Monthly Archives: June 2005

General

Did YOU know about the floods in Canada???

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During the hot weather last week, I heard a lot on BBC about the heat, rising temperatures, high humidity, the risk of thunderstorms and the floods at Glastonbury. But not even once did I hear about the destructive thunder and lightening storms, hail, tornados and overflowing rivers that my parents have had to live through in southern Alberta (that’s in Canada, in case any BBC employees are reading. The northern part of North America. The second largest country in the world. Where the Queen went recently. The place where England played rugby’s Churchill Cup on Sunday. Ring any bells??).

Mom and Dad had been keeping me updated all week on their situation. Living on a river, the only main source of water for irrigation for miles around, it was looking like they were going to be in dire straights come the end of the week. So, my father being an industrious person, got the tractor out and built a berm around the front of the house (the back being buried in a hillside anyway), as well as making sure all cattle were clear of the projected water line and everything protected that could be. (I must say this was round two of flooding – they were flooded much worse than this in 1997 when the ice jammed on the river and the water was flowing 8 feet deep round both sides of the house…) But, back to the flood at hand. Having had about 9 inches of rain since the beginning of June, expecially in the foothills around Calgary, the rivers in southern Alberta that are sourced in the Rockies were ready to burst their banks. The Old Man River, which runs through Lethbridge, did so earlier in the month, and now the Red Deer River, on which my parents live, was due to do the same. The peak hit my parents’ place on Wednesday, and my dad took this picture soon afterward. If you look at the top left corner, you can see the edge of the trees, which is where the river channel is. Amongst those trees are several cattle pens, a barn, a few wells, and my mom and dad’s house. The buildings you can see are the main farm yard, and the house where Mom and Dad’s hired man, Willie, lives. Everything on the lower level, save the house, was wet. You can see more pictures in the Photo Gallery.

Flood from Irrigation level

But that wasn’t all. On the ranch that my dad runs for his family at Hilda, Alberta, there was more destruction. About 30 miles away a tornado touched down, damaging a large natural gas plant. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the storm wreaked much more damage than that. On the Hilda place, rain, high winds and hail hit, damaging the house and destroying several outbuildings. This picture, thankfully not from our place and not of an inhabited building, shows what kind of winds were blowing. The metal bit is a granary – an upside down granary – that has been blown into and wrapped around this abandoned house.

Hilda neighbour damage 2

This is what it’s supposed to look like…

Looking at the CBC (That’s Canadian Broadcasting Company…) website, Alberta wasn’t the only province hit by flooding. Saskatchewan and Manitoba have also been badly flooded. Prime Minister Martin has promised flood relief, but that doesn’t help the people who died, or lost all their memories and possessions.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, all are fine, Mom and Dad’s house didn’t get wet, and the insurance will probably cover the damage to the Hilda house. Hey – it needed new windows anyway! But the problem still remains – Canada doesn’t seem to exist for most Brits. It’s huge – all of the UK would fit into southern Alberta comfortably – but they are generally thought to be an extension of America. Have you seen our money?? It has the Queen on it too! Perhaps you could pay us a little more attention now and again? After all, we did volunteer to fight beside you in World War 2…

Movies & TV

Isn’t It Ironic

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The news today is full of the sudden death of Countdown host Richard Whiteley. However what struck me as particularly ironic was that over the weekend Channel 4 has been rerunning one of it’s promotional sequences with stars from many of it’s programmes – including Richard – answering the same question. In this case, the one chosen was “How would you like to be remembered?”.

The answer given by Richard in the sequence is “as the face that launched Channel 4“. However in an interview shown in one of the tributes tonight, he speculates that he’ll more likely be known as the feret man after his now legendary encounter with a ferocious feret on a local news show back in the seventies!

Putting aside the feret, it will be interesting to see what happens with Countdown, the show which over the past 23 years Whiteley has made his own. If they decide to continue, whoever takes over this popular show, they will have a hard act to follow.

Church, Politics

The Co-Op Bank Takes A Stand

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Browsing through the news feeds today I came across a news item I had missed reporting that the Co-Op Bank had decided to bar my favourite group of Christian fundamentalists, Christian Voice. The bank gave the reason as follows:

“Following a review of the activities of Christian Voice, we wish to give you notice that we require you to close your account with the Co-operative Bank plc. It has come to our attention that Christian Voice is engaged in discriminatory pronouncements, based on the grounds of sexual orientation. This public stance is incompatible with the position of the Co-operative Bank, which publicly supports diversity, in all its forms, for our staff, customers and other stakeholders.”

You can read the full Christian Voice press release on their site. Of course, you can also read about their campaign against gays in the Police, and their ‘satire’ site called true vision both part of the reason given for the decision by the Co-Op.

