The Blairs of Britain

The Blairs of Britain

The three Blairs of Britain -- Tony, Ian and Eric -- are curiously connected over time to the contemporary so-called "War Against Terrorism," the seemingly endless battle against a ubiquitous enemy driven political ideology and fear of the unknown.

The first of the troika of Blairs, Tony, the current but outgoing Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, appeared punctually at noon on Wednesday, May 17, at Parliament in the House of Commons, where I watched him stand for 30 minutes to answer questions from various party members [some friends, many foes] including Labour, Tory and Liberal Democrats among others [US translation: Big Labor Democrats, Ronald Reagan Republicans and Jesse Jackson Democrats]. Blair, who has served nine years as the UK's PM but who has fallen out of favor due to his lap dog alliance with Bush in prosecuting military action against Saddam in Iraq instead of Osama where ever he is, started his remarks by honoring the names of two Brits killed in Iraq last week.

Sitting on the oak benches covered with hunter green ribbed leather -- the same as I sat upon from Stranger's Gallery, where I could peer down upon the proceedings from the stadium-like configuration of the House of Commons -- Blair, looking fit and sounding well-versed for the weekly challenge he endures when Parliament is in session, responded with vigor to the very pointed questions shot at him from across a small table by the opposition party lead by David Cameron, the Tory leader.

Compared to the demeanor of the Ohio Senate and House, where emotional rhetoric is shut down quickly by either The President or The Speaker, the exchanges between Blair and others verged on the point of shouting at each other. The questions zinged at him by his critics were aimed to kill, or at least fatally embarrass him.

The top topics of the day that made the news by reporters, who like myself in the Ohio Statehouse were given special seating assignments, were about the deportation of foreign prisoners, the resurgence of the UK's nuclear energy program and when British soldiers will return from Iraq.

On the first topic, deportation of foreign nationals who are suspected of anti-social behavior or who have been convicted of a crime and have served time in prison, Cameron said Blair's flip flopping on the issue [mimicking the strategy used by the Swift Boat Bush-backers in the last presidential election in 2004 to fatally wound the Democrat's John Kerry to the point he could not regain his political health] had resulted in him being "rattled" by the controversy. Cameron said Blairs changing declarations on the topic was a further sign his administration was "in paralysis," as was confirmed in a report the following day by The Guardian, a newspaper published in London and Manchester, that reported on PMQT.

Cameron tightened the noose further on Blair by noting to his face that his own senior civil servant in charge of removals, Dave Roberts, "did not know how many illegal immigrants were in Britain," an observation Blair blasted over, declaring that "there will be an automatic presumption to deport...Irrespective of any claim that they have that the country to which they are going back may not be safe," a statement I witnessed that was confirmed again by the Guardian.

Blair also has angered Green and other environmental supporters by declaring he will support the resurgence of nuclear energy facilities across the country. Curiously, as oil skyrockets in price -- BTW, here in the UK the price of petrol [gasoline as we American's know it] is approaching $10 USD a imperial gallon, about 10% more than a US gallon -- the UK and the European Union are also rushing towards producing more energy from renewable sources, especially wind. According to a recent BBC report, the UK is also working on over 20 wind-energy farms. For any one who has visited the UK or Ireland, as I did in 2003, the wind is always blowing, sometimes dramatically. Since arriving three days ago, the weather here has been blustery, to say the least. As I understand the EU's strategy to become greener over time, the move toward and the investment in renewable wind energy power is clearly blowing in the wind.

It was exciting to see Cameron badger Blair to his face, something political junkies can only dream of happening in the US. Could you imagine such a thing happening in the Ohio General Assembly or the US Congress? Even though the theory of evolution is under attack, pigs will take flight before any such confrontation will happen in the world's greatest democracy.

When asked when UK troops will leave Iraq, Blair like Bush said they will stay there as long as needed or until Iraqi forces are able to do the job themselves. According to my friends here in East Dulwich, Blair is nearly out the door now due to his close alliance to Bush's War in Iraq and the longer he is the PM, his Labour Party, which genuinely saved the nation from the stringent policies of former Tory PM's Margaret Thatcher and John Major, will continue to fail at the polls, as they have in the past two national elections.

Housing in the UK is expensive according to American standards. My friends' small home would sell for about $700,000 USD. Today, as we returned from a fundraiser at their children's school, we passed by a relatively small house they called "derelict" that is selling for about $500,000 USD. One of Blair's great boasts at PMQT was the introduction of the 60,000 British Pound house. One of my hosts asked, "I'd like to know what he's talking about and where they are." This was another pejorative comment made by my friends who once were supportive of what he had done to turn the country in a different direction from where it was headed under Thatcher and Major but who have now turned away from him.

