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12. 26 pm: 'We don't have a gun problem, we have a sin problem,' says former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee weighed in on the massacre at an elementary school in Newtown saying the crime was no surprise because we have "systematically removed God" from public schools. "We don't have a crime problem, a gun problem or even a violence problem. What we have is a sin problem," Huckabee said on Fox News. However, this isn't the first time such a shocking statement has come from Huckabee. Read more.
10. 40 am: US must control gun culture, says Anand Mahindra
The tragedy reignited calls from gun control activists for laws restricting access to weapons.
A crowd of about 200 people gathered outside the White House on Friday evening for a candlelight vigil, many of them drawn together through social media sites. Speakers urged President Barack Obama to push for gun control and said the Connecticut shootings were just the latest in a US epidemic of gun violence.
But it's not just the US. India has reacted to the gun culture in the US too. Anand Mahindra, Chairman and Managing Director, Mahindra Group tweeted that US being the leader of the world must control gun culture in their country.
OK America.The world always watches you & you like being the leader of the free world.We're watching you now & we want to see gun control…
— anand mahindra (@anandmahindra) दिसम्बर 15, 2012
Writer Taslima Nasreen also tweets about the gun culture in the US and says Americans will never go against their 'deep-roote gun culture'.
Americans will not go against their deep-rooted gun culture.They'll soon forget Newtown school shootings.A new gun man will kill next year.
— taslima nasreen(@taslimanasreen) दिसम्बर 15, 2012
Reflecting the difficult politics of gun control, Obama has not pushed for stricter gun laws, calling instead for better enforcement of existing laws. But Friday's shooting once again stoked the never-ending debate.
Emotions were running high in Colorado, which was rocked by the 1999 Columbine High School and — less than six months ago — the movie theater shooting in the Denver suburb of Aurora.
"Until we get our acts together and stop making these … weapons available, this is going to keep happening," said an angry Tom Teves, whose son Alex was killed in the theater shooting last July.
11. 45 am: The heavy-duty firearms was registered on Adam Lanza's mother's name
The 20-year-old US school shooting suspect reportedly used heavy-duty firearms that were allegedly registered on his mother's name.
The life of Adam Lanza will be dissected, analyzed and re-analyzed in the days to come as investigators dig into the background of the 20-year-old, who law enforcement sources say returned to his elementary school and opened fire. Thus far, there are clues, but no answers. Police have not even publicly confirmed Lanza as the assailant.
CBS News reported that the Connecticut school shooting suspect planned attack in advance.
11. 23 am: US school gunman's brother defends himself on Facebook
"It wasn't me I was at work It wasn't me", wrote Ryan Lanza on his Facebook page soon after he was mistakenly named as the man who shot dead 28 people, including 20 children, at a US school. The shooter has been identified as 20-year-old Adam Lanza, the younger brother of Ryan Lanza.
The elementary school shooting left 20 children and 8 adults dead in the US state of Connecticut, the second deadliest in US history only next to the Virginia Tech Massacre in April 2007, which claimed 33 lives.
Ryan Lanza was working at his desk at the Ernst and Young when he saw a TV report that he had fatally shot people at the elementary school in Connecticut. It was at that moment Ryan realized what his brother, Adam, might have done.
Lanza told his boss that: "I need to go."
He then walked out from Times Square office of the tax real-estate group, according to a co-worker who spoke to MailOnline on condition of anonymity. Ryan stoutly defended himself in a series of Facebook posts after he was mistakenly named as the killer.
He wrote on his Facebook page: "I'm on the bus home now it wasn't me." Less than two minutes he wrote in capital letters: "IT WASN'T ME I WAS AT WORK IT WASN'T ME." Ryan has been detained by the police.
10. 30 am: School shooting postpones Cruise premiere in US
The US premiere of the Tom Cruise action movie Jack Reacher is being postponed following the deadly Connecticut school shooting.
Paramount Pictures says "out of honor and respect for the families of the victims" the premiere won't take place Saturday in Pittsburgh, where "Jack Reacher" was filmed.
The premiere would've been Cruise's first US media appearance since his split from Katie Holmes over the summer. It was to be more contained with select outlets covering and a location away from Hollywood or New York.
A proclamation ceremony for Cruise had been planned with Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Corbett and Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.
No new date for the premiere has been set. The movie opens on 21 December.
Will Obama have the courage to stand up to the US gun lobby?
Talk of reining in America's gun culture is considered politically risky, and Obama avoided making such direct calls during his successful run for re-election this year. However, Friday's tragedy has led to what is now President Obama's biggest test: Will he have the courage to stand up to the powerful American gun lobby? Read our piece here.
VIDEO: A wrapup of the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.: apne.ws/UYNtLg -JM
— The Associated Press (@AP) दिसम्बर 15, 2012
9.40 am: Australia, Britain express shock, sympathy
Leaders of two of the closest longtime allies of the United States have been quick to express sympathy over a shooting rampage that left 26 people dead, including 20 children, at a Connecticut elementary school.
Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said in a statement on Saturday that her country shares America's shock at what she called "this senseless and incomprehensible act of evil."
She said that Australians, as parents as well as friends of the American people, mourned the loss of young children and teachers who were murdered in a place of learning.
British Prime Minister David Cameron said that he was "shocked and deeply saddened" to hear of the shootings and that he found it "heartbreaking" to think of those who lost such young children.
9. 15 am: President Barack Obama has issued a Presidential Proclamation to honour the victims of the Newtown shooting
Presidential Proclamation: Honoring the Victims of the Shooting in Newtown, Connecticut: at.wh.gov/g7kP2
— The White House (@whitehouse) दिसम्बर 15, 2012
As a mark of respect for the victims of the senseless acts of violence perpetrated on December 14, 2012, in Newtown, Connecticut, by the authority vested in me as President of the United States by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, I hereby order that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, December 18, 2012. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord two thousand twelve, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-seventh.
9. 09 am: Connecticut Governor says the shooting is a "tragedy of unspeakable terms"
Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy has described the shooting as a "tragedy of unspeakable terms" that left 20 children and six adults dead in one of the most horrific incidents in US history.
"You can never be prepared for this kind of incident. A number of our citizens, beautiful children, had their life
taken away from them as well as adults whose responsibility it was to educate and supervise those children," Malloy said.
The gunman, identified in local media reports as 24-year -old Ryan Lanza, was also found dead inside the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. The shooting caps a year of similar horrific tragedies in which gunmen opened fire on unsuspecting citizens in a theatre in Colorado and a gurdwara in Wisconsin.
Connecticut police lieutenant Paul Vance said the investigation is ongoing and said another person was found dead at a "secondary crime scene" near Newtown. He, however, did not release further information but media reports said Lanza's brother was found dead in an apartment. Vance said the shooting was concentrated in one section of the school inside two classrooms.
8.54 am: Suspected gunman is school teacher's son
The man suspected of killing more than two dozen people at a school in the US state of Connecticut was an honors student who lived in a prosperous neighborhood with his mother, a grade-school teacher who liked to host dice games and decorate the house for the holidays.
Adam Lanza killed his mother at their home before driving her car to Sandy Hook Elementary School and — armed with at least two handguns — carried out the massacre before taking his own life, officials said. A third weapon, a .223-caliber rifle, was found in the car, and more guns were found inside the school.
The 20-year-old may have suffered from a personality disorder, law enforcement officials said.
Investigators were trying to learn as much as possible about Lanza but so far, authorities have not spoken publicly of any possible motive.
8. 50 am: Witnesses said the shooter didn't utter a word
Catherine Urso, who was attending a vigil Friday evening in Newtown, Connecticut, said her college-age son knew the killer and remembered him for his alternative style.
"He just said he was very thin, very remote and was one of the goths," she said.
Lanza and his mother, Nancy, lived in a well-to-do part of Newtown, a prosperous community of 27,000 people about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of New York City.
A grandmother of the suspect — who is also the mother of the slain teacher — was too distraught to speak when reached by phone at her home in Florida.
"I just don't know, and I can't make a comment right now," Dorothy Hanson, 78, said in a shaky voice as she started to cry. She said she hadn't heard anything official about her daughter and grandsons. She declined to comment further and hung up.
Adam Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan Lanza of Hoboken, New Jersey, was being questioned, a law enforcement official said. He told authorities that his brother was believed to suffer from a personality disorder, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the record about the unfolding investigation.
The official did not elaborate, and it was unclear exactly what type of disorder he might have had.
Ryan Lanza had been extremely cooperative and was not under arrest or in custody, but investigators were still searching his computers and phone records. Ryan Lanza told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.
Brett Wilshe, a friend of Ryan Lanza's, said he sent him a Facebook message Friday asking what was going on and if he was OK. According to Wilshe, Lanza's reply was something along the lines of: "It was my brother. I think my mother is dead. Oh my God."
Adam Lanza attended Newtown High School, and several local news clippings from recent years mention his name among the school's honor roll students.
Sandeep Kapur, who lives two doors down from the Lanza family in Newtown, said he did not know them and was unaware of any disturbances at the Lanza house in the three years that he and his family have been in the neighborhood.
He described the area as a subdivision of well-tended, 15-year-old homes on lots of an acre or more, where many people work at companies like General Electric, Pepsi and IBM. Some are doctors, and his next-door neighbor is a bank CEO, said Kapur, a project manager at an information technology firm.
"The neighborhood's great. We have young kids, and they have lots of friends," he said. "If you drive past this neighborhood, it gives you a really warm feeling."
The rampage in the northeastern state of Connecticut was at least the fourth big shooting spree in five months in the United States. It was by far the deadliest of the year and most heart-wrenching.
