In Race to Run Hong Kong, Scandal Taints Beijing’s Choice

19 February 2012 - New York Times

An unauthorized addition to a luxury house may be sinking the hopes of the man thought to be China’s favorite to be Hong Kong’s next leader.

Henry Tang, a former senior government official, is facing increasing pressure to end his campaign to become chief executive, Hong Kong’s top government position.

Long seen as the candidate favored by Beijing, Mr. Tang has seen his popularity plummet over months of missteps, capped last week when he acknowledged that structures built at his wife’s home did not have government approval. Mr. Tang insists on continuing his candidacy, but the unauthorized construction, a favorite topic in local media coverage of public figures, was seized on by his political opponents.

“I don’t think he can hope to salvage his credibility,” said Alan Leong of the Civic Party. “If he can’t handle his own affairs, how can he run a government?”

The scandal has provided more than just tabloid headlines. Political observers say the concerns dogging Mr. Tang reveal a growing public frustration that the local political and economic system is ruled by a small elite out of touch with the rest of the population. Mr. Tang’s candidacy, analysts add, also suggests a need to rethink the vetting process for candidates, and has fueled a growing local anxiety over Hong Kong’s relationship with mainland China.

The challenge facing all Hong Kong candidates “is whether they can be seen defending Hong Kong’s interests and autonomy,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, head of government and international studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. “One of the themes of the campaign should be addressing social inequalities and creating a fair competition law. I don’t know if there’s anyone willing to fight these forces, any politician with the courage to speak out.”

This year’s election for Hong Kong chief executive was expected to be like previous campaigns since the territory was returned to China in 1997, a buttoned-down affair that would have little drama. A 1,200-person election committee representing various business and social constituencies across Hong Kong will elect the chief executive on March 25. The majority of the committee’s members are seen by many political observers and academics as taking their cues from Beijing as to whom to support.

Both Mr. Tang and his main rival in the campaign, CY Leung, a former convener of Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, are viewed as acceptable candidates by the establishment in Beijing. A third candidate, Albert Ho of the Democratic Party, is seen as having little chance of winning the election.

Last week, Mr. Tang labored to explain the structures built at the home owned by his wife. Local news reports said that one of them, a basement occupying 2,200 square feet, or roughly 200 square meters, contained features like a wine cellar, a home movie theater and a Japanese-style bath. Mr. Tang has rejected those claims and said the basement was used as a storage space. He said his wife had carried out the work without his knowledge.

But the reported extravagance and Mr. Tang’s explanation, seen by many as shifting blame onto his wife, have sharply influenced public opinion. A poll conducted by the University of Hong Kong showed that most people surveyed doubted the integrity of Mr. Tang, the 59-year-old scion of a wealthy family from Shanghai. The poll was published by The South China Morning Post over the weekend.

The sagging ratings culminate months of gaffes by Mr. Tang, who last September resigned as chief secretary, the government’s No. 2 position, to run for chief executive. In October, amid public speculation about an extramarital affair, he acknowledged simply that he had made a mistake in his romantic life.

Last May, Mr. Tang said Hong Kong’s youth should try to emulate Li-Ka-shing, Hong Kong’s wealthiest tycoon, rather than complain about the growing gap between the rich and the middle class. The remarks were made during a year in which Hong Kong residents staged several demonstrations to protest housing prices and what they have called an economic system run by a small group of wealthy individuals.

Analysts say those protests were part of a larger movement reflecting growing frustration among Hong Kong residents over their voice in the political system and access to housing and public services.

“In Hong Kong, you have a coterie of people who are rich and powerful,” said Michael DeGolyer of the Hong Kong Transition Project, an independent research organization. “You have a rigged economy that is full of cartels, not truly open and competitive. People are concerned by that.”

That sense of frustration has spilled into public perceptions of mainland China. Many observers say Hong Kong residents fault people from the mainland for driving up the costs of housing and clogging public services. The number of mainland women coming to Hong Kong to give birth has grown so dramatically that the local government placed a cap on how many pregnant mainland women are allowed into hospitals.

Surveys by both the Transition Project and the University of Hong Kong have shown that a growing number of people identify themselves as Hong Kong residents rather than Chinese. Such studies do not surprise local analysts and politicians, who say the existing system for choosing Hong Kong’s chief executive presents many challenges for mainland China’s leadership.

“Beijing has to be careful,” said Mr. Cabestan of Hong Kong Baptist University. “Local society is more frustrated than ever, and an increasing number of people feel sidelined by the mainland nouveaux riches coming here.”

Added Mr. Leong of the Civic Party: “The cultural differences between Hong Kong and the mainland have not been properly addressed for the past 15 years,” a reference to the period since the territory’s handover to China. “Beijing should bring some humility when dealing with Hong Kong.”

Imperial Outpost in the Gulf

18 February 2012

This is very timely if you read my 5 February entry below. Coming soon on Amazon and hopefully to a bookshop near me is:

This is the book description from Amazon:

In 1932 the Sharjah airfield was created out of nothing in the open desert, an overnight stop on Imperial Airways' route carrying mail and passengers to India and eventually to Australia. The British government drew upon the RAF's experience in the Middle East to build a fortified rest house there, for fear of possible attacks from the Beduin. Air travel then was a luxury beyond most people's means. But passengers in transit praised the comfort of the Rest House in the desert. Imperial Airways switched during the 1930s to using flying-boats that landed on the creek at Dubai, a move that favoured Dubai's emergence as a commercial hub. Then, during WWII, the airfield became a transit point for troops going to India and the Far East. For RAF and American air force personnel, a posting to Sharjah made the heart sink as it was notorious for its extreme heat, isolation and poor rations.

The history of Sharjah airfield is central to the story of the modern Emirates. In this meticulous account, Nicholas Stanley-Price brings the past vividly to life, using an impressive array of unpublished contemporary photographs and records, and fascinating stills from documentary footage shot at Sharjah in the 1930s.

About the Author: Nicholas Stanley-Price is a specialist in the conservation of cultural heritage. Originally educated in the classics, he earned a doctorate from Oxford for his research on prehistoric Cyprus and he has lectured and published widely on archaeology and conservation theory and practice. He has twice spent a year as a government advisor in the Gulf region, the first in the late 1970s as Assistant Archaeological Advisor in the Ministry of National Heritage and Culture of Oman, and the second in 2007-8 as Strategic Advisor in the Sharjah Museums Department in the United Arab Emirates. He is now an independent consultant living in Rome.

Passengers and staff should have been protected from Air Australia failure

17 February 2012

The failure of Air Australia, previously known as Strategic Airlines, has been likely for weeks. Indeed it may be that the company was actually trading while insolvent. The airline last week denied reports of substantial unpaid bills but the final straw came last night when the refueller at Phuket demanded cash payment instead of extending further credit.

It may well be that the Australian regulators should have done a better job of protecting passengers and staff who are now in financial difficulty or stranded.
 
It will take days for all 4,000 people stranded by the collapse of the Brisbane-based airline to make their own way home. Qantas, Jetstar and Virgin Blue are all helping but passengers have to buy new tickets and then try and recover the cost of their now cancelled flights.

Air Australia was placed in voluntary administration overnight, grounding all flights. This was after it spent all week denying rumours of financial problems. ir Australia dives, passengers stranded

Mark Korda, a spokesman for administrators KordaMentha, said "there's about 4,000 people overseas and they actively need to manage their own affairs. Our call centre can take the calls but they should not be relying on Air Australia to get them back." Mr Korda said the airline had run out of money to refuel its planes overnight.