Lafayette Park in Washington DC is used as protest area because it is within view of the White House. Outside Parliament yesterday, next to St. Margaret's Church, which is located next to Westminster Abbey, war protestors displayed big, colorful banners and flags that caught many an eye, including mine.

But inside the famous chamber, which was reconstructed following German bomb attacks in WWII, the atmosphere was solemn and dignified. Those of us with tickets to the proceedings, mingled in the stately corridors leading to the House of Commons that were lined with statutes of the rich and famous of English history and replete with wall murals that told colorful stories of the once proud and world-dominating British Empire.

In the minutes before the event started, British Bobbies dressed in their finest and wearing their signature hats with an eight-pointed badge on them, asked all of us to stand behind an imaginary line so The Speaker's procession could come through the hallway and make it's way into the chamber [Jon Husted, eat your heart out]. The procession was lead by black shiny shoed servants wearing small wigs who marched single-file through the corridors that echoed with the clap of their shoes hitting the marble floor. Preceding The Speaker was his gold colored sceptre, which was about four feet in length and that was laid to rest on the table in front of his ornate covered chair and over which Blair and Cameron went at it like ferrel cats in suits, hissing and clawing at each other from across the table.

The second Blair of Britain is Ian, the head of London's police force. He came to prominence when suicide bombers detonated themselves in a London underground subway station on July 7, 2005. As we know 9-11 in the US, Brits refer to this date as 7-7. He oversees the public camera surveillance system in place throughout London. The system of cameras mounted on buildings and poles surveying everyone walking the streets was able to lead to the identification of the bombers by the police who reviewed tapes and spotted the bombers scoping out their route before they committed their act of violence. In his comments at PMQT, PM Blair said he would like such a system to be more wide spread throughout the country.

This leads me to the final Blair of Britain, Eric Arthur. Although you may not know him by his given name, you do know him by his more famous pen name, George Orwell. Among his many writings, the two everyone should read or re-read are Animal Farm and 1984, the prescient work about a never-ending war of fear in a society built on obedience through public surveillance, which to me seems closer to reality than many care to admit.

Having stumbled onto 1984 last year through happenstance, I read it with a new sense of understanding I didn't have in 1964 when it was a reading assignment in high school. 1984, written in 1948, was Orwell's foretelling of an English society where the leader, Big Brother, was a friend to all and not to be doubted or challenged [sound familiar America?] and where production was always better than before and language was the ultimate controler of thoughts.

Language was controlled by constantly shrinking it. One of the characters in the book was most proud when the new dictionary was smaller than previous ones. One of the key concepts in 1984 was that "whom ever controls the present controls the past; and whom ever controls the past controls the future."

Winston Smith, who tells the story of 1984 from his viewpoint as a writer for the state and whose job it to rewrite information so that it would agree with the present regardless of what was forecasted in the past, knows his thoughts are not as blindly faithful as they should be. He pays the price for his doubts by being tortured to the point where he believes what the state wants him to believe only to finally be assassinated because even though he was rehabilitated, he could no longer be trusted to implicitly follow without questioning the party line.

I see many aspects of 1984 in play today: From the White House's declaration that everything is better than it was before, notwithstanding facts to the contrary, to the War on Terror which is being used to both eavesdrop on Americans and to withhold information from them, to the slippage in America's understanding of the value of their own civil rights and its lethargy in objecting to it, to Bush's unilateral and unchallenged use of executive privilege to the point where he says that in a self-declared state of war he can do anything he wants without fear of any one doing anything to stop him, and no one is stopping him. 1984 is blooming 20 years late, but it is here nonetheless.

It's late in the evening here in London and I've been summed by my wife to come down stairs and stop my anti-social writing routine.

Buckeyes in Europe hops to Amsterdam tomorrow, Monday.

Monday, we're off to Amsterdam, where the Buckeyes in Europe will continue.

T-Minus Zero and Writing

T-Minus Zero and Writing

It's D-Day. Departure day, that is. Posting from the basement office of my brother-in-law's Garrett County, Maryland home, 280 miles and 11 dead deer into our trip to Europe, I'm preparing to enter the tsunami of people streaming to our nation's Capitol. We'll be streaming there because our British Air flight departs at 6:35 p.m., and we need ample time to find our car park and make our way on the DC metro to Dulles Airport.

We're traveling light, which is to say neither of our carry-on bags weighs more than 22 pounds -- the limit for Ryanair, touted as Ireland's largest airline that flys you at bargain prices to second-tier airports through out Great Britain and Europe. Our real baggage -- one each -- is also light compared to what we've lugged around before.

Stranger in Stranger's Gallery

Our first order of business once we land at Heathrow Airport (London), will be to make our way to Parliament and the House of Commons to hook up with Prime Minister Tony Blair for Prime Minister's Question Time. We're to be at the St. Stepehen's Gate entrance at approximately 11:15 for security before entering the chambers.