The children were among the youngest victims of a mass shooting in recent history.
Frightened students who were rushed from the building by police were told to close their eyes. Children — some crying, others looking frightened — were escorted through a parking lot in a line, hands on each other's shoulders.
"Our hearts are broken today," President Barack Obama said, wiping his eyes during brief comments to reporters in one of the most emotional public moments of his presidency. The children killed were just 5 to 10 years old, he said. "They had their entire lives ahead of them — birthdays, graduations, wedding, kids of their own."
Watch Obama's statement on the shooting in Newtown, Connecticut
The national debate over the issue of gun control in America exploded once again. Obama said the U.S. had been "through this too many times" with recent mass shootings and that the country has to come together to take meaningful action, "regardless of the politics." He did not give details.
Police shed no light on the motive for the attack. The gunman was believed to suffer from a personality disorder and lived with his mother in Connecticut, said a law enforcement official who was briefed on the investigation but was not authorized to publicly discuss it.
Law enforcement officials speaking on condition of anonymity said Adam Lanza killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, and then drove to the school in her car with three guns, including a high-powered rifle that he apparently left in the back.
Authorities said he shot up two classrooms but otherwise gave no details on how the attack unfolded.
The attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School, just two weeks before Christmas, was the nation's second-deadliest school shooting, exceeded only by the Virginia Tech university massacre in 2007 that left 32 dead.
This time, the victims were far smaller. Children told their parents they had heard bangs and, at one point, a scream over the intercom. Teachers ordered them to hide in closets or corners.
State police Lt. Paul Vance said 28 people in all were killed, including the gunman, and one person was injured.
Lanza's older brother, 24-year-old Ryan, of Hoboken, N.J., was being questioned, but a law enforcement official said he was not believed to have had any role in the rampage.
Investigators were searching his computers and phone records, but he told law enforcement he had not been in touch with his brother since about 2010.
The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the unfolding investigation.
On Friday afternoon, family members were led away from a firehouse that was being used as a staging area, some of them weeping. One man, wearing only a T-shirt without a jacket, put his arms around a woman as they walked down the middle of the street, oblivious to everything around them.
Another woman with tears rolling down her face walked by carrying a car seat with a young infant inside and a bag that appeared to have toys and stuffed animals.
Robert Licata said his 6-year-old son was in class when the gunman burst in and shot the teacher.
"That's when my son grabbed a bunch of his friends and ran out the door," he said. "He was very brave. He waited for his friends."
Licata said the shooter didn't say a word.
Stephen Delgiadice said his 8-year-old daughter heard two big bangs, and teachers told her to get in a corner. His daughter was fine.
"It's alarming, especially in Newtown, Connecticut, which we always thought was the safest place in America," he said.
Theodore Varga said he was in a meeting with other fourth-grade teachers when he heard the gunfire, but there was no lock on the door.
He said someone turned on the public address system so that "you could hear the hysteria that was going on. I think whoever did that saved a lot of people. Everyone in the school was listening to the terror that was transpiring."
Also, a custodian went running around, warning people there was a gunman in the school, Varga said.
"He said, 'Guys! Get down! Hide!'" Varga said. "So he was actually a hero." The teacher said he did not know if the custodian survived.
Varga said he tried to kick out an air-conditioning unit in the window so the five teachers in the room could escape, but he only managed to knock out the wood next to it, and the space wasn't big enough for all of them to squeeze through.
He said he smelled gun smoke in the halls as he ran out to escape through a door. Varga then went around to help three other teachers climb out of the window of the first-floor room they had been in.
Mergim Bajraliu, 17, heard the gunshots echo from his home and ran to check on his 9-year-old sister, who was fine. He said she heard a scream come over the intercom at one point. He said teachers were shaking and crying as they came out of the building.
"Everyone was just traumatized," Bajraliu said.
Richard Wilford said his 7-year-old son, Richie, said he heard a noise that "sounded like what he described as cans falling."
The boy told him a teacher went out to check on the noise, came back in, locked the door and had the kids huddle in the corner until police arrived.
"There's no words," Wilford said.
Melissa Makris said her 10-year-old son, Philip, saw what looked like a body under a blanket as he fled the school.
The shootings instantly brought to mind episodes such as the Columbine school massacre in Colorado that killed 15 in 1999.
"I think as a society, we need to come together. It has to stop these senseless deaths," Columbine principal Frank DeAngelis said Friday.
Already this year, a gunman killed 12 people at a Colorado theater, and another gunman killed six people before killing himself at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.
"We have endured too many of these tragedies," Obama said. He addressed reporters in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, named in honor of the former White House press secretary who was shot in the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in 1981. Brady and his wife, Sarah, have become activists for gun control measures.
"If now is not the time to have a serious discussion about gun control and the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our society, I don't know when is," one member of Congress, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, said in a statement.
Overseas, there was both shock and sympathy.
In a public statement addressed to Obama, French President Francois Hollande said he was "horrified."
British Prime Minister David Cameron said "it is heartbreaking to think of those who have had their children robbed from them." Queen Elizabeth II sent a message Obama saying she was saddened by the "dreadful loss of life."
With inputs from Agencies


text: Home Surname List Name Index Sources Email Us | Seventh Generation1633. Walter McCuiston was born in North Carolina.1239 He appeared in the census in Columbus City, Franklin County, Ohio.1239 He was an electrician for a steam railroad shop in Columbus City, Franklin County, Ohio.1239 Walter has reference number (177ix-261). Walter McCuiston and Unknown were married.1239 They1239 were divorced.1239 Unknown (private). |

subset: commoncrawl


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Boeing has been awarded a three-year $9.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory to develop and demonstrate technologies that enable multiple small unmanned aerial vehicles to coordinate with each other and a manned airborne control station to carry out intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.
Military terminology
India will test fly, in 2012, its indigenous airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) system integrated onboard a modified Embraer EMB 145, an official involved in the project said.
Singapore-based Stratech Systems Ltd. yesterday signed an agreement covering the establishment of a joint venture with Israeli UAV specialists Aeronautics. The new entity, Stratech Aeronautics, will operate from Singapore and will initially fo-
cus on the Asia-Pacific region. Not only will the new teaming enhance and market its existing products, but will ultimately develop new offerings.
As was true of much of the industry, Israel Aerospace Industries saw a fairly steep dip in sales during 2009, largely due to a marked softening in demand on the civil side of its business. Published financial results for the first three quarters of 2009 showed sales slipping by about 25 percent on 2008 and there were few signs that the fourth quarter numbers will have reversed this trend.
Breaking with a tradition that has seen major military procurements signed and announced only in Abu Dhabi, the UAE government sealed deals for new training and AEW&C aircraft during the Dubai Airshow this month. Pilatus secured the new basic trainer, an order for 25 PC-21s worth $521 million, to also include several training simulators with all systems and services.
The Saab 340 AEW&C aircraft with Erieye radar, which is destined for the Royal Thai Air Force (RTAF), took to the skies for the first time on Friday, flying from Saab's Linkoping plant where airborne early warning and control conversion work is undertaken. Thailand has one AEW&C aircraft on order (plus another option), as part of a deal involving Gripen fighters.
One of the more unusual debutants at this year's airshow is Israel Aerospace Industries' HAROP loitering munition. A cross between an unmanned aerial vehicle and a bomb, HAROP is an expendable air vehicle that is launched from the box in which it is transported. The weapon can loiter over the battlefield for up to six hours, using its nose-mounted EO/IR sensor turret to spot targets or relay video imagery back to the control station.
The Teal Group's latest Market Profile and Forecast for the unmanned aerial vehicle concludes that expenditure on UAVs will rise from an annual $4.4 billion in 2009 to $8.7 billion by 2018. At the same time, the aerospace analysis group forecasts a rise in UAV payload expenditure from $2 billion to nearly $5 billion.
Israeli EO/IR expert Controp has added a number of new products to its extensive range of sensor payloads, and they are on display here on its stand in the Israeli National Pavilion. Leading the debutants is T-STAMP, the latest member of its STAMP family of lightweight payloads for small aircraft, UAVs and helicopters.
In the Israeli Pavilion, avionics specialist Rada Electronic Industries is unveiling a new line of compact avionics systems designed specifically for unmanned aerial vehicle applications. The company has developed a range of interface control processors, engine control and payload management computers, modular avionics and inertial navigation systems, and electrical power management units.


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Spaceintense stock a wide range of event furniture for dining inside or out and low seating when guests really want to relax.
Spaceintense offer standard trestles at 2'6" wide. With place settings either side this leaves little space in the middle of the table so we have introduced a wide trestle at 3'3''. A six foot table will accommodate 3 down either side comfortably, which is 6 per table. Wide trestles will accommodate a place setting at the end of the table without affecting the place settings either side. Both widths of trestle are available at 6' and 4' in length.
To complement the low seating there are low tables available for hire. These have also been sourced from Rajesthan and feature ethnic paint work.


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Glen Ellyn residents on apartments excluded from TIF: 'It's worse than a war zone'
GLEN ELLYN – Although many residents of two low-income apartment complexes in Glen Ellyn asked to be removed from a proposed TIF district, some neighbors are concerned about what the removal could mean for an area they say is falling apart.
"I live right there. It is not a safe environment for the World Relief children. It's not a safe environment for my children or any of our neighbors," Glen Ellyn resident Renie Atchison said. "It has directly impacted my family. It's a slum. It needs to be addressed."
Atchison voiced her concerns at a public hearing held Sept. 9 by the village as part of the due process to establish a TIF district along Roosevelt Road.
