Anglo-Saxon and Continental mentality divide

Anglo-Saxon mentality is about individualism and personal success. As long as I have achieved, nothing else matters, I've deserved it. The wide rich-poor gap typical fro Anglo-Saxon economies testifies to that attitude. The arrogance of the bankers just recently bailed out with public money who have awarded themselves billions in bonuses wouldn't have been tolerated outside the Anglo world.

Collective good and equality are more a consideration in the Continental (Northern) Europe that includes France. Only from there could come rich people demanding to be taxed more to help the country, like it has just happened in Germany.

Random acts of kindness in the City

I don't know whether the countryside has ever been the veritable repository of virtue and good manners or whether only in the good olden days people used to be nice to each other. One thing for sure, city life does not make folks any softer. The stress and frustration of urban rat-race seem to do everybody's heads in.

So much the more fun it is to observe how people react to random acts of kindness. A bit every day - I try to make it a regular practice. A smile, a nice word,a gesture of courtesy.

Many are incredulous. Their immediate reaction is suspicion. I guess they think I want something from them.

Yet many are impervious. The callous around their hearts protects them from hurting and good feelings likewise.

For a few, it does not register at all. Too busy, perhaps. It's alright, receiving gratitude is not the purpose of this exercise.

I am so happy though that there are enough souls out there whose first unconscious reaction to a smile is a smile. There is hope for this weird protein-based species.

TV is a Hitler in your home

Have you ever visited someone, often invited, only to find your host glued to the TV too busy following another portion of Big Brother tribulations to pay attention to you, the guest?

Since when has this become acceptable? I once was at a private dinner party where the hostess fell asleep right at the dining table while watching some shite on TV over our heads. When she came to, she continued as if nothing had happened.

I think it defeats the whole purpose of inviting people over to your place and is also insulting because it shows that whatever crap they put on to have you watch commercials is more fun and important for you than your friends.

The least wanted country of Europe

Moldavia has long been the butt of jokes in the Soviet Union. I've never been there so can't say whether is is justified or not, but it is perhaps tale-telling that election after election, they find it hard to find anyone wishing to become their president. A few years ago it turned out a scandal when no one applied. This time they only have one candidate.

Berlusconi endorses Blair for EU president

News from the League of Crooks. Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi is backing TonyBlair for EU presidency. Blair's PR people should have contacted the zany Ceasar in advance because surely in the polite society Berlusconi's support is highly undesirable.

Laptop, man's best friend

If you put your laptop on your belly and start defragmentation, it's just like a cat, warm and purring. Gotta love it!

On the roots of African poverty

I found these two lines from an article about a recent election in Gabon very thought-provoking.

"Gabon is sub-Saharan Africa's fourth biggest oil producer and Africa's second biggest wood exporter, although most of its 1.4 million people live in poverty.

August's election was called after the death of Omar Bongo, one of the world's richest men, who had ruled the nation for four decades."

Now Omar's son will be calling the shots in Gabon. This reminds me of how 400 men who own Russia now keep pumping money out of the country, keeping the majority of its 150 million eking out a barely decent living.

Phantom roadworks on UK highways

So it is not just me who sees sections, patches or whole lanes of roads closed ostensibly for works with nothing being done there. According to a Highways Agency's survey, 55% UK motorists have the same experience.

The National Audit Office says that due to a "lack of management information" accurate figures for the cost of road resurfacing and such could not be gathered. In layman's terms it means that no one knows what exactly is done during roadworks and how much it costs. Although Highways Agency is a public office, road improvement contracts are awarded to private companies. Any comment would be superfluous.

US and UK: credit crunch bailout cost

In her time, Margaret Thatcher reformed the UK economy along the US lines: denationalising, cutting social spending and, most importantly, making the financial sector the most important source of revenue.

The special relationship mentality has finally backfired. The perceived commonality with the Trans-Atlantic Big Brother made Britain forget that it is not in the big boys league any more. Apart from the very obvious difference in economy scale, the US has a vast production base, which, sadly, on its own soil the UK has chosen to let die.

As a result, America has been able to absorb the credit crunch shock with a bailout that amounted to a hefty quarter of its GDP. For the UK, however the price was close to its whole annual GDP.

British Victorian administrative bureaucracy model

I have never seen a more chaotic, overblown and utterly clueless bureaucracy as here in the UK and I have lived in Russia and Thailand. Trying to get anything done each time reminds me of a trip through Alice's Wonderland where I get to meet most grotesque creatures who tell me most senseless things and never fail to send me the wrong direction.

I really wonder how it all has come to this as in Victorian times a few thousands of British bureaucrats were running a global empire efficiently and with a sumptuous profit. In the India Office, a handful of public officers were managing a giant, overwhelmingly diverse state 10 times as big as Britain itself and without the help of any fancy office equipment.

I reckon that the downfall of the British administrative tradition happened during WWII when wartime ministries and state control were blown out of any proportion under the premises of "war needs". That monstrous labyrinthine system still lives on in the form of the British welfare state together with its legacy of a direly faulty management model.

I was surprised to find out that there has been no research of how the British Empire was run in its heyday. That alone would have provided an invaluable lesson to this glorious nation that is suffocating under the burden of its ineffectual government.

Britain and socialism: marriage doomed for disaster

Why socialism is failing in Great Britain?

Socialism is all about regulations. The nation's mentality should be naturally inclined towards bureaucratic excellence. National attitude and ways of organising things will manifest itself multiplied manifold in how the administrative system is put together.

Socialism can succeed only ion countries with the natural knack for planning, mostly Northern Europe and France. In the USSR socialism has grown into an oppressive dictatorship as the country had always been such.

The British with their Anglo-Saxon love of liberty and individual freedom , shun central authority. They were the first nation to curb monarch's rights with the Magna Carta. Good socialism requires a good central planning authority and that would go against the grain in Britain. That is why the welfare state in this country is in such a horrendous shambles.

Circle of chaos: M25 is Britain's most-closed highway

The M25, London's Ring Road is the country's most closed highway. In the first eight moths of 2009 it was closed more than 1700 times amounting to about 5000 hours. Wouldn't it be easier just to shut it altogether and build something more viable next to it?

Archbishop of Canterbury slams hedge fund controls

Last month, in a bid to protect London's miserably failed financial industry, Boris Johnson flew to Brussels to stop the EU from introducing new hedge funds regulations. Hiscauuse has just found itself strong supporters: the Church of England's commissioners who include the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. That comes as little surprise as the "'divine institution"has 4.4 billion pounds invested in hedge funds. Any comment would be superfluous.

give take balance perfect relationship

It is curious to observe how people only expect to get something in a relationship - be it a casual sex fling or something more lasting. Although lasting here is quite an overstatement. It is doomed to come to a quick (or a long and painful) end, if all you hope is to gratify yourself.

The secret to success, as always, lies on the surface. If both partners take care to learn and satify the other party's needs, then it will be a prefect symbiosis. For example, if in sex both partners work hard to give maximum pleasure to it all will be starry sky and fireworks. The opposite of it will end up in masturbation into a live person.

You also get to learn to much from learning about the other, whilst staying focussed just on yourself will get you nowhere.

Run, Tracey, Run!

Tracey Emin, the artist that shot prominence after her drunk appearance on Channel 4 in 1997, said she would quit the UK for France because of the proposed tax hike on high earners.

Emin is behind such profoundly meaningful and innovative pieces as My Bed (an unmade bed decorated with body secretions, used condoms and dirty underwear) and Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 (a tent appliquéd with the names of all people the artist has been in bed with).

Emin hopes that French government will be more of receptive of her creative talents and we hope they will teach her to make her bed in France.