditions but I never knew just how it clings to all things whimsical and dusty. Only on observing it first-hand I come to realise how the exactingly logical and systematic French approach must be alien and even repulsive to British heart.

Anglo-Saxon idea of freedom is often used against proposal to introduce some kind of personal ID system. It is true because Anglo-Saxon rules and laws only designate the limits beyond which you are not supposed to go. On the Continent, the rules are guidlines that you are supposed to follow.

However, in modern state with it culture of fear and increasing control over more and more aspects of private lifes and actions, there is no way to do without some form of personal identification. While most Continental countries started using ID cards, the English just can't stop seeing it beneath their dignity. Instead, just not to forfeit their liberty and not to go the dreaded Continental way you need to bring your electricity or gas bill a a prove of domicile! And that is just for abiout anything for signing up at a GP's office to opening a bank account. Need to see a doctor? Where is your gas bill? Logical? Hardly, but at least we keep our freedom.

Millions and millions of flies like shit

Huge popularity does not warrant worth. Lots of things liked by millions are downright trash. Sometimes realising that makes me feel like such an outsider.

Everybody is raving about Harry Potter. Duh. Nobody seems to notice that it is but lacklustre third-grade hogwash that will be forgotten as soon as the marketing budget had run out. Luckily, English literature has produced such an enormous amount of genius children books that nothing can spoil its reputation.

Or take Lion King, the musical. The only good thing about the show is the costumes and the wacko African lady. The rest would be utterly forgettable if I didn't have to fork out 65 blooming quid for my ticket, thus partially funding Elton John's hair transplant surgery.

Another worldwide craze that seems to affect tens of millions of people, Big Brother. Why would shameful antics of desperate low-lifes attract so much attention and debate?

Or the greatest hack of modern days, Dan Brown. People, can't you see his books for what they are? "Arse gravy of the worst kind" to quote Stephen Fry. I am glad I have him on my side on this one.

Victoria & Albert Museum - the giant cupboard of the British Empire

Victoria & Albert Museum - this is where the revolution in industrial design started. Artefacts and materials from all over the world were gathered here so that young Englishmen (and later English women) could see and learn world's best in shape, colour and composition.

But for me the V&A is more like the giant cupboard of the British Empire. Extremely ornate on the outside and inside it so overabundant, it tires me out quickly.

Geert Wilders denied UK entry

A huge round of applause to the British Government: Dutch hate-monger MP Geert Wilders was denied entry to the UK. Finally he is officially seen as a shameless self-promoter that he is. The shoddily bleached Catholic chauvinist attempted to come for peddling his failed act Fitna at the House of Lords.

Russian Hits: I Will Remember

An 80-s Russian rock ballad by Aleksandr Ivanov and Vladimir Presnyakov.

Russian Hits: The Last Thing That I'll Say

Another tragic Russian song: The Last Thing That I'll Say. The heroine dies later the same day rejected by her love and killed by the man who she rejected.

Russian Hits: I Will Never Forget You

A 1983 hit from Juno And Avos opera about tragic lovers: a Russian sailor and a Spanish noble lady in 18th-century California.

Russian Hits: Ne Otrekayutsya Lyubya

When Loving How Can You Renounce - a song to the lyrics by a tragic poet Veronika Tushnova from the 50s who died of unrequited love.

Russian Hits: Help Me Out

A classic 60s hit from one of the most popular Russian movies ever: The Diamond Hand.

Russian Hits: Fnishing The Circle

A New Year's anthem from 1987 USSR by the biggest stars of the time. Peculiarly enough, the lyrics were written by six (!) people.

Russian Hits: Vladimir Presnyakov - Zurbagan

Vladimir Presnyakov singing his own cover. It's a mid-80s hit Zurbagan named after a imaginary romantic port city from the books by Aleksandr Grin.

Russian Hits: I Want To Be With You

One of my most favourite songs when I was a teenager. The melody is beautiful but the lyrics are simply superb, possibly best modern Russian poetry. It is about someone who can't put up that his lover has tragically died and apparently ends up in a psychiatric ward after many attempts of suicide. Aleksandr Ivanov is singing a cover of Soviet 80's super star group Nautilus Pompilius. The title is I Want To Be With You.

Russian Hits: Alyona Sviridova singing jazz

This is one of my favourite Russian (well, technically, Belorussian) singers, Alyona Sviridova. The song is called I'm The Right One. It is a cover of an early 90s Russian hit. It goes about someone whose object of affection thinks she's out of his league (it's a guy's song originally) but he says that if given a chance he can prove he's the right one for her. Very nicely flowing, beautifully crafted lyrics.

RyanAir cheap ticket scam

I really think they should prosecute airlines like RyanAir for their blatantly misleading advertising.

The 79-pence ticket to Dublin has miraculously become 73.53 pounds as I proceeded with the booking and if I had a check-in luggage that would be 25 quid more. In that case you also pay a check-in charge.

Well, from 79 p to 100 quid and you also get the most cramped and chintzy looking aircraft, no food, no drink and have to walk across the airfield and land up to 100 km away from where I mean to arrive. Well, this is my first time with RyanAir and I'll think twice before I book again.