The administrators said people who had paid by credit card or have travel insurance are highly likely to get refunds, but those who paid in cash may have lost their money as the airline had no cash for refunds. "Unfortunately if you paid by cash, it is likely you will not be entitled to a refund unless you took out insurance and that insurance covers an event of insolvency," the administrators said in a statement.

Six Air Australia flights were due to depart Melbourne today, two to Phuket and four domestic flights to Brisbane. Another four were due to depart tomorrow including two to Honolulu in Hawaii. A total of 40 flights were due to fly from Melbourne over the next week and all have been cancelled.

In the wake of the grounding, there have been calls for the Australian aviation industry to be investigated.

The people hit hardest were the group checked in at Phuket and ready to leave for home at 7.30pm local time. Their plane's departure was delayed a number of times before passengers were handed a press release from KordaMentha after midnight. It said: "In the short term, the fleet will be grounded. It currently appears that there are no funds available to meet operational expenses so flights will be suspended immediately. For clarity, it also appears highly unlikely there will be any flights in the short to medium term. You should make alternate travel arrangements."

That rather ruins your vacation. Stuck at the airport. No accommodation. No flight. No one to help.

Air Australia was re-launched three months ago as a discount holiday airline, flying to Hawaii, Phuket and Bali from its home base in Brisbane.

But it also flew to Hawaii from Melbourne, with daily flights from Wednesday to Sunday.

Its domestic routes included a daily flight Melbourne to Brisbane and it also served the booming mining areas of Western Australia, with flights from Perth to Derby and Port Hedland.

Only yesterday Air Australia, which has five aircraft including two twin-aisle Airbus A330s and two smaller Airbus A320s, was still taking bookings over the internet. The first sign of trouble for the airline came this week when it was revealed that it had been unable to pay aviation fees and charges to Air Services Australia.

The airline was also being pursued over debts for terminal leasing at Perth Airport and over other charges it had not paid to Melbourne Airport.

It claimed less than 48 hours ago it was in no financial strife and denied claims it had also been late with payments to Flight Centre.

Air Australia leased some aircraft via its European arm, including enlisting one aircraft from Turkish airways Atlas Air to operate on routes from Australia into Asia. That aircraft was crewed by Turkish nationals, about a dozen of whom worked with Air Australia, with a number of Thai aircrew also employed on Thai wages and conditions. Some of the Thai crew, which were reputedly on a wage of around $90 a day in Australia and have been stranded in Melbourne.

Cash is king. And Air Australia had none. The company were minimally staffed and their costs should have been reasonably good. But without deeper pockets the airline was always going to struggle.

Conversations with Thaksin: a sycophantic approach to biography

17 February 2012 Sholto Byrnes in The National

"Conversations with Thaksin is the third in the Giants of Asia series, a set of very strange but nonetheless fascinating books by Tom Plate, a former Los Angeles Times executive who now insists on calling himself "Professor Tom". I say strange because outside of court biographers, it is unlikely that any writer would approach these subjects - before the former Thai premier he covered Malaysia's Dr Mahathir Mohamad and Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore - in so relentlessly sycophantic a manner. Even fellow admirers of these men would cavil at the way "Professor Tom", who has taught courses at universities in America and lectured at the UAE University in Al Ain, bends over backwards to share their sense of being misunderstood by the international community and the western world in particular.

Lee, for instance, has been completely synonymous with Singapore's governance and its phenomenal success even since before full independence in 1965; but he has never made any secret of his dismissive views about democracy and individual rights. "We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think," as he once put it. Plate is quite right to state that Lee is not the authoritarian ogre he is sometimes caricatured as - "not remotely ... some crackpot Pol Pot, nor some hare-brained 'Little Hitler'" (the latter insult famously came courtesy of William Safire in The New York Times). One might, however, not go as far as Plate by saying instead that he is "the Clint Eastwood of Asia, a definite straight shooter", the "Masterful Mind" mesmerised "by the dance of brilliant ideas ... And - gosh! - consider that his own autobiography (two immense volumes) is almost as lengthy as Winston Churchill's. Think about that." Gosh! - or should that be gush? - indeed.

Likewise, I would agree with Plate - although many would not - that Dr Mahathir, the almost equally dominant leader of Malaysia from 1981-2003, "was in fact the best living example of an effective moderate Muslim leader that in recent memory the world had seen". I'm not sure I'd want to begin by addressing him thus, however: "This book ... it's the reader having a long and maybe somewhat intimate conversation with Dr M. The idea is to feel his personality, his flair, his instincts, his brain. Nobody else is like you."

Beyond that, the tone is folksy, often to the point of grating, and we learn far more about Plate's own life than is desirable: his problems with his waistline, what he did when he realised he was going to be fired from the LA Times, the fact that his father had a temper and so did his best friend at college, his wife's opinion of his wish to be liked; and so on and so on.

This is all the more irritating because despite their apparent ubiquity in their heydays, these "Giants of Asia" could be difficult to get to. My own efforts to interview Lee Kuan Yew began with a three-hour grilling by both the Singapore High Commissioner and his deputy in London, followed by the demand that for the request to go further, I must partner publication in the boutique, left-leaning New Statesman with a more mass-market right-of-centre journal. I came up with The Daily Telegraph - Britain's best-selling quality newspaper - but, alas, Mr Lee and I are still no better acquainted. And when access is granted, the subject may not be in a revealing mood. My interview with Dr Mahathir, granted specifically so he could discuss a rather unflattering new biography of him, got off to an unpromising start when he pretended not to know what book I was talking about. All of which is to say: hasn't Plate, granted hours of one-on-one interviews with his subjects, seriously missed the chance to ask penetrating questions of three men who have so divided opinion that there is almost no ground between those who regard them as heroes and those who see them as tyrannical dictators?

Up to a point, Lord Copper. Perhaps stung by criticism of his first two books, Plate explains his softly-softly approach in his new volume on Thaksin Shinawatra: "You probably know that Sixty Minutes-style dice-and-slice questions usually get nowhere with major political figures. Instead you harden up, into the shell like that of a well-weathered tortoise. Bang on it as much and as hard as you want and all that will happen is the head will duck inside and you will be left all alone in the room by yourself."

Well, "Professor Tom" is certainly not one to wield the knife. He is prone to come up with analyses that other commentators have unaccountably overlooked, such as his suggestion that what Thailand needs is an international commission of reconciliation, on the board of which should sit Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi (assuming she is at liberty, which she has never been thus far, to leave and re-enter Myanmar), the Pope, Jimmy Carter and "every saint, all the goody types, you know?" How Plate thinks that Thailand and its king could possibly countenance such an intrusion into the country's politics is beyond comprehension.

But Plate's "Gee shucks, did they really say that about you?" style has a huge upside. His subjects open up to him in a way they may not have intended to, and the insights the reader gains into their characters are considerable; to the point that Plate's books, for all their faults, will be incomparable tools for historians, biographers and anyone who ever wants to figure out what made these men, who do deserve to be called "Giants of Asia", tick.