PMQT was started in 1961 by Harold MacMillan, the PM at that time, to afford Members of Parliament to ask questions and to hear the PM's responses, which can break news or provide a titillating response to a topical subject.

ASIDE: Having covered the Ohio Legislature for nearly three years, the good, bad and ugly of it all, I think having the governor of Ohio stand before the Ohio House each Wednesday when they are in session to serve as a target at which members could aim their questions at, would add spice and liven up our sometimes tired system of public discourse in the Buckeye State.

At PMQT, the official records of speeches given each time are seated directly above The Speaker of the House of Commons, so as to afford them proximity without interferring into the carefully arranaged procedure that is PMQT. This process, according to Parliament's own website is called "Hansard," and gains it's name from the first recorder of speeches in Parliament.

ASIDE: The statehouse press corps in Columbus has an opportunity to get up close and personal with the President of the Senate and The Speaker of the House in what is called the "Gang Bang." The GB, which often times includes hardened, seasoned lady reporters who are as much feared as they are respected for their journalistic prowess and ability to drop a bomb on anyone at any time, is a time following the end of legislative session when reporters, gathering like hungry eaglets, stand at the bottom of the dais, waiting for one either the POS or TSOH
to descend and feed them answers to their questions. Some reporters as T-ball-like questions that have to do with procedural matters and involve "when..." and "have you..." and "are you...," while others wind up with a mini course on the subject of their question.

Stranger's Gallery, where we have tickets to sit, is I believe at the opposing end of the chamber. To actually sit in Stranger's Gallery, which has limited seating, it is essential to first have secured tickets, which we did through the kindness of my friend Joe Hayes, an American from St. Louis who has served as the Mayor of Arundel, in West Sussexx slightly south of London, for the past several years. With Joe's help, his local MP, Nick Herbert, a conservative who would fit well into the Ohio House these days, delivered the goods, which are waiting for us at SSG.

I leanred my lesson on this one in 2003, when I naively thought I could stand in line for hours, and have a seat to watch the proceedings. I did stand in line for hours and actually sat on wooden benches in the grand corridor of the House of Commons, but all I saw were people walking past me once the event was over.

Time to go. Next post will be from London. Cheers, mate!

Travel Planning and The Art of Browser Juggling

Last Millenium Travel

Once upon a time, out-bound travelers normally went to a travel agency to speak with a travel agent who dispensed maps and travel information like a prescient anthropomorphic vending machine that knew where you were going. For a price, someone else did all the work. You sat through it, thought about what you were going to pack, then paid the bill.

Had my North Dakota lottery-winnings check appeared as I keep hoping it will someday, I'd be more inclined to take the last millenium travel-planning route. But since another week went by without it showing up, we did what we normally do: we did it ourselves. Although this method requires role-playing [agent to customer] with yourself, the decisions -- and the blame for them -- will all be yours.

Aside: But if you are ready to play the blame game on travel particulars, especially when vouchers are issued through email, remember the controlling rules will be those of another country. This understanding was emphasized in the final words of our lodging contract from Lucca, which read: "Any problems that may arise between the parties will be dealt accordingly to Italian Law and will be dealt in Lucca." Any statehouse reporter worth his or her story leaks knows to read between these lines, even if they are in Italian. When in Lucca, to avoid a run in with the medieval walled-city's scales of justice, do as the Luccans. Soprano watchers, take note.

Browser Juggling

Sitting in the comfort of your home (my choice) or office, you can now find and see almost anything in the world. Clicking your way through a couple key websites can, when used as a group, become a powerful provider of info. Even with a half-baked plan, a bucket of determination and lots of time to work around the inevitable obstacles that humans or machines will cause you as you enter and exit the payment process, learning the art of juggling multiple browsers (I use Mozilla Firefox 5.0) is an acquired talent that you'll enjoy as your booking victories pile up.

Approaching the trip planning process like a seasoned tag-team duo, my wife Kathy and I took turns navigating through websites over the past month, learning on the fly their in's and out's as we compared and contrasted information from one site to another, then hitting the submit button to lock in rates and accommodations. OJT is what it's all about when you're shopping the web. Learning to be an armchair travel planner takes time, but it's good time as it represents a mini continuing-education-course guaranteed to improve your digital moxy, notwithstanding the embedded frustrations that will give you intermittent heartburn. Your newly developed ability to juggle browsers, and the multi "open tabs" you open as you go, would look impressive if you wanted to attend Jedi College.

Utilizing your browser's "tiling" feature (I prefer vertical, not horizontal), you can have many windows open simultaneously. And with the "tab" option in Firefox, you can manage them like a maestro might conduct a full symphony orchestra, calling on each musical section as the music demands to conjure forth their informational treasures.

Googleishous!