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Ron Goff on August 12, 2011 15:36Don't Touch A Thing
Ron Goff on August 01, 2011 00:50France Is Calling
Ron Goff on March 22, 2011 01:40No Distance Ron Goff John Kesler
Ron Goff on December 01, 2010 15:22
Need a gift for a gifted musician?
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"Appreciate expression......but respect the craft" - (me, 2011)
Ron Goff: National Association of Jazz Educators (NAJE) award winning soloist and recording session musician with hundreds of
credits including:
Sheryl Crow
Coca Cola
Dave Weckl
Tom Kennedy
Six Flags
St. Louis Cardinals
Anheuser Busch.
Ron Goff began playing saxophone when he was ten years old. Initially he began playing alto and was heavily influenced by David Sanborn. Playing alto through highschool and college he won several soloist awards and was interviewed by Downbeat magazine at age 15. Upon graduating highschool, college music classes took a backseat to his already blossoming commercial recording career. Ron switched to tenor saxophone when he was 23. While he was still playing alto saxophone Ron was heavily influenced by John Coltrane and Michael Brecker so the transition to tenor sax was a natural one. After hundreds of commercial recordings and a couple of tours Ron became disillusioned with pop music culture and took a hiatus from music for a couple of years. A series of events led him back to playing with a different attitude. The upcoming album, "Illusion of Reality" is the result of his new attitude toward creating music. Here are Ron's comments on his current project, and his new attitude toward music: "When I chose to rejoin the music community I decided to do it on my terms. I want to do it for the art, for the love of music, for genuinely communicating my emotions with other people. In the past I listened to everyone else but myself, and it led me to a career that I came to loathe. This time around it's about reaching people with no compromise; just great music that everyone can enjoy. So much jazz music today is watered down by players that are in it for the money, or players that are so into what combination of notes is technically correct that they lose the essential message of music - to create something people can feel and enjoy, and sometimes something people need to reflect or think about. My main goal is to create jazz music that contains melodies and rhythms that all people, not just jazz enthusiasts, can enjoy. Melodies should be singable and the rhythms should be danceable, or at least something anyone can tap their foot to. Jazz music used to do that but I don't hear that so much anymore: I want my music to sing and dance. I want to couple the simplicity of great melodies and rhythms that make pop music of today so popular with the complex harmonic structures, rhythms, lines, etc. that jazz lovers can sink their teeth into. Ultimately I want to create music that gives everyone a sense of happiness and satisfaction that I got as a child from listening to really great players. When I write and play I think of a good mystery movie where everyone is clued in on what's going to happen, and they're anxiously waiting to see how it plays out. That's what I want to provide to new listeners and fans alike: something they can grab onto, and then something unexpected that allows then to enjoy the song over and over again."


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Hair Color Ideas For Winter 2010
5 Wintry Hair Color Ideas to Take You Right Into the New Season
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by Jaime Richards
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Wednesday, March 12, 2014 12 p.m. - 3 p.m. Recreation Center
The Winter Career Fair is held specifically for students and alumni who are seeking full-time positions and/or internships. We welcome a collaborative effort between your organization and the University as an opportunity to provide you with high quality employees from various industries including teaching, business, health, foreign languages, engineering, computer technology, sciences, criminal justice and more! The 2014 Winter Career Fair provides an excellent opportunity to promote your company or school district. Our elementary, secondary, and special education students are prepared to enter the classroom as highly qualified teachers who promote excellence in teaching. Please feel free to peruse resumes and post jobs prior to the event through Career Connection.
Registration fee of $175 includes an 8 ft. table and lunch for two representatives. Additional representatives $25 each. Cancellations less than one week in advance are ineligible for a refund.
Several sponsorship opportunities are available. You can view all of the benefits of becoming a sponsor here.


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A collection of news and information related to Personal Finance published by this site and its partners.
Top Personal Finance Articles
Displaying items 100-110
BlackBerry to Go Private in $4.7 Bil Deal
Story | Sep 23, 2013 | 12:30 PMTroubled smartphone maker BlackBerry announced that it has signed an agreement under which a consortium -- to be led by Fairfax Financial Holdings -- would buy the company for $4.7 billion and take it private. Last Friday, BlackBerry announced plans to... -
Memories of the financial crisis, five years later
Plan to die: Compile key docs, instructions for surviving spouse
Story | Oct 22, 2013 | 6:30 PMLosing a spouse is one of the most difficult events a person may face. The transition that follows is difficult, but it can be helped immensely if key records and documents, along with clear instructions about necessary financial, legal and other... -
Mayor Rahm Emanuel's finance guru Lois Scott hires bond firms she knows
Windfall won't ensure a comfortable retirement
Family estate planning: Where to begin
In Theory: Should churches hire business consultants?
Story | Oct 18, 2013 | 2:25 PMIn their quest for donations during tough economic times, many churches are turning to business consultants who specialize in helping religious institutions. For example, Eagle Brook Church in St. Paul, Minn. used Dallas company RSI Stewardship, which... -
When to ask for, hand over money reins
Column | Oct 18, 2013Among the more difficult money challenges in life is knowing when to persuade an aging parent to hand over his or her checkbook — or, if you're the one in your golden years, when to ask for help managing your finances. Like seniors surrendering car... -
Family finances: The benefits of donor-advised funds
Story | Oct 16, 2013 | 2:30 AMSelecting a charity that will use your money wisely and effectively isn't easy, particularly during this hectic time of year. Donor-advised funds are one solution. These funds allow you to make a charitable contribution now, claim the tax deduction on... -
Simple lesson in Nobel Prize-winning research: Pick index funds
2013 Ask An Expert Hotline


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The Hiller Instinct: Hiller Instinct: Interview with NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams
7NEWS Political Editor Andy Hiller has more.
The last time the Democrats debated was their first time together on a stage, and the ringmaster was NBC Nightly News Anchor Brian Williams.
"As a moderator, you're the viewers advocate... and you've got to jump in where you think people are screaming at their TV sets at home," said Williams.
It's easier said than done, admitted Williams, especially when there are eight democrats who want to be president -- more than enough for a moderator or a voter.
"There are too many candidates in the running," said Williams. "Natural selection and running out of money means it will thin down very quickly, and we will pine for the days when we had other people to go for diversity of opinion perhaps."
Still, said Williams, tonight is not too early to check in on a debate and check out all the candidates
"You can learn a lot about someone looking at how they think on their feet," said Williams. "They're thinking as hard as you'll ever see them think. They know a lot is on the line when they're formulating their answers."
Though no moderator ever gets to give one, here's a closing statement from Williams:
"Right now, it's very polite, and that's going to change," said Williams.
(Copyright 2007 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)


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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CAMERON DIAZ, Pt 2 November 14, 2013
Posted by markswill in Media, Navel Gazing, Politics, Schmolitics.3 comments
I ended last week's excursion to the outer fringes of melancholic resignation by claiming that there had at least been some compensation in the shape of cultural nourishment. That said, we're not out the woods yet but before return to the forces of darkness, I will honour my promise, kicking off with the fantastic Pop Art Design show at the Barbican – a sprawling, comprehensive exhibition taking in pure art, commercial media and even furniture and household goods. A good 90 minutes if not two hours are required to take it all in. Equally uplifting, partly because I was barely aware of his work, was the Daumier exhibition at the RA and rather more for laughs, Michael Landy's installations based on the martyred saints at the National, even if they do rather ape what Bruce Lacey was doing 50 years ago.
In fact I'm writing this on the train back from King's Lynn after a jolly works outing to see the temporarily returned post-renaissance paintings acquired in 1779 from Robert Walpole's ancestral seat, Houghton Hall, by Catherine the Great. Walpole had Houghton built specifically to accommodate a collection that wasn't uniformly to my taste – although the Van Dycks, Velazquez and Marattas were of a high order – but its scale and décor, still beautifully preserved, are the perfect setting for an assemblage that's shortly to return to Russia, never to be seen here again. (Also, the warm fruit scones in the caff were the best I've ever had – which is saying something – and we enjoyed one of Griffith's pork pies, brought all the way from Shropshire, on the train home). Top day on all counts, then.
Only two theatre outings in the last coupla months, but both crackers: Terry Johnson's clever, archly comic Hysteria at Hampstead with Anthony Sher playing a much put-upon Sigmund Freud (N.B. Naked Old People Alert), and Moira Buffini's Handbagged at the Tricycle which is a sardonic, brilliantly observed and pitch-perfectly performed imagining of the hostility between M. Thatcher and H.R.H. The Queen. Both still (just) playing so if you live in London, get there quick.
As for films, well obviously I'd advise seeing The Counsellor with Brad Pitt, Javier Bardem, Michael Fassbinder and of course Ms. Diaz all on topping form. And as they haven't quite yet been released, I'll repeat my enthusiasm for All Is Lost (R. Redford, brilliant), Nebraska (B. Dern, ditto… indeed his best since The Driver), Labor Day (Kate Winslet, more ditto), August: Osage County (La Streep outstanding as a drug-addled, vile-tongued matriarch) and the best film ever to come out of Romania, Child's Pose. Which perhaps isn't saying much. But then neither am I.
Except on the subject of HOUSING, the price of which if you live in the South East, which I don't, you'll know is rising at some 8-10% per quarter. It seems extraordinary that the government tacitly if not actively encourage this by allowing, i.e. without any notable tax deterrents, foreign investors to buy 'off-plan' properties they will never live in or mansions they might visit occasionally, indirectly pushing up the cost of rental as a consequence. Then on the other hand the banks, several of whom we part-own and who screwed up the economy by over lending to an over-heated housing market, instead of to business as they were supposed to and which we were told would re-build the economy on sounder basis, are again offering 95% mortgages and often with government backing. In the spirit of last week's blog, I have tried to overcome my cynical doubts about this by listening to the pundits who, like Thatcher, claim that having lots of rich Russians, Arabs and hedgefund hogs investing in bricks and mortar will have a beneficial trickle-down effect for the rest of us. And maybe this time around I am wrong and they are right?
