saturday sense

Yesterday afternoon I set off with my mother for 24 hours in Laugharne, West Wales, the charming little town where Dylan Thomas lived for many years. We paid our pilgrimage to his boathouse, in reality a tiny potting shed where, in between large whiskies, he wrote Under Milk Wood. Our B and B was adequate, though the steeply sloping ceilings rendered it impossible to pee in the loo without leaning back alarmingly and risking staining ones trousers or bringing about a return of the bad back and neck which had hitherto receded. But all in all, under brilliant blue skies, an interesting and happy sojourn.

COMMENT

In the olden days, Any Answers used to be a right old fascist's corner: you know the sort of thing, "I am sir, yours shocked and horrified of Tonbridge Wells, signed Sir Bufton Tufton"

Well, things certainly have changed. Today, commenting on President Obama's scathing rhetoric against BP over the oil spill, we first heard from an oil exploration expert who gave evidence at the Piper Alpha enquiry, ie someone who actually knew what he was talking about. This was followed by someone who noted that the same kind of attack has never been launched from America over the disgraceful behaviour of Union Carbide in the Bhopal disaster in India in 1984- a very, very good point.

This was then followed by another contributor who pointed out that while BP is being asked to suspend its payment of dividends until the mess is cleaned up, no one in the US has ever mentioned putting the same kind of stricture on the banks, whose unbridled greed led in large measure to the world-wide financial crash- a disaster whose effects have been even more far reaching in their implications for ordinary people than even the worst oil spill.