To an amateur travel planner, taking Google into your own hands is equivalent to what a magic wand can do for a young apprentice wizard. It makes things happen you never thought could happen. We all know Google has become synonymous with information retrieval, much the same way the name Xerox stood for paper copies and Kleenex translated into wispy personal paper tissue. With the world's strength in satellite imaging now at the hands of you and me [imagine what the NSA can see] Google Maps is a must-use tool to "see" your destinations, be they places or routes.

The free version, notwithstanding the slight age of the images, is a wonder of science and technology. By entering a simple place name like "London" or a structure name like "Eiffel Tower" or an exact street address, Google Maps will fly you there in nanoseconds. Once "virtually there," by drilling in or out, you can literally see the lay of the land. And when the images are of good quality, which is not always the case, even Peter Pan would be jealous of the view, as you fly at street level or peer down through a cloudless atmosphere to your destination below.

The Wonder Websites

When you're ready to fly hither and yon, as I've done for a while, the roundup of websites I can recommend from personal experience that will turn you into a competent, quick travel agent are Google Maps, ViaMichelin, TripAdvisor, SlowTravel.com, Worldby.com, Venere.com and Kayak.

Via Michelin is fantastic for European driving directions, complete with kilometers traveled, petrol needed to make the trip and the expected cost of that petrol at current prices. [BTW, to change USD last week into Euros and British Pounds took $2.01 for one BP and $1.385 for one Euro.] TripAdvisor is a "go-to sight" for visitor comments and a cornucopia of other info. SlowTravel is what the name implies; a site for travelers like us who don't want to rush or be rushed from one stop to another. Instead we'd rather hang around a bit, not that we're going to be mistaken for a local but to enjoy life from a different perspective.

Illustrating this notion is done best by recalling the scene from National Lampoon's Holiday Vacation movie when the movie's family finally arrives at the Grand Canyon after a series of mishaps befall them. Tired, mad, upset, they leave after a about eight seconds of group gazing into the gorge's timeless bowls. They cut and run as the view is too overwhelming to do much more than gawk in wonder at its enormity.

Kayak is the new pick of the web-travel-planning litter. It gathers search results from across the web, reducing the need for you to visit the many sites it searches as it mines data to match your request.

Still Learning to Drive the SOA Blogmobile

This is my second post to Spinelli on Assignment since I took it out for a spin a couple days ago. I know where the ignition key goes and how to put it into gear, but I'm very much an OJTer. Steady as she goes for me for a while. Next week I'll be in the nation's Capitol to attempt to hunt down information related to my father's 1928 passport and his attainment of U.S. Citizenship, which may have occurred about 1917.

Although we leave home soon, adventure is still just over the horizon. Stay tuned. JMS

Buckeyes in Europe -- Plan, Pack, Travel

Spinelli on Assignment

Mark Twain's time-travel fantasy "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" is a fanciful juxtaposition of time, place and purpose. The opposite of Twain's historical and humorous out of time fantasy is Spinelli on Assignment (SOA), a contemporary match in time and space that includes a health dose of the author's viewpoint and perspective, all floating above an undertow of humor.

The viewpoint and perspective of SOA is that of me, John Michael Spinelli, a native of Ohio on perpetual self assignment . I've amalgamated my civic and business accomplishments with my years as a journalist covering Ohio politics, issues and lawmakers to produce a body of work with a unique style and focus.

Buckeyes in Europe (BIE) is my new blog covering my return to Italy in 2006 to visit the small hometowns of my father and mother, Mike Spinelli and Jane Gallucci, who although they met and married in America, were born in towns only 30 miles apart in the poor, southern state of Puglia, always renowned for its olive trees but now being touted by some as Italy's next up and coming tourist area.

My wife Kathy and I are in launch mode for our upcoming trip to Italy. Like astronauts entering the space capsule hours before launch time to work their checklists, feeling both excited and anxious, we are likewise readying to successfully catapult ourselves to Europe. Once there, we'll spend several days in each of my parent's birth places -- Faeto (or Fait, according to native Italians) for my mother, and San Marcos in Lamis, near the Gargano Peninsula along the Adriatic Sea, for my father.

In BIE I'll give you bite-sized, flavorful travel samplers of our adventure, which begins in London and ends in Paris, with molto stops inbetween including Amsterdam, Bellagio, Milan, Lucca, Cinque Terra, Rome, Naples, Amalfi Coast, Bologna, Venice, Barcelona, Chartres and Blois in the Loire River Valley. Of course, what isn't planned is where the real adventure will lie, and I'll be ready and receptive for what the road or track ahead brings, be it the Via Appia or a high-speed Eurostar train.

Consider SOA launched. More episodes will follow. New to the blogosphere, I'm as excited as a teenage driver sitting behind the steering wheel of his first car, looking at the open road ahead and wondering where it leads. SOA is about to enter traffic, so keep an eye out for it as it comes to an email near you.