(no subject)

I have work to do.
I'm gigging this weekend at a Hunt Ball in Gloucestershire. Two 90 minute sets. I will have to take precautionary measures to stop my hands cramping up. I've found that salt helps. I won't come off stage until about 2am.
I won't get home until about 5am.
Advice for all you budding guitarists and other musicians out there: try to have someone awake in the car beside you to stop you falling asleep at the wheel. Either that or employ roadies....but function bands don't really stretch to roadies, dammit. Ah well, if I didn't enjoy playing with this band I would have bailed by now. Also, when I didn't have any money whatsoever, the money from gigs helped pay the bills.
Somehow I don't think I do it for the money, no matter how much of a hard-bitten professional I try to appear.

I have to get the first draft of the children's story together asap, but I think that will have to wait until after Sunday.

Go well and do good things.

But before I get on with my practice.....

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090918/ap_on_re_us/us_abandoned_mercury_mines_6

If you want clean water....and your mercury mining organisations have escaped their financial obligations concerning the cleanup of their mess, well it has to be paid for somehow. Perhaps with tax-income? 

Some selective quotes.

Government officials blame mining companies for shirking their financial responsibilities to clean the sites, either by filing for bankruptcy or changing ownership.

The Sulfur Bank Mine has made the nearby Clear Lake the most mercury-polluted lake in the world, despite the EPA spending about $40 million and two decades trying to keep mercury contamination from the water. Pollution still seeps beneath the earthen dam built by the former mine operator, Bradley Mining Co.
For years, Bradley Mining has fought the government's efforts to recoup cleanup costs. An attorney for the company didn't return calls seeking comment.

It took a hundred years to pollute and will take almost as long to put right. But strangely enough we can't force the folk that made the mess to clean it up. This is the marketplace in action, and the long-term consequences of....not enough regulation, perhaps. Or have I missed something germane?

Trafigura

Nice to know what the lives of Ivory Coast natives are worth according to Trafigura.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/sep/18/trafigura-victims-compensation-offer

Actually nothing, nada, zilch, a big fat zero.

The Ivory Coast authorities should not have let Claude Dauphin out of prison until the scale of damages for the victims had been dealt with alongside the cost of the clean-up. The rather impressive sum of £1,000 each for the victims who are still alive, but nothing to the families of the dead. Although this ain't a war-crime, it certainly seems to be a crime against the humans in the Ivory Coast. Perhaps this should count as a crime against humanity.

Me, I'd string these folk up. Should I ever meet someone who works for that company, I'll know where to spit.

£1,000 will buy you what exactly? Even in a third-world country? It won't even buy you the smallest cheapest new car from India. But the dead don't even get the money to bury them. Corporate manslaughter in the first world carries what penalties? Where is the weregild?

I am reminded of the Bhopal disaster.
Bruce, what's your opinion?