These insights do not always show these men in their best light. I'm not sure that Thaksin, who was widely accused during his premiership (2001-2006) of heavy-handedness in dealing with insurgencies in the Muslim south of Thailand, did himself any favours by letting slip his thoughts on the inhabitants of those parts. "Often the husband is very lazy. They want to stay all day in tea-houses, drinking tea, and then playing with the cuckoo bird, the one that can sing. It is the lady of the house who goes to work." Similarly his aside that when he plays golf with his friend Hun Sen, prime minister of Cambodia, sometimes they "tell boys' jokes" too off-colour to reproduce here. His reminiscence about the former Japanese leader Junichiro Koizumi is better: "Once he told me, in front of China's Premier Zhu Rongji, 'You know, before my prime ministership I had a lot of girlfriends. Now, after becoming prime minister, I have a lot of security people!'"

Admittedly, Thaksin's fortune did originally come from telecommunications, but it is nevertheless telling to discover that he has an extraordinary 12 mobile phones permanently on the go (he fibs and says the number is only eight, but Plate finds him out). Likewise not many interviews with former premiers end up yielding confessions such as "I lose weight, and now I am very proud of my tummy" - a line Plate interprets to mean that Thaksin is image-conscious as only a man keen to return to the limelight would be, despite his protestations that he wishes merely for a role "beneficial for the country and the people". All these, as well as Plate's perception that Thaksin suffers from "severe loneliness", add to a rounding out of his character and win him a degree of sympathy that appears to justify his interlocutor's approach.

More serious are Thaksin's admissions that he ignored the warnings about the military coup that toppled him in 2006, responsibility for which he points squarely at General Prem Tinsulanonda, the head of the Privy Council and the king's closest adviser - thus risking the charges of antimonarchism that his enemies always alleged. He also undermines his ardent professions about national reconciliation and forgiveness when he offhandedly remarks that he believes his foes will eventually be hauled up in front of the International Criminal Court. Given that his sister, Yingluck, is now prime minister, and that his chances of returning to Thailand without being arrested or assassinated must be reckoned as better than at any point since his ousting, such comments are highly relevant, if not necessarily helpful to his cause.

But they are all part of why this new book on Thaksin is the most successful of Plate's series so far. Dr Mahathir and Lee Kuan Yew may remain very vocal (too vocal for his successors' comfort, in the case of Dr M), but they are retired. There is no chance they will lead their countries again, and while their records deserve to be examined more even-handedly than their western detractors tend to do, in those books Plate comes across as too much the apologist keen to readjust the political obituaries. In the case of Thaksin, it is clear that he burns to return from exile and that he still hungers after power. The "deliverance" to which Plate refers in the title of this book has yet to happen. This lends it an urgency the others lack. It also adds a little more bite to "Professor Tom's questioning. He should concentrate in future on other leaders whose careers have come to a premature halt but who hope to resume them. Other such "Giants" are, after all, not in short supply in Asia."

Sholto Byrnes is a contributing editor of the New Statesman and a frequent commentator on South-east Asian politics and religion.

Why this year's Bahrain Grand Prix should not be taking place

16 February 2012 - The Guardian

"When I started this weekly blog I wanted it to be light and fluffy, like freshly beaten egg white, the top of a cappuccino or the economic musings of George Osborne.

But today this corner feels as dark as Pluto's armpit and I feel in sombre mood. I'm talking about the Bahrain Grand Prix, which is scheduled to take place on 22 April. From this distance the race will probably take place, barring another flashpoint of major significance.

But should it? I mean, all things considered, should it really go ahead? I'm not banging on about human rights now, even morality, because we'd be here all day. No, I'm looking at the Bahrain Grand Prix purely as a sporting event.

I first met John Arlott, the great former cricket correspondent of the Guardian, in 1970. This sounds like a digression, but it's not. I had just landed my first newspaper job, working on a small weekly in Lewes, and used to mooch about the County Ground in Hove hoping to meet the leviathans of the press box, Woodcock (the Times), Swanton (Telegraph) and Arlott.

Arlott was my favourite, a judgment only partly influenced by the fact that whenever I met him he would give me a pound note. Perhaps he felt sorry for this apprentice, with his scuffed shoes, drip-dry nylon shirts, greasy black hair and acne.

For his pound he wanted me to dictate his typewritten reports to the copytakers at the Guardian. He didn't like doing this himself because when he read out his own stuff, he was always tempted to revise and rewrite it.

In 1970 the sporting talk, apart from England's chances of retaining the football World Cup in Mexico, centred on the cricket tour by South Africa, and we longed to see such great players as Barry Richards, Mike Procter and Graeme Pollock.

"It shouldn't take place," I will always remember Arlott telling me, rolling his rheumy-red eyes which always looked as though they had been invaded by a bottle of his favourite claret.

"Why, because of apartheid?" I asked. "No," he said. "Well, yes, of course because of the system of apartheid in South Africa [once, when presented by an immigration landing card and asked his "Race" Arlott entered "human".]

"But what I mean is that if the South Africa tour does take place the cricket will be played behind barbed wire. There will be dogs and police and protesters and violence and not many spectators. And sport should never be played in that environment. Sport is an enjoyment, a celebration, and it should always be played in that setting."

The tour, of course, was cancelled and Arlott's profound wisdom survives the test of time. I was reminded of his words when, 20 years later, I covered Mike Gatting's rebel tour of South Africa by a group of misguided and mercenary England cricketers. At least I covered the tour until I was flung out of the country and banned for life for penning my thoughts on apartheid.

When Gatting was asked about one particular riot he replied, infamously: "There were a few people singing and dancing and that was it."

I was reminded of that less than appropriate summation when Formula One's commercial-rights holder Bernie Ecclestone, responding to this week's violence that marked the anniversary of Bahrain's "Day of Rage", told me: "There were a lot of kids having a go at the police. I don't think it's anything serious at all."

Well, I've never been to Bahrain, though I may have the opportunity in a couple of months' time. Meanwhile, though, I feel a deep unease. I know the country is changing, but there are still too many surviving hardliners in the police and military.

I have spoken to people who are out there and their reports of violence and torture are just too vivid to be untrue.

It took me back to 1990 and the terrors of South Africa, to a time when some naive folk still clung to the notion that politics and sport could be kept apart.

South Africa was never going to stay the same, but the country's sporting isolation played a big part in the changes that took place.

Last year the debate about the Bahrain Grand Prix, which was ultimately abandoned by that country's government, wounded Formula One. It is doing so once again. It may well go ahead but against a backdrop of protest and repression and few spectators, will it be a true sporting event? I think I know what John Arlott would have said."

EK's A380 goes Dutch in August

15 February 2012

Emirates Airline said today that it is to upgrade its Amsterdam service to an A380 from August.

Since launching passenger flights to the Netherlands in May 2010, the route has seen strong demand, the Dubai airline said, necessitating the move to the flagship Airbus A380.

The A380 will operate to Amsterdam from August 1.

Emirates currently has a fleet of 20 A380s which serve Auckland, Bangkok, Beijing, Hong Kong, Jeddah, Johannesburg, Kuala Lumpur, London Heathrow, Manchester, Munich, New York JFK, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Shanghai, Sydney and Toronto.

Amsterdam will become the 19th A380 point after an A380 deployment to Tokyo in July.

Bombs in Bangkok and the Iranian connection

15 February 2012

Iranians are suspecyed in what appears to have been a badly botched bomb plot in the Thai capital put yesterday.

The bombs have raised U.S. and Israeli warnings of a heightened threat of terrorism sponsored by Tehran.

Three explosions tore through Sukhumvit soi 71 in Bangkok on Tuesday afternoon, wounding four bystanders and blowing off the legs of a bomber who Thai police said was an Iranian national. A second Iranian passport holder who fled the scene was detained at the city's international airport, according to Thai police.