I'm slightly surer of my prejudicial positions on the ENERGY COMPANIES and the NATIONAL HEALTH, both of which obviously concern me in my twilight years. Much to my surprise I agree with John Major that the cartel which supplies light and heat to our overpriced homes are profiteering cynically and enormously, the huge salaries of their bosses and the 'enhanced shareholder value' which they trumpet as their prime motive causing both anger and fear amongst those who increasingly have to choose between adequate heating and feeding themselves. And of course a consistent reduction in either leads to ill-health which disproportionately effects the elderly who of course, because of the deliberately repressed interest rates have found their living standards further reduced. A troll round any branch of Aldi or Lidl witnesses growing numbers of harried looking pensioners debating whether they can afford own-brand ketchup or tinned sardines, nutrition being rather lower down their economic agenda than three or four years ago.
I don't therefore find it coincidental that the NHS is creaking under the strain of all these increasingly ailing crocs, neither am I surprised that closing down walk-in centres, cutting support to GP surgeries and the A&E units that are having to take up the slack, plus wasting squillions on IT systems and senior management that do sod-all for frontline services results only in weasel words from Cameron and Co. The contrarian view, which in my new spirit of impartiality I am bound to espouse, is that like many other developed countries we should jolly well pay for some or all of our healthcare, ergo, the rich and entitled would enjoy better health, live longer and contribute more to, erm, offshore tax regimes.
Oh, and one final cause for unfettered joy: Ed Reardon's Week is back on R4, and on excellent form – 11.30am Mondays.
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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO CAMERON DIAZ November 8, 2013
Posted by markswill in Cars and Bikes, Media, Navel Gazing.16 comments
In The Counsellor, a violent but not unappealing drug trafficking thriller due out later this month, Cameron Diaz's deliciously villainous character spouts a lengthy homily about change, its inevitability and the smart person's decision not to fight it. Obviously I am not a smart person because Canute-like, I constantly resist change. I was also reminded of the foolishness of this when visiting the Paul Klee exhibition at Tate Modern, for although in his day (1879-1940) Klee was a serious thinker and teacher about matters artistic, on the evidence of this rather disappointing show he failed to put his thoughts into action, or rather onto canvas. Which in failing to put most of my own stridently voiced opinions into practice, I am also a craven hypocrite.
And it is of course this untypically honest admission that partly accounts for the hiatus in blogging which I whined about six weeks ago, although then I cited the irrelevance of one man's views in a world where better brains than I have bigger and better fora to disseminate them and the usually despicable acts of mankind that prompt them. So whilst I still advocate Private Eye, The New Yorker and even Prospect if you really want to know about mankind's horrors and follies, I was moved by Ms Diaz's, or rather scriptwriter Cormac McCarthy's observations to re-consider my position on a few matters that had recently vexed me.
HS2 The current political wrangling over the proposed £42billion north-south trainline is characterised by the opposing sides constantly issuing contradictory reports on its viability, cost and disruptive elements. My view is that it'd be a disaster, especially for the citizens of north London whose properties and lives would be blighted for a decade whilst it was built (I spend a lot of time in north London, see), and as a regular traveler on a creaking east-west train service to and from and my Welsh home, I'd far rather see the money used upgrading existing rail routes. But because so much political capital depends on HS2 going ahead, it almost certainly will. Just as it almost certainly will be beset by cost overruns and delays and do nothing for the economies of northern England that are its supposed beneficiaries.
MEDIA & BOOKS The recent sacking of its arts critics by The Independent and the steady cull of journalists by the Telegraph, Times and Guardian confirm that mass print media is doomed. Ditto the ongoing closure of independent bookshops due to the increase in sales of digital readers with Amazon, the arch-villains of the piece, rubbing salt into the wound with a series of ads showing an ugly man smiling at his Kindle in front of a pile of discarded books. A recent report that children, often encouraged by parents desperate to keep them occupied, just don't have the attention spans to read anything other than digitized gobbets of information confirms that the printed word is doomed. And with it, probably anyway, the power of the press to challenge authority and commerce to account for their myriad venality. So I'd better get used to that, too. But a bracing if surprising counterpoint came from Murdoch's News UK paywall-loving boss, Mike Darcey, in the latest In Publishing (print edition, natch): "Papers like The Guardian are eating themselves alive by publishing a newspaper at £1.40 and then giving all the content away for free." Precisely.
CAR TROUBLE A rare case of contrition now regarding my unfashionable romance with the internal combustion engine. I got it wrong with the Twingo I irrationally bought in August (because I liked its cheeky looks and supposed economy), and am having doubts about both selling my Lancia Gamma and my continuing ownership of the gorgeous technological marvel/nightmare that is my Citroen XM. Since acquiring it, the Twingo has needed a replacement driveshaft and cambelt, both nightmarish to source because it was never an UK import and Renault UK can't or won't identify relevant parts numbers. Ergo many frustrating hours spent badgering confused and irritated friends/mechanics/axe-murderers for help. The Citruin has developed a leak from I know not where, probably because I stupidly let a garage who didn't know XMs service it instead of doing it myself. And winter's coming and its bum's getting rusty. Until I bought the XM, I maintained that one's 'daily driver' should cost no more than £1000 and deliver at least two and usually three year's virtually trouble-free motoring, after which I'd flog it for a few hundred less than it cost and move onto another cheaply insurable old banger, arrogantly assuming that I knew enough to do rudimentary maintenance and avoid buying a dog. Oh, and I'd keep and cherish a classic for high days and showing off. The XM, glorious to drive though it is, proved the exception in every respect, but I thought I'd box clever by replacing the Lancia with it as my object of automotive lust and make the Twingo my daily driver. Wrong, wrong, wrongity wrong. And worse, when I occasionally drive a modern BMW or, gulp, Ford, I kinda hanker after transport that's quiet, reliable and economical… even if it has no soul.
TALKING OF SOUL All of this unrequited resistance to the march of progress has this month been ameliorated by some determined cultural consumption, but as your attention span has probably already been stretched to its limits, the details of which I'll peddle around early next week in a unexpectedly prompt second instalment.
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Still Scribbling (Just About) September 2, 2013
Posted by markswill in Cars and Bikes, Media, Navel Gazing, Politics, Schmolitics.29 comments
There have, it seems, been 85 of the suckers over the past few years, and almost uniformly bleating about some social injustice, media travesty, political inertia and/or conspiracy blah-blah-blah. My last blog in fact exhorted my reader to simply buy Private Eye whose muck-raking activities are far, far more assiduous, wide-ranging and comprehensive than a lone scribbler's could ever be, and that remains my position. And in a world increasingly run by giant corporations and their poodle governments, the potential for protest to have much effect is limited. Which is why I haven't published another one for months and likely won't do for many more.
Indeed I think it's fair to say in the world we now blindly struggle through, my generation really had the best of it and I pity the poor blighters following in our wake.
But just for the record, these are the subjects that have me wringing my hands most often and most intensely : Mick Farren's death; Google; Amazon; virtually all politicians; Syria; fracking; HS2; global energy policies; most electronic media; banks and bankers; my personal finances; human behavior in the digital age; Afghanistan; celebrity culture; finding a garage who can competently tend my Citroen XM. It's never bloody ending.
And since this will be probably be my last scrawl for ages, I'll try and counterbalance that litany of despair with a brief list of things that have made life bearable:
DAVID BYRNE and St Valentine at the Roundhouse: 8-piece brass section, quirky if borderline irritating guitarist/chanteuse Annie Clark and Byrne's magnificent songs. Truly uplifting.
MOVIE BINGEING: Seeing up to seven a week courtesy of my gig with the Picturehouse chain. Yes, there's dross a'plenty, but some gems too, recently including What Maisie Knew, Closed Circuit, Cold Comes The Night, All Is Lost, Gloria, The Great Beauty, Enough Said, Blue Jasmine and Nebraska… all out now or in the next two months, and all to be savoured before online streaming and home cinema finally kill off real cinema (and I'm out of a gig, again!).
ART: a now not-so-recent trip to Paris revealed some unexpected gems, including Hey! Modern Art & Pop Culture at the wonderfully whacky Hailles St Pierre (a sort of mini-Roundhouse) featuring 'outsider artists' from the 70s onwards, including the Clayton Brothers, the biker druggie Joe Coleman, Erik Joyner and dozens more. Hey! is also an occasional, beautifully produced mag-book worth €19 of anyone's money whose interested in truly innovative creative mavericks that make the Damien Hirsts, Chapman Bros. and Tracey Emins of this world look like the cynical, minimally talented hucksters that they are.
And the Chagall exhibition, mostly of his bitingly critical anti-war works at the Musee du Luxembourg was moving in a different way.
But most impressive was a trip to the Musee des Artes et Metiers. I was making my third visit there in the vain hope that I might finally work my way through its enormous collection of technical, industrial, consumer, automotive and architectural design exhibits (I failed) when for light relief wandered into the temporary Enki Bilal show. He's little known (to me) Serbian-born comic book artist and writer – a master draughtsman and fantasist with an agreeably perverse view of the (nether) world, but he's also made several feature films, unshown in the UK, which despite massively limited resources and zero CGI are incredibly dramatic and graphically imaginative. This I know only because he'd spliced together a riveting and often hilarious assemblage that played on a constant 15 minute loop.