Christian Voice is now calling on the bank to ask all other Christian, Muslim and Jewish organisations to withdraw for the same reason, and calling on Christians to boycott the bank. They describe the action as being by “politically correct bully boys”, which does strike me as somewhat hypocritical following what they did to the Maggies centres earlier in the year!

It is important to realise at this point that however Stephen Green tries to spin it, the Co-Op are very clear over why they took the action, it is not for religious reasons, but purely on grounds of diversity:

“They are targeting one group of society in a hateful manner. The bank believes in respect for all sectors of society and its approach to Christian Voice is based purely on the issue of diversity and not on the grounds of religion.”

The bank is being very clear not to make a statement about the religious belief, but on the way that Christian Voice act on that belief. Indeed as Christian Voice themselves say, many religious groups bank with them based on their ethical stance. Their objection is on the basis of the active targeting of gays that the organisation carries out. (The Thinking Anglicans site explores this further.) This is in some ways a classic example of the conflict between ethics and religion with which the Church continues to wrestle, a conflict that is present within the gospels in resolving the inclusivity of Jesus against the exclusivity practiced by the Jewish authorities in his time.

Anyway, going back to the decision, it is worth noting that whilst Christian Voice are correct in stating that homophobia is not explicitly stated within the banks ethical policy, the last line reads:

On occasion, we will make decisions on specific business, involving ethical issues not included in our Ethical Policy.

It also states elsewhere that controversial decisions such as this, where the case is not clear cut, will be passed to a special committee for discussion before the decision is made.

In my opinion, whatever you think of Christian Voice, the bank is entirely within it’s rights to do business with whom it wants. The ethical policy of the bank is created from customer feedback and voted on by the customers on a regular basis, and certainly the majority of opinion I have heard on this decision so far has backed the stance taken by the bank. Whilst there may be some who will close their accounts over it, I suspect many people will either see it as a good move, or not be bothered at all.

Pictures

A Great Little Phone

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I’ve continued to be impressed by the Sony Ericsson K750i, once I’d got rid of the buggy firmware with which O2 cursed the phone.

By far the best feature is the camera. Today I discovered the macro mode, designed for shooting close up shots, and took a nice shot of the Channel 9 Guy that sits on my desk. You can click through to Flickr to see a bigger version and take a look at the clarity of the picture.

Channel 9 Guy

Whilst on the subject of Flickr I’ve also added a Photo Galleries page which uses Flickr to automatically generate pages of our pictures stored on the site. Currently there is only some pictures of the cat, and the pictures of the recent Alberta floods.

Movies & TV

24 Series Four Concludes

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We’ve just finished watching the Sky One back-to-back showing of hours 23 and 24 of series four of 24.

The last two hours started with Tony held captive by Mandy, the profesional terrorist who has been in the background through all four series, right from the early episodes of series one currently reshowing on BBC, and including her assasination attempt on President Palmer at the end of series 2. Needless to say, it was slightly predictable Tony getting caught as in the previous episode he and Michelle had just got back together, however the writers were nice, and although at one point you thought Tony was dead, ultimately the two of them got together.

Jack was not so lucky. As with previous series, the main series plotline was tied up within a few minutes of the start of episode 24, when CTU managed to locate the missile and it was shot down. This left Jack to come back to base to be dumped by his girlfriend, and then to discover that the Chinese wanted him arrested for the slightly botched raid on their consulate earlier in the series. The current presidential security adviser decided that Jack was too much of a risk to fall into Chinese hands, and arranged for him to be arrested and then killed. However, Jack got a warning from ex-President Palmer, and with the help of Tony, Michelle and Chloe, made his escape, after faking his own death. Of course as Tony and Michelle dropped him off, they left him with a handy secure mobile phone, ready for series five next year.

To some extent, what was promised with series four, with it being a different show without the regular cast didn’t materialise, by the middle of the series, about the only regular who hadn’t appeared was Kim, and then by the end we even had ex-President Palmer coming along too, in many cases almost replacing new characters that had appeared at the beginning of the series. There have also been criticisms that much of series four was a rehash of series two, and also concerns about the focus on arab terrorists. Another area of concern was the more extensive use of torture, with some commentators speculating whether the show was attempting to legitimise torture in the War on Terror.

Series five may well have to be different, with Jack having to go on the run. However it seems apparent that the writers have decided that they need a group of familiar characters, hence why many of the regulars were brought back in during this run. One positive note is that, following the demise of Enterprise, 24 has gained the services of Manny Coto, widely credited with having produced some of the best episodes of Enterprise during it’s final year. Since 24 has already been given a sixth season, hopefully he’ll have a better run at this show than he got with Enterprise!