The blasts follow alleged plots in India and Georgia on Monday, and in Azerbaijan and Thailand last month, which Israel has blamed on Iran or its Lebanese militant ally, Hezbollah. Iran denied involvement in Monday's incidents and didn't comment on the Bangkok blasts.

The accusations come as Iran faces growing international pressure. On Tuesday, senior European and American officials said the European Union was moving as early as this month to ban blacklisted Iranian entities from using a clearing system for international financial transactions, a move that would drastically cut Tehran's ability to access the global financial system.

Shipping giants AP Moller Maersk A/S, Frontline Ltd. and Teekay Tankers Ltd said their ships will no longer call at Iranian ports as an EU embargo on Iranian oil begins to take hold months before its July 1 launch.

A security lockdown in Iranian cities on Tuesday stifled antigovernment protests, but the political opposition is hoping a boycott of the March 2 vote will send a message of discontent with the government from a public coping with rising inflation and a plummeting currency.

Shows of aggressiveness abroad play well with regime supporters in Iran. In a sign of defiance, Iran today announced new advances in its nuclear program.

The suggestion is that Iran has begun to follow through on a threat to target Israeli or U.S. interests around the world in retaliation for the killing of an Iranian nuclear scientist in Tehran on January 11th. The U.S. and U.K. denied involvement in the Tehran incident, while Israel hasn't commented.

Thai police said the first of Tuesday's explosions occurred in an apartment rented by three foreigners, at least two of whom held Iranian passports.

After the men fled the building, one of them, bleeding heavily, threw what appeared to be an improvised bomb at a taxi after the driver refused to let him in.

The injured man then attempted to throw another explosive device when he encountered a police patrol nearby, said Police Maj.-Gen. Pisit Pisutsak. "The bomb instead dropped next to him and blew off his legs," Gen. Pisit said.

Thai authorities identified the injured man as an Iranian national, Saeid Moradi. A second Iranian who fled the explosion, identified as Muhammad Hazei, was detained at the airport as he attempted to leave for Malaysia, according to Thai police. At least two unexploded devices were found in their house, police said.

Thailand isn't considered a major terrorist target, but is a popular tourist destination for Israelis, especially young people finishing their military service. It is also a hub for American and other Western expatriates.

Last month the USA and other embassies issued a travel warning for their citizens traveling to Thailand.  Thai officials demanded that the Americans retract their warning; yellow shirt protestors gathered outside the US embassy. Now. as the terror warning for Bangkok turns out to have been well advised, will Thais protesters now go and apologise to the US Embassy? Thought not.

The one troubling aspect of this rush to blame Iran is that the handling of the weapons was highly amateurish, and lacked the sophistication that would normally be expected from an operation executed by either Hezbollah or Iran’s own external operations wing, the Quds Force.

As always the Thai authorities will try and insist that the city is safe; the bombs were intended for "foreign nationals" in Thailand, national police chief Priewpan Damapong said. He did not give further details but said only that the targets were not Thais.

Which explains why the only no Iranians who were injured yesterday were all Thai.

Khasab is home for tourists and smugglers

14 February 2012

Khasab is the local capital of the Musandam peninsular; and it is in Oman; but cut off from the rest of Oman by the UAE. Khasab is 500 kilometers from Muscat and is locally nicknamed the "Norway of Arabia" more for the scenery than the temperature.

It was the Portuguese who built Khasab at the beginning of the 17th century at the height of their naval presence in the region.

This sparsely populated peninsula enclave belongs to Oman but is encircled on land by the UAE, a legacy of how the area was carved up in the final days of British rule here in the last century that resulted in Oman holding joint control with Iran over the strait.

The natural harbor gives shelter from rough seas and Khasab was designed as a supply point for dates and water for Portuguese ships sailing through the straits of Hormuz.

Access to the area by land was virtually impossible until a modern coast road was built from Ras al Khaimah. This has made Khasab a popular weekend destination for people living in the Emirates and tour guides have replaced fishermen in the local economy. Khasab's main hotel is the Golden Tulip Hotel, which sits on a cliff overlooking the gulf.

First you have to cross the border. The UAE-Oman border is about 40 minutes drive beyond Ras Al Khaimah and is in something of a frontier town. UAE residents who are not GCC nationals should leave their car and enter the departure building. Do have your passport and car registration and aed35 per person.

You then drive 200 yards to the Omani border. Again leave the car. You need passports, your car insurance for Oman and aed50 per person. Bad luck if you are stuck behind a coachload of tourists as their is only one person to issue your visa.

It is all very friendly.

The return is more or less the same. Except no payment is required and their is a customs point as you cross back to the UAE.

The drive to Khasab is spectacular. The mountains have no life or vegetation. There are small villages, sandy clean beaches and the air feels clean. Driving back to RAK at dusk you can see football being played in every Omani village that you pass through with pitches chiseled out of the rock and sand.

The biggest event in recent times in Khasab was last month with the opening of a Lulu Hypermarket right on the harbourfront.

The store is so large that you could fit the entire population of Khasab inside. Although opened for over a month now there are still few people shopping and the near expiry date of many goods suggests little stock turnover.

It is a good place to get a picnic lunch and to stock up on Omani dates!

An old article by Shashi Tharoor in the Times of India. Still interesting and relevant today.

"It has become a cliche to speak of India as a land of paradoxes. The old joke about our country is that anything you say about India, the opposite is also true. We like to think of ourselves as an ancient civilisation but we are also a young republic; our IT experts stride confidently into the 21st century but much of our population seems to live in each of the other 20 centuries. Quite often the opposites co-exist quite cheerfully.

One of my favourite images of India is from the last Kumbha mela, of a naked sadhu, with matted hair, ash-smeared forehead and scraggly beard, for all the world a picture of timeless other-worldliness, chatting away on a cellphone. I even suggested it to the publishers of my newest book of essays on India as a perfect cover image, but they assured me it was so well-known that it had become a cliche in itself.

And yet, cliches are cliches because they are true, and the paradoxes of India say something painfully real about our society.

How does one come to terms with a country whose population is still nearly 40% illiterate but which has educated the world's second-largest pool of trained scientists and engineers, many of whom are making a flourishing living in Silicon Valley? How does one explain a land where peasant organisations and suspicious officials once attempted to close down Kentucky Fried Chicken as a threat to the nation, where a former prime minister bitterly criticised the sale of Pepsi-Cola since 250 million of our countrymen and women don't have access to clean drinking water, and which yet invents more sophisticated software for the world's computer manufacturers than any other country on the planet? A place where bullock carts are still an indispensable mode of transportation for millions, but whose rocket and satellite programmes are amongst the most advanced on earth?

The paradoxes go well beyond the nature of our entry into the 21st century. Our teeming cities overflow while two out of three Indians still scratch a living from the soil. We have been recognised, for all practical purposes, as a leading nuclear power, but 600 million Indians still have no access to electricity and there are daily power cuts even in the nation's capital.

Ours is a culture which elevated non-violence to an effective moral principle, but whose freedom was born in blood and whose independence still soaks in it. We are the world's leading manufacturers of generic medication for illnesses such as AIDS, but we have three million of our own citizens without access to AIDS medication, another two million with TB, and tens of millions with no health centre or clinic within 10 kilometres of their places of residence.

