Entries from September 2008 ↓

The Global Credit Crunch: Banking on the Fall Guys

September 30th, 2008 — Money

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I’ve tried them all. I hate them all. I hate all banks. I hate my bank. I hate banking with bankers even though I used to be a bleeding banker myself but that was another lifetime ago.

My first job after leaving school was with one of the big four banks in the City of London. They called themselves Midland Bank International Division, then, but these days they are better known as HSBC; one of the largest banking and financial services organisations in the world with some 9,500 offices in 85 countries. They are, therefore, part of the global banking network of financial institutions that are currently falling prey to the so called “credit crunch” and “toxic debt” syndrome.

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Dark Crime White Victim

September 23rd, 2008 — Crime

It’s not just black men who get the clutching handbag treatment in public places these days, my mate Kris found out, though he’d long ago discovered how his black friends can open up crowds like Moses parting the Red Sea whenever we’re out shopping or simply walking down the street.

Being Eastern European, he’s also a little too dark to be English to most members of the great British public, so he too gets tarnished with the same ‘dangerous-looking foreigner’ brush. To say that things have got worse since the war on terror and the London bombings would be an understatement, he was on the phone complaining to me recently, but I am getting sick and tired of getting sick and tired of suspicious looks from English people whenever I ride the tube or buses. Some may say that they are afraid of all young people these days but that’s far too simplistic a response, and I’m no spring chicken, he said.

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Sexual Perversity in Bangkok

September 21st, 2008 — Letters From America, Society, Sport, Travel

“HIV! HIV! – Go fuck yourself!” she said. And then I woke up. Or maybe it was the other way round. Maybe a whore outside my door was actually cursing her punter and I wasn’t dreaming at all, and then, I woke up.

“Why you don’t want condom? Fuck you! I don’t like you.”

“Fuck you too” said the English-speaking white male voice. “I don’t like either of you. Fuck off! Go on. Get out!”

Across the hallway a door slammed shut and the two Thai whores continued their cursing. “You got no Willy. You got no Willy…he-he-he…Fuck you too! HIV! HIV!”

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Maze at Apollo Hammersmith

September 13th, 2008 — Events, Music

Sunday, September 21, 2008
7:00 pmto11:00 pm

The best live soul band in the whole wide world, Maze (featuring Frankie Beverly), is coming to town for two nights at the Appollo Hammersmith (London) after several years away from the British music scene.

Anyone who knows their funky soul music will tell you that the detail here is between the parenthesis (i.e, “featuring Franklie Beverly”). While Maze without Beverly is still a good bass-driven funk band, us die-hard soul fans will be queuing around the block for the distinctively smooth soulful vocals provided by Mister Beverly himself, without whom there’d be no international success for this early 1970s band from Philadelphia.

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Filming The Weakest Link

September 13th, 2008 — Events

Wednesday, September 17, 2008
2:00 pmto7:30 pm

Don’t ask me what possessed me. But on the very same day that I was invited to meet The Queen of England at Buckingham Palace, I applied to appear on the Weakest Link and managed to get through the audition process three months later last February.

They said it could take up to two years to get an invitation to appear on the show and after hearing nothing for seven months, I finally got the dreaded telephone call: “Hello, Paul. It’s Laura from Weakest Link. Congratulations! We’d like you to appear as a contestant on Weakest Link. Are you free on Wednesday 17th September?”

I actually wanted to hang up the phone, but after much humming-and-ahhing, I agreed to meet The Queen of Mean - the ice-cold host Anne Robinson - she who must be obeyed. Armed with her usual infamous put downs and razor-sharp wit, I guess you could just call me masochistic.

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Obama Dreams of a Better America

September 1st, 2008 — Politics

There is a widely held truism that black immigrants from all parts of the world tend to do better in the United States than their African-American counterparts because they actually dare to believe that, “yes, we can” succeed despite the odds. The same is arguably true of African-Americans in England, for example, who as outsiders can bypass the “historical baggage” and are often preferred in the marketplace to the home-grown variety of ethnic minorities as a result.

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If any one thing comes out of Barack Obama’s historic nomination as the first black man to lead a major American party in its bid for the White House, it will be a new understanding among African-Americans, and the American people in general, that frankly anything is possible if you truly believe and prepare yourself wholeheartedly for the task at hand.

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