Amazingly, given their no-budget origins, Bilal managed to persuade star names to appear in them, such as Julie Delpy and Michel Piccoli (Tykho Moon), Frederic Pierrot and Charlotte Rampling (the deeply weird Ad Vitam a/k/a 'Immortal') and Jean-Louis Trintignant and Maria Schneider (Bunker Palace Hotel). Bilal's films are available, if hard to track down, on DVD but I recommend that you do. (I also got to bestride Prosper Keating's meticulously maintained Velocette KSS whilst in Paris, but that was art as ancient engineering).
Lichtenstein at Tate Modern is long over of course, but it's still zinging around in my head, and the Salgardo photos at the Natural History Museum are pretty damn incredible.
THEATRE: The revival of Gorky's Children of the Sun at the NT was a timely reminder of the perils of political expediency, thrillingly staged and performed, ditto Chimerica at the Almeida – since transferred to the West End – which boldly addressed the growing power of China and waning influence of America. More conventional but no less caustic was Noël Coward's supercharged comedy of upper-class manners, Private Lives at the Gielgud.
MEDIA: Apart from the aforementioned Private Eye, The New Yorker continues to be the source of much pleasure and instructive intelligence. Long, beautifully written articles on subjects as diverse as Louisiana tugboat dynasties, Tibetan politics and the exploitation of African mineral resources by shadowy Israeli industrialists, plus the best film reviewers in the world bar none make the £100+ annual subscription worthwhile… even if, with hideous inevitability, its publishers are trying to migrate us online.
And so finally of course we come to Renault Twingos: I've always fancied these cheeky wee-but- roomy French hatchbacks since riding around in a colleague's during my frequent business trips to Paris in the mid-90s, and having been obliged to sell my beloved Lancia Gamma, I spent some of the proceeds on what is now probably the only one in mid-Wales.
Certainly the only one in metallic gold with a full length sun-roof. What larks… almost as much fun in fact as riding a Honda CBX around in what for once has been a fabbo summer.
The Eyes Have It May 16, 2013
Posted by markswill in Cars and Bikes, Media, Politics, Schmolitics.6 comments
It's been a good six weeks since I last spewed forth, or rather a pretty bad six weeks if you're a miserable old doomsayer. Not that there haven't been a fine moments, the highlight being a high-speed dash across Wales and the Midlands with my friend M aboard a new Honda CB1100 and the latest Triumph Bonneville. We swopped bikes enough both during and the day before to share the conclusion that by a small margin the Trumpet was in fact the better all-rounder, so for once British was best… well British built from numerous Chinese and Italian bits. But the joy of it was just being able to belt along hour after hour at improbably high speeds on lightly trafficked, sun-dappled roads… something I haven't done in duet for many a year.
Since then I've yet again been struggling to come up with something fresh to blog about and yet again each time some news item or personal experience prompts the requisite degree of righteous indignation, before I can find time to sit down and scribble – which frankly is difficult enough at the moment – some further outrage emerges, and so on and so on. For the moment then, I'm stymied… which may come as a relief in certain quarters. But if anyone still needs to feel livid about the state we're in, then I can do no better than commend you to Private Eye which six decades on is still, in fact probably now even better at muck-raking than when it began in the '60s .
Whether it be murky arms deals supporting murderous dictatorships, local government incompetence, ongoing banking malfeasance, officially sanctioned pollution, venal commercial interests on both a national and global scale and most of all the corruption and gob-smacking stupidity that goes on at every level of politics, the Eye still delivers the goods in pithy, well researched gobbets which no longer seem to attract the libel writs and legal censure they once did… surely proving that most of what they print is true. (And it will be fascinating to see what the consequences are of the major report in the current issue on what "made Britain the capital of global corporate crime"… although see below).
The downside of this of course is that the perpetrators of what ultimately harms and impoverishes us no longer care much about getting caught – look at Chris Hune and his pathetic attempts to cover up a speeding offence. Neither do the Primarks and H & Ms of this world who pride themselves on flogging ultra-cheap, rubbishy clothing produced by near-slave labour in shoddily-built third world factories which, when they collapse and kill hundreds of their workers certainly don't prompt boycotts on the High Street. We have, I believe, become so inured to the dishonesty and rampant self-interest displayed on a constant basis by those who should be setting the unimpeachable standards of morality and fair-play that we should aspire to – whether they be politicians, business leaders or so-called respected media figures – that we've become just as cynical as them.
And that is a cause of great despair and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness that in a somehow justifiable way encourages all but the very, very brave, and possibly Private Eye journalists to pursue the same hang-the-consequences solipsism as our so-called role models. Meanwhile the national media is busily abandoning investigative reporting in favour of the mindless celebrity bollocks that they mistakenly think will save them from further ruin.
But despair doesn't really make for good journalism, and certainly not good bloggery.
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Nothing To Fear But…? April 5, 2013
Posted by markswill in About me, Media, Politics, Schmolitics.19 comments
Not that it really matters, but the unusually long hiatus in my bloggery – by recent standards, anyway – is down to the fact that just as I was putting the finishing curlicues to a searing expose of how politicians and commercial interests employ fear to get their way in the world, my friend Dick Pountain did a much better job than I'd just attempted in his newly posted blog, which I commend you to read here
Admiring though I am of his insight and intellect – and I really do advise you sign up to his regular musings – it left me with a metaphoric hole to fill which happily was remedied by a visit to the Royal Court to see The Low Road, written by Bruce Norris. You may've been luck enough to see his last play performed there, Clybourne Park, a brisk, darkly humorous excoriation of racism and property speculation in Chicago, with über-Hobbit Martin Freeman especially impressive. The Low Road fills an even broader canvas, namely the entire history of modern America woven into a neat and devastating parable on the venality of its financial system, with a noxious side-order of religious bigotry and racism. It's a sprawling, three hour work wryly narrated by a non-judgemental Adam Smith, and it would've had even more wallop had it been edited down by 30 minutes, but it had the desired effect of leaving me both highly entertained and very angry.
Coincidentally, novelist Sebastian Faulks vented similar anger in a recent Evening Standard article. As in Norris's play, he observed that the economic woes caused by a breed of bankers who profited from the naïve trust of their investors hasn't resulted in a single banker, hedge fund manager or other financial huckster being imprisoned for the misery they've caused. He wrote:
"The FSA (Financial Services Authority) which was meant to police the system was too weak to do its job. The ratings agencies misunderstood the products they were rating. The 'big four' accountancy firms signed off things they should never have let pass. The 'magic circle' law firms helped financial houses construct (their) lethal instruments. Crazed by greed, the traders told us they had spread the risk so thin that it could never come home to roost."
Well we now know how wrong they were, with almost everyone who isn't earning a proverbial mint in the City suffering from the consequences. In a week when the Chancellor substantially shrunk the social welfare safety net to the extent that millions of the poorest will lose out, whilst simultaneously he reduced the tax rates for the richest, we are required to accept that such policies are necessary to ensure the future comfort and prosperity for all.
Then we had Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury and like his master George Osborne and most of the coalition cabinet, a sleekly-padded upper-class millionaire, telling R4 listeners that lowering the tax rate for high earners would encourage more of them to move to Britain and spend money that would provide employments for others – the same 'trickle down' theory that Mrs Thatcher's last government manifestly proved not to work. On other occasions, Alexander and his cohorts have also defended the apparently obscene bonuses given to executives of the banks that we bailed out and in several cases now largely own, as being essential to preserving Britain, or more particularly London, as a global financial hub vital to the economy. An economy which, although he didn't mention it, successive Tory (and recent Labour) governments would otherwise have destroyed by letting our manufacturing and energy industries go hang or become owned by foreigners who don't pay much if any UK tax.
And whilst I don't want to turn this into a tedious analysis of why this is balderdash, I will say that I just don't get it.
Personally of course, I'm lucky. I may not earn much, but I don't pay rent or a mortgage and have no kids to support, but my relentlessly rising cost of living is such that I have to watch very carefully what I spend on utilities, clothing, transport etc. My heart therefore goes out to those less fortunate than me and I believe that all of us would perhaps, possibly, just conceivably be more willing to submit to the strictures of millionaire politicians who understand not a jot what it's like out in the real world of broken Britain if they brought some of the bankers to book.
It isn't even ironic that the 'papers are full of stories about unemployed people who've been thrown into jail for defrauding the benefits system of a few thousand pounds when those who brought the economy to its knees, and caused further cuts to that system, go scot-free.
Indeed after a nod to the now dormant Occupy movement, as Faulks also noted, " It is difficult to understand why there are not peaceful protests every day outside RBS, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and all the other places where a few men conspired to gamble with money that did not belong to them – and got away with it."
My own theory is that Osborne, Alexander, Cameron and their fat-cat pals in the City have cunningly and deliberately made it obvious that any mass protest or show of indignation would risk the financial security, pathetically limited though it may be, of those who did the protesting.
In other words we are obliged to be afraid, very afraid, of rocking the boat.
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Dubious in Dubai March 18, 2013
Posted by markswill in Cars and Bikes, Politics, Schmolitics, Uncategorized.16 comments
Before I get into my brief, gob-smacking trip to Dubai, there's some unfinished business following the catalogue of cultural recommendations which I unilaterally chose to excrete into the ether last week. Misgivings abound about this, but is it any worse than zillions of my peers' FarceBerk postings concerning the cute antics of kittens, kids and inebriated colleagues ? Erm, probably.