Bollywood makes four times as many movies as Hollywood, but 150 million Indians cannot see them, because they are blind. India holds the world record for the number of cellphones sold (8.5 million last month), but also for the number of farmer suicides (4000 in the Vidarbha district of Maharashtra alone last year).

This month, in mid-November, the prestigious Forbes magazine list of the world's top billionaires made room for 10 new Indian names. The four richest Indians in the world are collectively worth a staggering $180 billion, greater than the GDP of a majority of member states of the United Nations. Indian papers have reported with undisguised glee that these four (Lakshmi Mittal, the two Ambani brothers, and DLF chief K P Singh) are worth more than the 40 richest Chinese combined.

We seem to find less space in our papers to note that though we have more dollar billionaires than in any country in Asia - even more than Japan, which has been richer longer - we also have 260 million people living below the poverty line. And it's not the World Bank's poverty line of $1 a day, but the Indian poverty line of Rs 360 a month, or 30 cents a day - in other words, a line that's been drawn just this side of the funeral pyre.

Last month, the Bombay Stock Exchange's Sensex crossed 20,000, just 20 months after it had first hit 10,000; but on the same day, some 25,000 landless people marched to Parliament, clamouring for land reform and justice. We have trained world-class scientists and engineers, but 400 million of our compatriots are illiterate, and we also have more children who have not seen the inside of a school than any other country in the world does.

We have a great demographic advantage in 540 million young people under 25 (which means we should have a dynamic, youthful and productive workforce for the next 40 years when the rest of the world, including China, is ageing) but we also have 60 million child labourers, and 72% of the children in our government schools drop out by the eighth standard. We celebrate India's IT triumphs, but information technology has employed a grand total of 1 million people in the last five years, while 10 million are entering the workforce each year and we don't have jobs for them.

Many of our urban youth rightly say with confidence that their future will be better than their parents' past, but there are Maoist insurgencies violently disturbing the peace in 165 of India's 602 districts, and these are largely made up of unemployed young men.

So yes, we are a land of paradoxes, and amongst those paradoxes is that so many of us speak about India as a great power of the 21st century when we are not yet able to feed, educate and employ our people. And yet, India is more than the sum of its contradictions. It may be a country rife with despair and disrepair, but it nonetheless moved a Mughal Emperor to declaim, ''if on earth there be paradise of bliss, it is this, it is this, it is this...'' We just have a lot more to do before it can be anything like paradise for the vast majority of our fellow citizens."

Shame at the UN

5 February 2012

Russia and China this evening vetoed a key UN resolution, supported by the Arab Leagu, on Syria calling for the resignation of President Bashar al-Assad following the massacre of more than 200 people by security forces in the city of Homs.

The other 13 council members, including the US, France and Britain, voted in favor of the resolution aimed at stopping the ongoing violence.

Reacting to the vote, France's ambassador to the UN, Gerard Araud, said: "It is a sad day for the council. It is a sad day for Syria ... History has compounded our shame."

The defeat came despite concerted efforts by western leaders to get security council backing for the resolution censuring the Damascus regime.

Speaking before the vote, Barack Obama called for Assad to step down following the latest bloodshed. The US president said Assad had lost his legitimacy as a ruler and had "no right" to cling to power. He said the regime's policy of terrorising its people "only indicates its inherent weakness and inevitable collapse".

Britain and France also condemned the violence and called for decisive action by the international community in an apparent rebuke to Russia, which carried out its threat to veto the draft resolution.

Death tolls cited by activists and opposition groups ranged from 217 to 260, making the Homs attack the deadliest so far in Assad's crackdown on protests that erupted 11 months ago in response to uprisings that overthrew three Arab leaders.

"The time is long past for the international community, particularly those that have so far sheltered the Assad regime, to intensify the pressure to end over 10 months of violence."

The French foreign minister, Alain Juppe, said the Homs bloodshed was a crime against humanity and "those who block the adoption of such a resolution are taking a grave historical responsibility".

But the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, criticised the UN resolution, saying it made too few demands of anti-government armed groups, and could prejudge the outcome of a dialogue among political forces in the country. Syria has been a key Russian ally since Soviet times and Moscow has opposed any UN demands that could be interpreted as advocating military intervention or regime change.

Earlier on Saturday, Tunisia decided to expel Syria's ambassador in response to the "bloody massacre" in Homs and said it no longer recognised the Assad regime. As news of the violence spread, a crowd of Syrians stormed their country's embassy in Cairo and protests broke out outside Syrian missions in Britain, Germany and the US.

The opposition Syrian National Council said 260 civilians were killed, describing it as "one of the most horrific massacres since the beginning of the uprising in Syria". It said it believed Assad's forces were preparing for similar attacks around Damascus and in the northern town of Jisr al-Shughour.

Another group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, gave a death toll of more than 200. It is not possible to verify activist or state media reports as Syria restricts independent media access. Video footage on the internet showed at least eight bodies assembled in a room, one of them with the top half of its head blown off. A voice on the video said the bombardment was continuing as the video was being filmed.

The resolution had no mention of weapons, no mention of sanctions. It was thoroughly watered down. Yet the killings will continue in Syria.

The other 13 council members voted in favor of the resolution, which would have said that the council "fully supports" the Arab League plan.

Mohammed Loulichki, the U.N. ambassador of Morocco, the sole Arab member of the 15-nation council, voiced his "great regret and disappointment" that Moscow and Beijing joined forces to strike down the resolution.

Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN used unusually strong and undiplomatic language: On twitter she said "Disgusted that Russia and China prevented the #UN Security Council from fulfilling its sole purpose."

Just for the record the Syrian ambassador to the UN, while enjoying his comfortable Manhattan lifestyle, said that "the UN has become instrument of war instead of preventing war."

The Russians appear to see this resolution as the first step of a Saudi Arabian war against Iran - of the sunni muslims against the shiites. The fact that the Russians have been arming the Syrian and Iranian armies seems to have been conveniently ignored. The Syrian regime is controlled by Assad’s minority Alawite sect, which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

No one wants to see military intervention in Syria. But the international community does want to see an end to the bloodshed and suffering in Syria.

Simply a significant proportion of the Syrian people want to see an end of the current regime. Violence against the demonstrators has led to huge escalation and the use of heavy weaponry against the civilian population. The increase in violence will lead to increased sectarian tensions.

In the big picture there are many that would like to see a weaker USA; imagine a weaker USA with a stronger Russia and China. Sure the USA makes mistakes and some of its actions are wrong, but it is a democracy, as a nation it reflects on its failings, and then it adapts its behavior. China and Russia may never get to that level of sophisticated participation.

This Washington Post editorial helps to make sense of the issue and the key players in what could be a major middle east conflict: Syria’s outcome has high stakes for the entire Mideast

Survival of the fittest

5 February 2012 - The Economist

THE future of Malev, Hungary’s 66-year-old national flag-carrier, has looked bleak since the European Commission ruled last month that government aid it had received between 2007 and its renationalisation in 2010 was illegal and must be repaid. The deeply indebted airline had no way of paying the money back and indeed was relying on continuing state backing to keep going while a buyer was sought. Early on Friday it ceased flying after the government—which is suffering a debt crisis of its own—decided to stop financing it.

