Animal magic

Britain is reputedly still a nation of animal lovers….(although the title also refers to a BBC children’s programme of the 1970s).

The reason for this post is just to comment on some of the great animal sculptures around Edinburgh.  Urban sculpture has been on the increase in Edinburgh over the last few years, but most of the recent examples have been animals, presumably because they are less controversial? Easier to understand?

The public certainly seemed to understand when it came to last year’s Cow Parade.  A similar set-up has happened in other cities around the world with model cows.

In this case, various organisations and businesses sponsored the making and decorating of over 40 fibre-glass cows, most full-size, that were then put in various public sites around the city.  (There were also a few mini ones, suspended between pillars of the Scottish Gallery of Art on Princes Street).

The cows were wonderfully decorated, many done by school children, or youth groups, some by individual artists.  Many were given cow-themed titles, with plenty of puns.  Later in the year, people (or again more likely, organisation) could vote to buy a cow at auction, with proceeds going to VetAid.

I’m not sure who has ended up keeping a cow – except that the office I work in overlooks a certain pizza restaurant, and they have one of these cows on the roof of their building. I think you could only tell from a higher building, as it can’t be seen from the front.

At least one person I met over the summer had made a school holidays outing out of touring the city and taking pictures of themselves/their kids next to as many cows as possible.

The other ones I see regularly: two giraffes outside the Omni entertainment complex at the top of Leith Walk.  I recently learned from a friend that these are made out of car scrap metal.  There are more traditional sculptures in sandstone in Holyrood Park, the area next to Holyrood Palace and which includes the hills Arthur’s Seat and Salisbury Crags.  A beautiful sandstone lion is very close to the palace – and simultaneously to the front entrance of the Scottish Parliament.

My final plug is for a statue that has been around for longer.  A collection of small plump pigeons are permanently in place on a pavement near the top of Leith Walk, looking rather fine in copper.  As they remain for longer, they’ve already aged to a gentle green.  Subtle, but perhaps the most effective – one of the more likely visitors to an Edinburgh pavement.

If anyone has plans for a seagull sculpture along similar lines, let me know.  The area around our home would be no bad place for it…

Enneagram and The West Wing

I was thinking the other day about the Enneagram – something that Alison and I have been reading about off and on for a while* – and wondered about the characters in the West Wing and what their types are.

To my absolute amazement, there seem to be no real posts about this out in Blogdom or on the Enneagram websites.  There’s stuff for Star Trek and Star Wars, but not for the West Wing.  So, here goes.  Please comment if you know Enneagram and the programme:

President Jed Bartlett: 6w5: He’s really stable most of the time but can become a bit counter-phobic and needs pressing to make important decisions.  When he’s depressed he  really goes to his 5 wing – very studious and introspective.

First Lady Abigail Bartlett: 3w2: This was a tricky one as she’s an exceptional scientist so could also be a 1 (perfectionist), an 8 (the boss) or a 5 (scientist), but I think she’s an achiever with a helping wing.  Interesting how she interacts with CJ who I describe below as a 2w3.  When Abby’s pushed – she moves towards caring – when she’s her own woman – she climbs the heights of her field of medicine.

Leo McGarry: 8w9: First of the strong character types – he’s the boss, but has some of this rounded off by being a bit of a peacemaker at times.  He’ll challenge Bartlett at times, but he’s a mostly reformed 8.  His motivation for anger has been channeled into the love of his country and serving at the pleasure of the president.  He respects decisions made by his staff as long as they can stand up for them.

Josh Lyman: 8w9: I think Josh is the same as Leo – which is what makes their working relationship so intriguing.  He is so, so angry – particularly with Republicans!  He can’t seem to form any kind of romantic bond properly and we see two relationships with strong women either not start (Joey) or fall apart (Amy), until right at the end of the last series (won’t say who in case you’ve not seen it all, but you can probably guess).

Toby Ziegler: 4w5: He’s a very introspective, emotional type who goes to his 5 wing (perhaps why he and the president can communicate) when pressured.

Sam Seaborn: 1w2: I’m pretty sure that Sam is a 1 – a total perfectionist.  He might be a 5, but I can’t quite figure that one out.  His wing is likely to be a 2 as he’s very much the helper than the peacemaker.

Donatella Moss: 9w8: I think this is a particularly funny one as we have friends who are 8w7 and 9w8 – almost Josh and Dona, but not really – they’re much nicer. Dona brings a lot of peace to Josh’s anger – though can also go head to head with him and gives as good as she gets.  She likes things to go well, but will stand up for herself.