Anyroad up, there was no room to mention a few exhibitions that have thrilled and delighted recently, and even if you live miles away and/or are ambivalent about art, if you go to only one show this year, make it George Bellows at the Royal Academy. Hitherto unknown to me, in his short life Bellows produced a vast body of work in ever-changing styles (think Lowry, Hopper, Rocker, Nicholson etc) including visceral depictions of illegal boxing bouts in his native turn of the century New York to seascapes to rather formal society portraits but with twists that mirrored his hero Manet at that painter's maverick best. It's only a small exhibition in the Sackler Wing but there are some hugely moving works there, including some WW1 reflections that are equaled only by Picasso's Guernica in their stark, powerful anger.
And talking of Manet, the RA currently has a bigger exhibition of his work, although the numerous deliberately unfinished paintings rather reduced my admiration for him even though his observational eye and subtle use of colour cannot be undervalued. And talking of Picasso, there's another smallish show of his early work at the Courtauld Gallery which of you're a Picasso completest (which I am) shouldn't be missed. Finally in more modern vein the Light Show at the Hayward is worth seeing if only for Anthony McCall's misty, atmospheric projections and a few pieces by Dan Flavin (who had a literally dazzling solus show there in 2006). I haven't yet seen the Lichtenstein at Tate Modern but as someone who sparked my enthusiasm for modern art back in the '60s, I'm slavering in anticipation.
And as a postscript to my list of recently consumed literature, I forgot to mention Susie Boyt's compelling, beautifully wrought new-ish novel, The Small Hours about a plucky, if troubled idealist who in setting up a private school is obliged to confront many of her personal demons.
Now Dubai. I've been telling everyone that this obscenely rich Emerati state evoked for me the Blade Runner cityscape, but transposed to the desert. The place is awash with skyscrapers, many of which line six lane highways behind which there's little but desert scrub. Weird. However from the 124th floor of the Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, even these towering edifices look like bungalows. Unfettered by planning requirements, although some of the architecture is aesthetically questionable, some of it is breathtakingly impressive, especially the buildings incongruously lining the Dubai Creek where traditional dhows load cargoes traded along the Gulf and beyond.
And just in front of the Khalifa there was a huge display of classic cars, all restored within an inch of their lives – mainly big fuck-off Bentleys, Caddies and of course the obligatory Ferraris – because thanks to the talented artisans who've emigrated from India and further east, Dubai is a centre for cheap, high-quality restoration work.
This of course raises the ugly issue of immigrant labour without which Dubai couldn't exist. Living in cramped and inhospitable dormitory suburbs, legions of building and menial service workers spend 50 weeks of their year creating the superstructures and maintaining the lifestyles of the copious ex-pats (some 80% of the 2million population) who've made their homes there due to the lack of income tax and a shamelessly retail-driven culture.
Visiting the (in)famous 'Palm Jumeirah' estate artificially stretching out into the Gulf felt rather like being in The Truman Show, and then rising surreally out of the shimmering desert, there's the world's largest shopping mall, and its largest indoor ski slope… All this said, Dubai's ruler, Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum is an apparently canny fellow who seeks to undermine any risk of Islamic (or other) revolution by ensuring all his native subjects are well looked after and regularly turns up unannounced, often driving his own Mercedes G-Wagen, to cultural and other events, such as the poetry evening I attended in a desert encampment where he stayed for a good, er, 20 minutes.
I gather that the Sheik and his family, a/k/a 'the government', are tolerant of the many Taliban big-wigs, international criminals and other despots who've put their money into Dubai just as long as they cause no trouble or incur debt, in which case they're out on their ears. Another consequence of his financial strictures was the horde of expensive cars left at the airport, gloveboxes full of maxed-out credit cards, after 2008's financial crash when their suddenly debt-ridden owners had to flee. And the cars, now covered in sand, are still there…
I spent my final evening with a lively group of young lawyers, digital entrepreneurs and media-types from China, the Antipodes and Europe who'd made the place their home and who provided sharp insights into Dubai's still escalating prosperity despite its lack of oil: it's become the financial hub of the Arab world, even more so now its troubled neighbours needs somewhere secure to store their capital. But not one of them expected to live there beyond a few more years, and hot, hospitable and intriguingly bizarre though it was, I doubt I could've stayed there even a few more weeks.
One final, bleakly instructive thought on where we're heading economically is prompted by this link (for which I must thank Dick Pountain). How sustainable, I wonder, is a world where such financial inequality continues to exist and indeed, grows?
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Like Life, Only Better March 10, 2013
Posted by markswill in About me, Media, That's Entertainment.21 comments
One of the (many) criticisms made of this blog is that it's almost unremittingly doom-laden. To which I'd say, 'Guilty as charged'. But as one gets older and from a growing catalogue of experience forms a world view, unless you enjoy great wealth and the insulation from reality it can afford, such pessimism is hard to avoid. Being a life-long, card-carrying hack, this augurs an almost feral need to communicate which ignores such constraints as readers' sensitivities or sympathies, constraints which the nature of the blogosphere, e.g. no editors, no rules, no overriding context, further renders irrelevant.
But it's not all gloom and dismay out there and as noted at the end of my last bilious outing, I also sometimes arrogantly feel moved to share some of the good stuff that I've enjoyed recently, which invariably means kulcher. So…
Thanks to my current day job, I can recommend some cracking films just about to come out, the best being Steven 'I'm Giving Up Making Movies to Become a Painter' Soderbergh's Side Effects. I'm a huge fan of Soderbergh who's gleefully defied categorisation with films as diverse as crime capers Ocean's 11, 12 & 13, disease thriller Contagion, his better-than-the-original re-make of Solaris and even that low-key titillation, The Girlfriend Experience. Although revisiting the corporate malfeasance he reflected in The Informant!, just when you think Side Effects is a worthy treatise on the nastiness of Big Pharma, it suddenly goes somewhere else altogether. And as a trio of characters in a battle of psychologically troubled wills, Jude Law, having recently snoozed his way through Anna Karenina, Dragon Tattoo's chameleon-like Rooney Mara and much to my amazement, Catherine Zeta-Jones, have never been better.
Theatre director Rufus Norris's movie debut Broken also ends up being more than the sum of its narrative twists and turns, namely a meditation on the moral state of the nation, (spoiler alert: it's not looking good). Deploying his native English accent for the first time in ages Tim Roth plays a well-meaning if slightly vapid father of an adolescent daughter who circumstance obliges to grow up fast. She's played with great spirit and credibility by newcomer Eloise Laurence and although violent, bleak and prone to arguably gratuitous flashbacks, Broken is well worth the ticket price.
Music video director Eran Creevy's Welcome to the Punch finds James McAvoy playing a bitter cop out to avenge the crook who nearly killed him during a mega-bank heist (the reliably intimidating slap-head, Mark Strong). Structurally it's kinda Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels for the internet generation, but despite a low-ish budget, its noir-ish view of a soulless London and excellent turns from all concerned including Andrea Risborough as McAvoy's professional foil elevate it into something rather superior.
McAvoy's been a busy boy lately and will shortly turn up as Bruce Robertson, a decidedly amoral detective in Filth, co-written by another newish director, Jon S. Baird from Irvine Welsh's eponymous novel. Set like Welsh's Trainspotting in Glasgow and occasionally saddled with the same incomprehensible dialect – bring on the subtitles, please – Robertson is trying to win back a wife understandably estranged by his wilful, often comically OTT misbehavior.
Even more entertaining, uplifting even for men of a certain age (guess who?), is Good Vibrations, a rousing biog of Terri Hooley, the god-father of Northern Ireland's punk rock scene. I was barely aware such a thing existed, but Hooley's transformation from hippie-ish record-shop owner to politically savvy pogo evangelist is most affecting, ending with him leading a raucously improbable version of Sony Bono's Laugh At Me to a huge, ecstatic Belfast audience. Richard Dormer as Hooley and Jodie Whittaker as his more grounded wife are both fab.
But sadly, man cannot live by celluloid images alone, although David Thompson's masterful The Big Screen is the best book on their development and social influence yet. And here's a few more tomes I've recently read and can recommend especially if, like me, you managed no more than 0-level English. Very different from Whoops!, his razor sharp critique of cowboy capitalism, John Lanchester's novel Capital cunningly interweaves the disparate, often deeply unattractive inhabitants of a gentrified London street who're confronted by a malign trespasser. Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl on t'other hand is a more straightforward thriller but written in an odd style that quickly turns compelling as the mystery unfolds. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Moshid Hamid is a thoughtful, cleverly wrought novella whose title says it all, with a pitiless final twist. Somewhat inevitably I'll finish with Deborah Moggach's latest novel, Heartbreak Hotel, which following her movie-inspiring Best Exotic Marigold Ditto gives further hope and hilarity to those of us awash with middle-aged testiness and torpor.
Turning novels into scripts of course courts peril, but having enjoyed Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time I was, ahem, curious to see how it might pan out as a play and given Luke Treadaway's astonishing performance as the OCD-ridden Christopher Boone, Simon Stevens' adaptation is just great. Having transferred the National Theatre's Cottesloe, its stunningly-staged production is now at the Apollo. I'm slightly embarrassed to say that all my other puffs are for National Theatre enterprises, too, although the most extraordinary – and I use the word advisedly – is a walk-around piece performed in the basement warren of Somerset House. In The Beginning Was The End is a witty, engaging and often disturbing examination of corporate and technological dystopia which obviously appealed hugely to this writer.
Also at the NT is Port, a narratively astute celebration of the human spirit, again by Simon Stevens, played across 13 years in a Stockport sink estate with some brilliant performances and a breathtaking stage design. Finally at the Southbank there's Frances de la Tour's, ahem, tour de force as the droll, obstinate owner of a crumbling country pile in People. Another magnificent Lyttleton staging, and although some critics disparaged Alan Bennett's script even my film-fixated sister thought it highly entertaining, infused as it is with his usual subtle poignancy.