Viktor Orban, the prime minister, said that restarting Malev was “not impossible”. Earlier this week the airline’s boss had used the same half-hearted phrase to express his hopes of reviving takeover talks with the Chinese state owners of Hainan Airlines. However, in the absence of a deep-pocketed rescuer, the loss of confidence an airline suffers on grounding its planes tends to prove fatal. Especially when, as in this case, stronger rivals immediately swoop in to grab its customers. Ryanair, which only ten days ago had announced plans to open five new routes out of Budapest airport, said on Friday that it would increase that to 31 routes, basing a fleet of brand-new Boeing 737-800s at Budapest from February 17th. Likewise Wizz Air, a Hungarian low-cost carrier, also said it would expand its Budapest schedules to fill the gaps left by Malev.

Ryanair has laid up a portion of its fleet for the winter season so it has plenty of spare planes ready to start flying on Malev’s old routes. But no doubt its wily boss, Michael O’Leary, will be driving a hard bargain with the authorities in Budapest over such things as landing fees, as the price of rescuing both Malev’s staff (who are being invited to apply for jobs with Ryanair) and the airport itself, whose future was at risk if its main customer went out of business.

The airline business is a fiercely Darwinian, survival-of-the-fittest affair these days, and Malev’s demise comes just a few days after the collapse of Spanair, a Barcelona-based carrier, and Cirrus, a German regional airline. In Spanair’s case, both Ryanair and its rival easyJet already have extensive routes out of Barcelona El Prat, and both have rushed to scoop up stranded Spanair passengers with cheap “rescue” fares.

Casting around for suitors
Although, as my fellow blogger noted earlier, air traffic has been growing in much of Europe, we are likely to see a continuation of this process of weaker airlines going under or being taken over, and stronger ones getting stronger still. A number of smaller carriers are casting around for sugar-daddies to to come and rescue them, some because their own finances are in a dire state, others because their state shareholders are deeply in debt and need to flog them off. Air Berlin recently fell into the arms of Abu Dhabi’s Etihad, but Spanair’s hopes of being swept off its feet by another swashbuckling Arab sheikh, from Qatar Airways, were dashed. Emirates, the third of the Gulf’s fast-growing “super-connectors”, has just started flying to Dublin, and would no doubt be welcomed with open arms were it to express an interest in the local carrier Aer Lingus. The Irish government wants to sell its stake, and there had been speculation that Etihad might buy it, but so far nothing has come of this.

Turkish Airlines, which dreams of building an international network to rival the super-connectors’, is eyeing up Poland’s money-losing LOT. The Czech government is seeking suitors for its flag-carrier, CSA. Likewise Portugal and its carrier, TAP. Last year the expectation was that IAG—the merged British Airways and Iberia—would buy TAP, though at the moment IAG is busy absorbing BMI, a British rival.

Apart from a bit of short-term confusion, for travellers in Europe there seems so far to be little to worry about in this wave of takeovers and closures. It seems that, in most cases, wherever there is sufficient passenger demand for flights, someone will quickly step in and meet it. The continued expansion of Ryanair, easyJet and the Gulf’s super-connectors is providing plenty of competition and choice. And as some familiar names disappear from the skies, we will soon get used to others—such as Norwegian Air Shuttle, which has just announced a huge aircraft order and plans to join the big league of European carriers

Lewis looks like he's in for the long haul

3 February 2012 - published 1 November 2012 in The Irish Times

CADDIE’S ROLE: Tom Lewis’ victory in the Portugal Masters three weeks ago means he now has greater control over his schedule, writes COLIN BYRNE

BLEARY EYED, quite disoriented and at about 35,000 feet over Outer Mongolia in an Airbus A330 sometime early yesterday morning local time, I found myself contemplating the unpredictable nature of trying to eke a living out of worldwide professional golf.

It may not have been my most lucid moment, especially as I was trying to remain horizontal enough to lay claim to most of the free seats in the middle of row 39 and pretend to myself that spreading out would both secure my extra leg-room and slumber. Instead it only caused hip and back discomfort, my attempts at snagging a business class seat were foiled, last minute, at the departure gate in Abu Dhabi.

The fact I have headed east to the HSBC Champions Tournament in Shanghai when realistically a few weeks back I was thinking more of a jet-lag free jaunt down to Spain for the second stage qualifier of the European Tour school is another example of the whimsical nature of the great, galavanting gamble of professional golf.

In the professional game, and particularly starting to caddie for a young player, Tom Lewis, who at that time had no official playing status, you need to be pretty much on stand-by, in anticipation of a trip to who knows where.

The early stages of a young professional’s career can be almost as capricious as the recent contest to elect the ninth President of our own little land. Where there is chaos there would appear to be opportunity. Where there is despondency with a system and our public representatives it looked like anyone with a thick enough neck had a chance of contesting for the highest office in the land, until the final hour when sense and integrity prevailed.

With the heroic exploits of my young, and at the time status-less, player in the final round of the Portugal Masters three weeks ago, both Tom’s and his bagman’s schedules have changed dramatically. From the arduous quest of trying to gain a playing status through some tournament invitations, including the tournament he won, the more realistic journey was going to be through the long and rocky road that is the tour school.

There are three stages of the tour school in Europe and by a stroke of luck, resulting in another competitor pulling out of the school Tom gained exemption to the second stage which takes place early December. The top 10 on the world amateur rankings are exempted from the first stage qualifier. This was a fortuitous break already as we saw that the very talented and top points scorer in the Walker Cup, Paul Cutler, did not make it through the first stage qualifier.

There are twists and turns along anyone’s career path which determine the ease of passage to the upper echelons of the game, or if indeed they ever make that transition. On top of Tom Lewis and his team of advisers securing some invites for him to try to slip in the back door and out onto the European Tour, and some other subtle twists of fate like not having to endure the first stage of qualification, it was Tom himself who seized the moment to seal his immediate fate on tour.

It is a remarkable achievement to win so early in a young career. Along with the morale boost it will give Tom, almost as significantly he now has the chance to plan his early steps as a professional. This is almost as important an advantage as having won.

Top golfing is about routines and so too is scheduling. An annual plan, with performance optimisation at a premium is something that normally only established players have the luxury of hatching.

Tom has already put himself in the position of competing at the highest level with many of the top players on the PGA Tour who will be playing in Shanghai this week. Knowing the respect he has for his fellow competitors it will just be another event that he is going to compete in and although the names may carry a little more kudos the objective of playing the course as best he can will still be the ultimate objective. He will have a healthy respect but not a capitulating one.

It is not such a great surprise Tom has already catapulted himself onto the world arena of golf. You just need to spend a little time around him in order to get a sense of his prowess.

It is a surprise to be back trawling the globe quite so soon after myself and Tom’s recent initiation. I am now in Shanghai shaking off the numbing effects of my first long trip in a while, amongst the hacking and herding of daily life in a metropolis with well over 20 million inhabitants.

We have arrived early amongst the sounds and smells that tell you are in a very different part of the world, in preparation for his first World Golf event and another challenge to whet the appetite of my young master.

Some more columns from Colin Byrne

Unique blend of golf living in harmony with daily life
Women in blue pick right time to strike for glory
Best of luck Edoardo, it was a pleasure carrying your bag
The young boy who never forgot a legend's hug

Sadly - older articles are behind the Irish Times firewall.

BBC decides that rimming is humour

3 February 2012

I have been entertained by the BBC's rather delayed response to my email to them on Christmas Day objecting to a show's detailed descriptions of "rimming" on early evening television  courtesy of BBC Entertainment.

I do think that a detailed description of “rimming” is neither family entertainment nor “humour of a sexual nature.”

Nor I suspect is it very appropriate for the UAE market.