CJ Cregg: 2w3: I’m not sure about CJ.  I think I need some help on this one.  She’s very caring and does what she thinks is best – but often is overtaken by events in her job and can become quite spiky.  Push a 2 and see where they go – do they seek to overcompensate by achieving or do they try to be perfect?  I think that when CJ’s pushed, she tries to stand her ground and make sure people tell her that she’s good at what she does.  Alternative is that she might be a 3w2.

I don’t know if I’m putting too much emphasis on their wings in order to make up for not knowing enough about their personalities, but having spent the last seven years with them, I think I know them a bit.  Perhaps you know them a bit more – or know more about the Enneagram.  Would love to know what you think.

Environmental taxonomy

The second area Gordon could have worked some tax wonders was with the environment.

It’s easy to say that the polluter should pay – though does this really work? We all think that multinationals like BP, Shell, etc., should pay more if they pump nasties into the biosphere, but what about us? If you take the principle to the logical conclusion, we should pay more tax for the amount of rubbish we produce and pay more tax on the fuel that we use.

I wonder whether consumers are motivated more by ease and pleasure than by saving money. We could all save a lot of money by not going on nice holidays to somewhere warm and most of the people I know who drive could save lots by driving smaller cars – but the thing is – we don’t.

2. Reduce tax for good behaviour – 1p/£1 for each category
If we were to be encouraged to do good rather than punished for being bad, I wonder whether we’d do better. We could get tax breaks for doing good stuff. Perhaps a penny off income tax if you use public transport, another penny off if you reach recycling targets and a penny off if you switch to alternative energy use.

Companies could be encouraged by doing the same – less corporation tax if they behave well – rather than considering it as an extra cost. By giving a carrot rather than a stick, consumers and companies would have a reason to do good.

If you meet all the good criteria you have more money to spend to boost the economy (potentially inflationary) or to put into pensions / investments / savings.  You will probably have spent some money to achieve some of the criteria needed to get the reductions in tax.

It might be that the reductions in your own pollution comes off your council tax rather than your income tax, but then that’s a topic for the next post . . . how to get your tax from you.

Of pressure and policy

It’s that time again – post budget and pre-end of tax year – we’re being bombarded with messages about saving in ISAs. It’s a good thing that it’s there to do tax free, etc., but it suddenly feels like a lot of pressure. In the past I’ve never really paid much attention to it, but this year we could indeed lump all our savings in that direction.

I’ve been thinking of putting money into some funds that give a high return, but couldn’t be described as being environmentally friendly (natural resources) or ethically sound (China), but would produce a good return where I could then decide what I do with the profits.

Up until recently it was a bit of an academic point, but with the approach of the ISA tax-free deadline I have to decide what to do. I’m probably going to wimp out and keep the money in the bank – staying liquid and giving myself the option to buy a car instead. It’s all about long-term gain vs short-term benefit and for the moment I don’t feel like being particularly high-minded.

Brown’s budget this week didn’t set a particularly good example. He’s made the tax system more complicated than ever and made it easy for his political enemies to make accusations that it’s only about winning votes. Unfortunately it was a lost opportunity to win more people around – the people who are likely to switch from Labour to the Conservatives when he’s Prime Minister.

So, what would I have done if I was Chancellor? Well, that’s a question I’ll answer over the next few days. I’m going to start off by suggesting that we have a flat rate of tax – a particularly easy one to suggest, but one that I think would kick start our economy in a massive way, so:

1. Flat rate of tax
20% for everything – all income tax, corporate tax and inheritance tax
Let the government play with the allowance levels, not the rates. That makes it easier for all of us.

More to come . . .

Pseudohistories and pseudoparodies

I’ve just had one of those “You what?” moments in reading some nonsense online. It came about from looking up something on YouTube and then happening on another link.

The link was to do with a historic theory called New Chronology from a pretty wacky Russian mathematician called Anatoly Fomenko. He reckons that the dark ages never happened, that Jesus was born around 1050 and that the smart cookies in the Renaissance actually invented the histories of Ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome. Sounds crazy, but you know what(?) it’s even crazier.

There’s some very, very warped logic at work and the guy completely ignores accepted chronologies. It’s almost as if he was bored one day and thought he’d come up with this by sitting in the library and looking at some old charts.

Fomenko can’t have actually been to see Ancient Rome, Greece or Egypt, but since he couldn’t comprehend the times involved he just made up his own view of history and then tried to use some historical data and science to back up his theory. That people are reading his work and taking it at all seriously is quite disturbing and more than a little annoying (architectural historian speaking here).

Taking a backward step – or three – it dissolves from being evidently crazy to being very, very funny.

From pseudohistory to pseudoparody – read Morten Monrad Pedersen’s account of his experiments with Fomenko’s techniques in his article on the way the Danish Royal chronology was falsified as recently as 1947 and how Abraham Lincoln and John F Kennedy were actually the same person . . .