But that's enough niceness for now – next week we'll be back to grumbling normality with… Dubai!
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The Rise (& Fall) of the Machines March 1, 2013
Posted by markswill in About me, Cars and Bikes, Politics, Schmolitics, Uncategorized.21 comments
Making my journey back home to Wales last Friday, because I didn't have time to explore the rich culinary paradise that is Praed Street, I found myself buying a sandwich in Sainsbury's Paddington store. Like its competitors and indeed WH Smith's cheerless outlet at the same station, Sainsbury's have replaced most of its human cashiers with automatic scan'n'pay machines. Having a train to catch in ten minutes, I nevertheless ignored the two staffers who urged me to use these machines instead of the lone person manning an old fashioned till, because I prefer to deal with humans wherever possible, and also on the possibly misplaced moral grounds that machines like these deny jobs to people who need them. Indeed it was instructive that it required two people to shepherd customers through the vexatious, time-consuming process of using the computerised facilities, although my principled stance meant waiting ages for a woman who'd apparently done her weekly shop to depart the sole humanly-helmed check-out.
So long, in fact, that I had to leave my sandwich in the rack of chocs and crisps in the checkout area and bugger off to catch my train muttering to myself that had all those three staff been working the tills, I might've not ended up lunchless. But I doubt Sainsbury's management would give a toss as they're obviously in the thrall of expensive technology that dispenses with troublesome human beings even if the customers might not like it. And as they're in fact deliberately trying to limit or replace staff with machines, it also renders hollow the supermarkets' claims about job creation when they're bribing local councils to allow planning permission for new stores. And then…
My journey home involves changing trains at Newport from the amusingly named Inter-City 125 to a usually cramped, draughty bus-on-rails through some stunning Welsh countryside and last Friday, for reasons involving dentistry, I had to break my journey at Hereford whose gaunt, freezing station I later returned to only to learn that a freight train had broken down outside Abergavenny, thus for an indeterminate period blocking anything else from chuffing north. The dread phrase 'replacement buses' had been invoked but the admittedly helpful station staff knew not how long they'd be and having to run the local film society box office that night I couldn't wait indefinitely: long story short, after 90 mins shivering wait I paid £30 to get to my car parked at the next station, but not before one of said staff admitted that broken down freight trains "are a regular bloody problem."
A little light internet research, albeit involving many incomprehensible trainspotters' bulletin boards, revealed that the goods train in question was pulled by a Type 47 diesel owned, like most of the UK's rail freight business, by the German company, Schenker. The Type 47s were built in the 1960s and designed to last perhaps 30-35 years, so perhaps it's unsurprising that they keep breaking down. But like America's Northwest Airlines who, until they started falling out of the sky, continued flying a fleet of creaky old Boeing 727s produced in that same era in the belief that it was cheaper to endure escalating maintenance costs rather than buy newer 'planes, no one at Schenker seems to've done a cost/benefit analysis of that. (Aviva Trains Wales, from whom I'm demanding a refund and taxi fare, probably wished they had). And of course if and when the penny finally drops, Schenker will probably buy replacement engines from a German company, not least because by then our last remaining (Canadian-owned) train builder will have gone bust.
These two admittedly unrelated events happened the same week that we learnt that lack of investment over the past 15 years means that our power stations, one of which the Schenker train was delivering coal to, must be de-commissioned well before enough coal-, gas- or nuclear-powered replacements have been built and the regulator, PowerGen, warned that prolonged black-outs can soon be expected. And then…
I recently took a friend to see Rust & Bone at Belsize Park's Everyman Cinema, one of a small chain that charges 50% more than the average flea-pit for the luxury of having over-priced drinks brought to your comfy sofa seats by girls called Clarissa. Having already seen the film in the course of my day job, I was surprised, then annoyed to find that the aspect ratio was all wrong and part of the image area was obscured by the curtains which evidently the projectionist hadn't noticed. After complaining to the callow youth who purported to be the manager, I was told that (of course) there wasn't a projectionist because the Everymans only use digital projectors and no-one there could do anything about it. And a phone call to an absent 'technician' at head-office yielded no remedy, either. So we walked out. (An angrier, more informed treatise on the death of the projectionist in the name of cost-cutting can be read in Mark Kermode's excellent book, 'The Good, The Bad… and The Multiplex'). I was going to cunningly use this cinematic debacle to segue into some movie and other cultural recommendations, but as I fear it might unduly test your patience, I'll leave that 'til next week .
Instead I'll conclude from these recent misfortunes that cost/benefit analyses aside, our captains of industry and politicians can't grasp that by putting people out of work – skilled or otherwise – who are not able to find jobs in the thrusting new industries we were told would be our economic salvation, they are de facto reducing the nation's ability to well, buy stuff. And since buying stuff is supposed to be what it's all about, then where does that leave us?
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Indian Winter of Discontent February 17, 2013
Posted by markswill in Media, Politics, Schmolitics.3 comments
Stuck as many of us are in a freeziferous winterscape™, it's a little churlish of me to bang on about about my recent trip to India but as ever, that won't stop me. As per last time I visited that sub-continent, I was riding on my friend D's coattails, this time chaperoning her to the Jaipur Literary Fest. where she was doing a couple of gigs. But neither she nor I had bargained for the Indian success of her novel Burst Erotic Marigold Yodel and the film that's based on it despite it being set there, so endless media interviews and book signings rather kept her (and thus me) at the festival itself, instead of sightseeing and mucking around in downtown Jaipur as we'd intended.
However it must be said that the appetite for culture amongst all levels of Indian society was a huge eye-opener, for not only is English the second language there, but the brilliance of the Lit. Fest. is that admission was free, so it's not the middle-class poseurs' paradise that most British equivalents are. It was truly heartening to see numerous school crocs of neatly uniformed kids attending the talks and queuing for autographs amidst the decaying splendor of the Diggi Palace, and equally impressive that the audiences for all the events were packed and on the basis of questions asked, incredibly well–read and –informed.
What's more, India is one country where newspaper, magazine and book sales are steadily rising due in part to increasing literacy rates, but also the relatively exorbitant cost of tablets, Nooks, Kindles etc. deters people from feeding their reading habits in anything but the traditional manner.
The only downside of the festival was the large and occasionally officious military presence due to the fear of Islamic fundamentalists causing trouble as they had done last year when Salman Rushdie was to've appeared but didn't, although extracts from his Satanic Verses were read out by literary supporters. However this year's event was not without controversy when one speaker denounced lower caste Indians as being responsible for most of the country's crime which quickly brought criminal charges against festival boss William Dalrymple and his co-organisers, the appearance of the Dalai Lama, which of course the Chinese contingent got angry about, and journalist/editor Shoma Chaudbury delivering an impassioned tirade against the Tata corporation (owners of Jaguar Land Rover) who'd forced the unpaid displacement of thousands of peasant farmers from their land so that they could build a giant car factory… Tata being the festival's main sponsor!
But India is mired in all sorts of controversy, from the judiciary's almost tacit acceptance of gang-rape following recent high-profile cases, to the government opening the door to supermarket giants like Tesco and Wal-Mart which obviously threatens the lifestyle and incomes of literally millions of small food producers and retailers.
Government corruption is endemic in India, but the people themselves, even when trying to sell you tourist tat or simply begging for coinage, are incredibly cheerful and polite but whom, at least from the few that I managed to discuss such things with, are deeply critical of what is being done in their name to gradually erode their culture.
Back home again, those same supermarkets are now at the centre of a scandal over the horsemeat content of their beef products, which I find both hilarious and venal. Hilarious because I actually enjoyed the horsemeat I've eaten in France and Spain and can't see why anyone wouldn't want to, but venal because it's been passed off as something else, and almost certainly the cripplingly low prices our farmers are forced to accept from the supermarket cartels has much to do with this. An exasperated farmer told the Today programme last week that he's lucky to make just £100 profit on a beef carcass that's taken him at least 18 months and several thousand pounds to rear, and whilst well-meaning food writers urge us to buy fresh meat from local butchers rather than processed food products from supermarkets, they ignore the facts that (a) supermarkets have put thousands of butchers out of business in recent years, (b) millions of low-income families couldn't afford fresh meat anyway and (c) an entire generation educated in schools where cookery is no longer taught wouldn't know what to do with it even if they could.
As an aside, but I think a relevant one, if the Pope rescinded the 2billion-strong Catholic church's ban on contraception, just think what pressure that would eventually relieve on food (and water) supplies in this increasingly over-populated world? As a further aside, little or no mention has been made since Pope Benedict XVI resigned last week of his shocking complicity in the cover-up of sexual abuse cases by Catholic clergy when as Prefect of the Congregation of Doctrine of the Faith (and directly responsible for investigating them). Although when Alex Gibney's powerful documentary, Silence in the House of God is released next month, conveniently just after he makes his formal exit, that may change. Angry thought it should make you, I urge you to see it, just as I urge you to go to India before it becomes just another satellite for the global supermarkets, and for that matter, Google and Amazon who surely won't be ignoring the burgeoning Indian economy and its laissez-faire regulatory and tax regimes for much longer.