Here are the emails. The BBC really should do better But it dumps old programmes into this market with little thought for content and it would appear little control over what is shown and when.

"Dear Robert,

Thank you for your message to our Contact Us site. Firstly may we offer our very sincere apologies for the delay in responding to your concerns.

We are sorry that your mother was offended by comments made in this edition of Jam and Jerusalem broadcast on Christmas Day on BBC Entertainment. Regarding the comments you refer to, there was a presentation announcement before the start of the programme which advised:

“This programme includes humour of a sexual nature. Parental guidance is advised”

Feedback from viewers such as yourself regarding the content and scheduling of our programmes is extremely helpful and important to us and please be assured that your feedback has been noted and will be passed to the scheduling team for BBC Entertainment.

Thank you for taking the time and trouble to contact us.

Best wishes,

BBC Entertainment

Your message

Christmas Day 8.30pm in Dubai and Jam and Jerusalem gives us a detailed description of "rimming." My 78 year old mother choked on her turkey.

Some things may be better broadcast later in the evening - or in this case not at all; as it was sadly unfunny.

Merry Christmas. Who should I send the dry cleaning bill to?

Robert"

Reuters journalists to strike

3 February 2012 The Guardian

Journalists at Thomson Reuters have voted to strike – the first at the news agency in more than 25 years – over a below-inflation pay offer.

The National Union of Journalists chapel at the company voted "overwhelmingly" for a 48-hour strike next week, to coincide with the release of Thomson Reuters' full-year financial results.

"We tried very hard to reach a settlement with management but the company's refusal to improve its below-inflation offer of 1.75%, which follows years of effective pay cuts, has compelled Thomson Reuters journalists to vote overwhelmingly for strike action for the first time in more than 25 years," said the Thomson Reuters NUJ chapel officers, Mike Roddy and Helen Long.

"Thomson Reuters must shoulder the responsibility for this dispute. The company ignored repeated warnings that members had reached a tipping point, after years of below-inflation pay rises, combined with rising costs, that are pricing many members out of their jobs."

The NUJ said that the pay offer had hit journalists whose families cannot afford to live in London.

A ballot for industrial action saw 83% of NUJ members at Thomson Reuters voting in favour and the strike is scheduled to begin at midnight on Thursday 9 February, for 48 hours.

The NUJ claimed that Thomson Reuters was also "under fire" over its treatment of cleaning staff at its Canary Wharf offices.

Barry Fitzpatrick, deputy general secretary of the NUJ, said: "This strike is about fairness. The management is proposing a below-inflation pay deal, while holding back money for a merit scheme.

"This is just not on. While our members struggle to make ends meet on their wages, the management should be putting all the money into an across-the-board pay increase."

NUJ members at the news agency last threatened to strike in 2008 and 2009 over job cuts and working conditions following the merger of Reuters and Thomson.

Thomson Reuters declined to comment.

Thai Smile is all about lower costs

3 February 2012

Thai Airways International has confirmed that its new business division Thai Smile Air will launch services on 1July 2012 as recruitment commences for the start-up’s own cabin staff.

The airline will be positioned as a low-to-medium-cost carrier between the mainline operation and low-cost venture Nok Air, but will not be a standalone operation like Nok Air but an internal business unit.

The reality is that Thai Smile will recruit a new crew with new contracts and operate at lower costs.

Thai Smile will commence operations with four leased Airbus 320s, increasing its fleet to eleven aircraft in the future. These were initially expected to be used to start services to domestic destinations bu it now appears that the start-up will initially have more of a focus on international routes.

This may be due to Thai Airways International increasing its shareholding in Nok Air and expanded its domestic role. Thai Smile is expected to offer flights within a three to four hour range from Bangkok and Thai is understood to be discussing traffic rights for a number of new overseas destinations to be se served from Thai Smile’s launch in July.

It is expected to inaugurate operations on July 1 initially with a twice daily link between Bangkok and Macau. As additional aircraft arrive THAI Smile will introduce daily services on the Bangkok – Chiang Mai and Chiang Mai – Phuket routes from August 1, while the carrier will replace Thai Airways on international links from Bangkok to Jakarta, Kolkata and Phnom Penh from the same date. According to Thai’s provisional schedule THAI Smile will also take over the operation of the daily Bangkok – Surat Thani route from September 1 and will operate the four-times weekly winter seasonal Bangkok – Gaya – Varansai – Bangkok rotation from October 1.

Thai Smile looks like it will continue to take over routes from Thai Airways International as additional aircraft arrive. These are likely to be markets with limited premium demand and where the Thai Smile brand will fit the operation better.

The airline will offer a two-class product using Thai’s current ‘TG’ flight code. With a lower cost structure than its parent Thai Smile will able to fly to a number of locations that cannot be served profitably by the mainline division, or serve existing routes more efficiently. Possible new destinations may include Amritsar, Brunei, Danang, Macau, Medan and Penang.

A day on the Yas links

31 January 2012

Yas we can said Scotland’s Richie Ramsay as he produced an outstanding ten under par 62 over the Yas Links Golf Cub to win the 2012 Emirates Airline Invitational hosted by Abdullah Al Naboodah yesterday.

Ramsay topped the field of 50 European Tour players in the pro-am event in Abu Dhabi, which helps raise money for a number of charities including the Tour Players Foundation along with Friends of Cancer Patients, the UAE Down Syndrome Association, the Special Care Centre Abu Dhabi. The Gala dinner following the Invitational was aiming to raise over$250,000 through a charity auction.

It was a lovely sunny day for your writer to make his caddying debut on the European Tour. I was caddying for professional golfer Russell McIntyre who is based in Portugal. Russell's day did not start well when he cracked his Taylor Made driver on the first tee. On a long course using the 3 wood off the tee was great for accuracy but little help for distance. The downside for Russell yesterday - he really made only one good putt all day; plenty were close; none would drop.

Ramsay finished three ahead of Richard Finch and Thorbjorn Olesen (65 was a good score yesterday) in a field that also included Sergio Garcia and Graeme McDowell, last year’s champion Retief Goosen – who made a hole-in-one on the eighth – and Ryder Cup Captains past and present Colin Montgomerie and Jose Maria Olazabal (who were in the group behind us) in a star line-up.

The other pro in our group was Tom Lewis, who made such an impact at the 2011 British Open before turning professional. Tom is still only 21, he is a genuinely nice guy, was a great partner for his amateur colleague, and is a terrific ball striker. He eased a 69 yesterday. With a little good fortune, some good advice, and with a few putts going in, he could become very, very good.

Our two amateurs were Russell's father - Stewart McIntyre - and Keven LeCocq, a UK based American, who plays most of his golf at Wentworth. Links for our fourball are below.

Caddying is tough - its a long hike with a heavy bag on a warm day. And you do need to pay attention to the game and to your golfer. Tom Lewis' caddy is the experienced Irishman, Colin Byrne, very composed and thoughtful; he has won majors with Retief Goosen and should be a great help to Tom Lewis in his first full year as a pro.

Colin is my kind of caddy - asked in 2008 who would be in his dream foursome he replied : the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Ghandi and Gene Sarazen.

Me - I think my caddying career may be a once off - though Kevin LeCocq was kind enough to ask me if I had been a pro caddy before.

It was a very good day; a top course in lovely condition, and a chance to watch some of the best golfers from the best vantage point. I even got to chat to Monty and Jose-Maria Olazabal.