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The Fallen Mighty January 21, 2013
Posted by markswill in About me, Media, Politics, Schmolitics.19 comments
Firstly and very belatedly, Happy New Year. Or if you live in Somalia, Afghanistan, Mali etc., Happy Bloody New Year. Actually, since our wonderful 'festive season' I've tried several times to pen a tirade, but each time I hit on a suitable subject, something even more terrifying or irritating came along and rendered it redundant. Now however…
I was leafing through November's Prospect magazine and intrigued by her byline, started reading Hephizbah Anderson (I'm shortly changing my name to Hezbollah Williams) on the 'Quantified Self' movement, a bunch of narcissistic über-geeks who track everything about themselves from how much they smile, shit and sleep to monitoring their blood sugar levels and reading habits using "wearable computer devices". As Anderson pointed out, although the QSers may be obsessive about personal data capture, anyone with a smartphone has the ability to mine all manner of information about themselves and their circumstances. And then lo and behold the next issue of Prospect contained a whole feature on how Google (of course!) is working on devices that will blur the distinction "between our physical and virtual lives". Point your iPhone at a restaurant and a 'Wikitude' app will reveal reviews of it, download the 'Fits.me' app and you can discover whether that saucy little chemise you're contemplating on Net-a-Porter will both fit and suit you. (This is addressed to my transvestite readers, obviously).
Writing this as I am on George Orwell's death-day, it'll come as no surprise that I find this lamentable, especially because the instant availability of great gobbets of information also means that info can easily be manipulated for commercial and/or malign reasons. And returning to Anderson's piece, even self-accumulated data – which is not necessarily the same as factual information, right? – can be used by data miners, or 'pirates' as I call them, to bombard you with sales pitches for anything that might improve your mood, bowel movements or sleep patterns etc., i.e. in much the same way as Google already picks up on the content of your emails, and Twatter your tweets (well not mine, obviously), Farceberk your cute snaps of little Johnny building a snowman and sell it to advertisers who then bombard you etc., etc. We may also become so enwrapped in our virtual or 'enhanced' realities that we are unable to distinguish it from the real one, indeed it may become the real one.
Of course as intelligent, self-disciplined individuals you ignore such puffery and dismiss any sinister implications concerning the technology that facilitates it, but I reckon that within a few years you'll have been brainwashed into surrender, much like the citizens of Orwell's dystopia. I smelt the reasons for this last week, the day after HMV went into administration and finding myself in the glittering metropolis, I visited its flagship Oxford Street store and witnessed a very sad sight indeed. The place was rammed, largely with badly-dressed men of a certain vinyl buying age (e.g. yrs. trly.), riffling through the racks of now heavily discounted CDs for bargains. Indeed I came away with fifty-quid's worth of stuff I really, really needed driven, I admit, by a subconscious fear that this truly marked the end of an era when music could be bought in physical form, at least somewhere other than online via mega tax-avoiders, Amazon.
It was, of course, the same week that Comet and Blockbuster also went bust which, quite apart from making thousands jobless and causing glee at Amazon HQ, prompted sage comment in the financial press that this was the inevitable outcome of a failure to recognise and thence adapt to the threat of online retailing (and in HMV's and Blockbuster's case, downloading and streaming). Quite how anyone, even the mighty HMV could match Amazon or Apple in flogging cut-price music wasn't discussed, but some commented, albeit without actual approval, that all this was merely capitalism's tectonic plates making one of their periodic shifts, just like when film gave way to digital and Tesco et al decimated the independent grocery trade. And that may be true, and we may just have to get used to the fact that consumer choice will be dictated by fewer and fewer mega-corps, many of whom, well Amazon anyway, who'll rely on another largely privately owned mega-corp we once called the Royal Mail to deliver its goods.
I'm currently reading Mark Kermode's entertaining treatise on what ails the movie and cinema industry, 'The Good, The Bad & The Multiplex' which my sister, who is deeply involved in both, refused to read because Kermode is a critic and "never trust a critic", but he, too, acknowledges that cinema must adapt if it's to provide a persuasive alternative to 60inch home cinema set-ups, Netflix and LoveFilm (prop. Amazon), because the film-makers by-and-large don't care how they flog their wares, just as long as they do. Multiplex traffic is in steadily decline, whilst my sisters' indie flea-pits do well because they offer a wider variety of fare and a viewing environment not staffed by glorified popcorn peddlers who know and care nowt about films, but the writing could well be on the wall even for her operation, just as it must be for our last remaining bookshop chain, Waterstones (see my last outing).
And to return to where I started, that is partly because the web, cloud computing (which an ad. in this week's New Yorker claims "will solve the world's greatest challenges" !!!!!) and most insidiously of all, applications and the miniaturised personal devices that run them will soon be able to deliver direct into our line of vision, and eventually I guess our subconsciouses, exactly what the few mega-corps who own them want them to… Especially when there's no HMV, Comet or Waterstones left where we can inspect the goods, and indeed the alternatives, in real time… even before going home and buying them online for a few pence less!
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'Won't Back Down' Trailer Makes the Grade
The first trailer for "Won't Back Down," a film co-written and directed by Daniel Barnz ("Beastly," "Phoebe in Wonderland") has dropped, featuring its strong cast of Maggie Gyllenhaal, the unconquerable Viola Davis, Ving Rhames and Academy Award-winner Holly Hunter.
The flick tells a very consumable (and tear-jerking) story of parents and teachers aligning to step up and make a change in their kids' under-performing school.
Every year, there's at least one: a feel-good family film which tackles tough real world issues and somehow ends on a smile. Sometimes these are based on true stories, and sometimes not. What's important about this type of movie is that it draws upon an unsavory element of cultural truth and presents an unlikely hero who's clever and determined enough to muscle through doubters, administrative obstacles, and his or her own personal hangups. In other words, the hero just won't back down 'til the win over the societal ailment in question. See what we did there?
Take a look at the trailer below, courtesy of Yahoo! Movies, and see if you agree that this is a sure bet for awards season consideration already. "Won't Back Down" hits theaters on Sept. 28.
'South Park' Rips On Kanye West And Kim Kardashian In An Epic Season Finale Yikes! Maid Found Jennifer Lawrence's Secret Stash Of Sex Toys


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The Little Foxes (2)
Dear Reader,
I welcome you to this week's teaching. Last week, we examined some of the little foxes that destroy marriages and homes. This week, we shall continue looking into some that can destroy homes, and thereby give place to the devil.
These are:
The Fox of Bitterness
If a member of your family or your spouse did something that really hurt you, and you have not forgiven him or her, then a root of bitterness is already springing up in you. Bitterness starts from very little things, and once it gains access into the heart of a man without being checked, it does the following –
It magnifies itself in the heart of the man, begins to dominate and rule him, and leads to unforgiveness.
It troubles and embitters people, causing them to lose their rest and peace. A person with bitterness in his heart will never want to be around or with the individual he or she is bitter about, even if it is the spouse.
It makes a man to fall short of the grace of God that ought to be at work in his life and family. When you allow bitterness in your heart, you frustrate the grace of God in your life, and of a certainty, without His grace, you are nothing.
It also defiles, and makes people filthy and unworthy before God.
The Fox of Pride
Pride is a trait that begins from the heart. A person who is proud needs not be told that he is. It causes a lot of strain and tension in homes and marriages.
It is pride that makes a man to see and treat his wife as a slave. This is because he sees himself as the king in his home, with no other member of his family being able to approach him. Fear and anxiety grip his household whenever he is around. This ought not to be!
Pride is also what causes certain women to look down on their husbands. They outrightly refuse to submit and obey them. This might be because they are better paid or more educated than their husbands.
It can as well cause some parents to constitute stumbling blocks to the glorious homes of their children in the future. When suitors come asking for the hands of their daughters in marriage, or their sons come home with ladies they intend to settle down with, they size them up, and conclude that as a result of their children's intending spouses' low academic, social, or financial status or background, they cannot be married.
The Fox of Ignorance
Ignorance of what God the Originator of the institution of marriage desires of individuals in a marriage relationship, can bring about destruction to them.
A wife, who is ignorant about her duty of submitting to her husband, might constantly experience strife, sorrow, pain in her home, and not enjoy the unreserved commitment of her husband to her (Ephesians 5:22-24).
On the other hand, a husband who is not aware that he is expected to love his wife unconditionally, might never get the best of her, nor enjoy the fullness of bliss that a home should have (Ephesians 5:25-33).
Perhaps you are reading this article right now and you are yet to experience the real bliss that a home or marriage should have, then you need to give your life to Jesus. You give your life to Christ as you confess your sins and accept Jesus as your Lord and Saviour. If you are set for it, please say this prayer of faith with me:
Dear Lord, I come to You today. I am a sinner. Forgive me my sins. Cleanse me with Your precious Blood. I accept You as my Lord and Saviour. Now I know I am born again!
Congratulations! Till I come your way again next week, call or write, and share your testimonies with me through:
- E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com
Tel. No: 234-1-7747546-8; 07026385437, 07094254102
For more insight, these books authored by me are available at the Dominion Bookstores in all the Living Faith Churches, and other leading Christian bookstores:
- Marriage Covenant
- Making Marriage Work
- Building A Successful Family.


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We got some exciting beers in stock - watch for the posts now --
Cantillon Mamouche ($25.99) is here
Just getting an order through is no guarantee, I will confirm back to you.
First six will get a bottle reserved.
I stopped orders -- let me see who got them -- I will confirm soon.
1 per person.
Only 6 bottles available
Thursday, July 14, 2011
3 comments:
- WhatsGaryDrinkingNow said...
Darn, I was waiting for the announcment of how to get my name on the want list and the first post I see is all the bottles are spoken for!
- July 14, 2011 at 9:28 AM
- Paul Hayden said...
Yes, it only lasted for about 2 minutes when it arrived.
- July 14, 2011 at 5:19 PM
- WhatsGaryDrinkingNow said...
I will be visiting St Louis the week of 18July from Tampa Florida. Hope you have some other great Cantillon beers available for me to buy and bring home!
- July 15, 2011 at 7:37 AM
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