The modern golfers are very different - they are not necessarily tall; but they are very lean and have great body turns and swing speed. And their control over ball distance and flight puts my efforts to shame.

Some links to our fourball:

Russell McIntyre - Pro golfer at Quinta do Lago. Likes snooker and snakes.

Stewart McIntyre - A Captain of the Super Yacht Industry: Summer 2011

Kevin LeCocq - Head of Global Investment Solutions : Deutsche Bank’s Private Wealth Management

Tom Lewis

Caddies like Colin Byrne double up as on-course psychologists

Chuck Culpepper The National Jan 25, 2012

Any notion of caddies having cushy jobs is so very last century.

"The more you do it, the longer you spend at the golf course," said Colin Byrne, the veteran caddie of the 21-year-old English wunderkind Tom Lewis.

"Everyone's looking for an edge, and I think everyone's afraid to leave the golf course."

One reason: "We're all influenced by what happens around us."

What happens around them nowadays is toil. Twenty years ago, Byrne said, some players traded on talent; now players trade on moderate talent plus diligence or considerable talent plus diligence. Even away from the course, they frequent hotel gyms alongside physios.

Byrne noticed the rigour upgrade with Swedish players in the 1990s (for yet another case of Swedish excellence).

The caddie's job thus has become "a lot more than the four to five hours on the course," bloating to more hours of driving ranges and practice rounds, hunting balance between practice and competition.

The yang might have trumped the yin sometimes, Byrne said, as when Padraig Harrington, his fellow Irishman, "finally admitted" that in golf's eternal mystery, he might have won more had he worked less.

Don't picture caddies standing in museums absorbing local culture.

The "old days" - you know, that 20th century - allowed for marginally more travel glamour and cultural edification, before so many people became so good that time grew so limited.

"I've come to South Africa," Byrne said from the tournament last week, "and I've come for work. I'm in a beautiful part of the world. I'm, you know, close to it, but I'm not really seeing it."

That "sense of being somewhere different" has grown fainter.

Some call them on-course psychologists.

"You know, you kind of get in the back door to a very big arena," said Byrne, who has written newspaper columns in Ireland.

"You know, because we're not skilled … There's no caddie school, no way to study it. It's probably something a lot of us have stumbled upon."

Then again, it is a hard to teach -and learn - art.

While discussing the two-time US Open champion Retief Goosen's brutal Sunday at the 2005 US Open, Byrne said: "Probably the art of caddying is understanding whom your dealing with, what would motivate him and what wouldn't motivate him.

"Some people need to be pumped up, and some need quiet words of encouragement."

"You can say the right thing and the wrong thing, even though it's the same thing and at the right time," Byrne said, likening it to how saying "Good morning" can work - or, not.

The job security amounts to …

"There's absolutely no security in the job," Byrne said, "which makes a very clean case if you're not getting on with the person or you're not doing your job. There's no contract.

"It keeps people with an eye on the job. It kind of makes you hungry, as well."

Unlike the slightly raffish days of yore, caddies must be more organised, more "stable", he said. They outnumber available jobs, so those just hoping to fill in would be more populous in tournament parking areas had mobile phones not enabled players in need to locate alternates.

And then, one quirk: "If the economy's doing badly, there are more caddies out here," Byrne said. "It's not an indicator you'd see in any financial papers, but it's not a bad one to look at."

But then, that soaring moment …

On a golden Sunday on Long Island, at the 2004 US Open in Shinnecock Hills, New York, as players bemoaned the barbaric course, Goosen edged Phil Mickelson even as the American tried to claim the first two majors on offer that year.

Upshot: Goosen won a road match, with a caddie who has worked for - at least - Goosen, Greg Turner, Paul Lawrie, Alex Noren, Edoardo Molinari, Lewis.

"Obviously it was a very hostile environment but I think that secretly helped Retief, because the harder you push him, the better he gets, the more obnoxious you get, the better he gets," Byrne said.

So: "He holes the final putt to win. Wasn't a fist pump. Was very simple. A double flip of the cap.

"For him that was probably a big thing, to flip his cap twice as opposed to doffing it.

"He did a double doff. Just the understatedness of it, that's what I like about him."

A guy in through the back door stood amid a huge moment that "justified all the times when you've caddied when you've lost money, or you've got absolutely no satisfaction out of it." His adjective: "indelible".

Twitter turns evil?

30 January 2012

I was waiting until I understood Twitter's new censorship policy before commenting on it.

But perhaps the saddest comment is how quickly both China and Thailand embraced the new policy. The fact that the new policy has been so rapidly embraced by countries determined to censor freedom of speech so that the only message heard is the official message says it all.

Last week, Twitter announced changes to the way it handles content takedowns. What the company had announced was that they'd built in the capability to censor content per country... in response to official requests.

Prior to Twitter’s announcement, the company had the power to delete tweets, of course, but not the ability to do so on a country-by-country basis. What’s new, the company said in a blog post, is “the ability to reactively withhold content from users in a specific country — while keeping it available in the rest of the world.” As part of the new policy, Twitter is setting up a new transparency regime whereby “if and when we are required to withhold a Tweet in a specific country, we will attempt to let the user know, and we will clearly mark when the content has been withheld.”

The truth is, Twitter has indeed instituted a method whereby they can - upon receipt of a "valid and applicable legal request" - take down tweets. The company also states that they will only respond "reactively"; in other words, to content that has already been posted. There is a safety feature built in: Users can change their location if they think the one Twitter has listed based on their IP address is wrong.

This is censorship, but Twitter isn't above the law. When the company enters a new jurisdiction, setting up offices and putting employees on the payroll, it is bound by the laws of that jurisdiction.

It may not be too much of a change. One day Twitter will be ordered to take something down. Now they are ready and can do so transparently.

But that has not stopped the Thai authorities from sensing an opportunity and the Information and Communication Technology Ministry will work with Twitter to ensure that tweets disseminated in Thailand are in compliance with local law.

ICT permanent secretary Jeerawan Boonperm said Twitter's move to censor or block content regarded as offensive in particular countries was a "welcome development".

The ICT Ministry will contact Twitter shortly to discuss ways in which they could collaborate, she said. The trouble is that the Thai authorities see this as am opportunity to clamp down on political views that do not agree with their own.

Rather bizarrely Chavarong Limpattamapanee, president of the Thai Journalists Association, expressed support for the new policy. "Local users must still comply with local law. Freedom of speech is a human right, but this freedom is not borderless. One must be responsible," he said.

Thailand has embraced web censorship. Last year alone the nation asked Facebook to remove more than 10,000 pages deemed insulting or critical of the Thai royal family, in violation of Thailand's lese majeste law.

Though there have been no reported arrests relating to Twitter in Thailand, a number of Thais have been jailed for posting messages on Facebook and the Internet. There were a number of high profile lese majeste cases last year, including a 61 year old man who got a 20 year prison sentence for sending SMS messages and a dual Thai-US citizen who received a two and a half year prison term for translating a banned book about the king into Thai.

Meanwhile the Chinese have also embraced the new policy. A bit unnecessary as Twitter is blocked in China anyway. Global Times insisted that "it is important for it to respect the cultures and ideas of different countries so as to blend into local environments harmoniously. This is normal practice."

But we should be concerned. Twitter has been one of a number of tools used to support and organise the Arab Spring. Of course it was also used in the UK riots last summer. The risk is that Twitter is depriving cyberdissidents in repressive countries of a crucial tool for information and organization.