Sometimes it’s really, really hard to do the right thing.

I saw this last night, and, being rather familiar with the background behind it, it made me very sad.

Why are CD’s packaged with both a sealed cellophane wrapper AND these incredibly annoying, hard-to-remove sticky labels?

Surely the cellophane is sufficient to prevent (or show) tampering? Why do I also have to spend 10 minutes every time I buy a CD trying to remove all of the fragments of these infuriating stickers?

With this kind of disrespect for the consumer, it’s no wonder that file sharing networks are so popular.

(This particular CD — LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver — is actually very good, however).

Large swathes of England are underwater following more torrential rain, and hundreds of thousands of people are without power or drinking water. This image of a drowning warning sign in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, pulled from the Channel 4 News website, says it all:

For more pictures of the floods in Britain, check out these sites:

• BBC News: Your Pictures – Flooding in the UK
• Channel 4: July Floods – Interactive Picture Map
• Channel 4: Britain Under Flood

I had to buy a hat in Colombia to keep the fierce midday sun off my head, and the first one I was offered (by one of the MANY pushy street vendors, for about $12) was this rather natty Panama hat — and since I’d changed planes in nearby Panama on the way to Colombia, it seemed both suitable and appropriate (apart from it making me look like the man from Del Monte in the 70’s TV commercials!).

This shot was taken from the roof terrace of the Monterrey Hotel, looking towards the Old Town.

I just received my first ever piece of SMS spam:

Ham@markweaver.com
/BAG /L.owest cost
m.3.d.s visit : (www
femonlines.com)

How annoyingly intrusive! How did they get hold of my mobile ‘phone number? I find this much more offensive than e-mail spam.

Well I made it back from Cartagena in Colombia without getting mugged, kidnapped or killed!

Actually this joke isn’t very fair to Cartagena, because the “Old City” tourist district is VERY safe indeed, with Policia Turistico on almost every street corner — they are going to considerable lengths to build up Cartagena’s reputation as a safe tourist destination, and the city deserves credit for doing an excellent job.

The rest of my stay was a lot of fun (as evidenced by the lack of blog posts); after the other members of Stuart’s party arrived, we chartered a speedboat to take us to Baru Island (a secluded Caribbean beach paradise), and took good advantage of Cartagena’s wide selection of restaurants, bars and clubs.

I can definitely recommend both Cartagena and the Monterrey Hotel for anyone looking to investigate Colombia’s potential as a tourist destination.

Today is my second full day in Cartagena, and I´m looking forward to the arrival of 3 more members of the Stuart Stag Party today — I´ve had fun wandering around and exploring the Old City, but it´s going to be good to have people to talk to other than the constant onslaught of hawkers, hustlers and beggars!

I´m in Cartagena, Colombia right now, for my old schoolfriend Stuart´s bachelor party this weekend — I arrived last night at about 10pm, after a long day of travelling that involved three separate flights.

My first observation was that it is hot and VERY humid here! My second observation is that there´s a lot of poverty, and consequently if you are obviously a tourist (which I am — obvious, that is), a lot of people attempt to sell you stuff that you neither want or need: jewellery, T-shirts, cigars, sunglasses, fake watches etc. etc.

I´m staying in the Monterrey Hotel, which so far seems quite agreeable; I have a nice, clean room with a big bed, A/C, a TV and minibar and a small balcony overlooking the courtyard. I´m sharing it with a small lizard, who makes quite an inoffensive roommate!

Anyway, I´m off in search of a fish supper!

After a decade in power, Tony Blair stepped down as Britain’s Prime Minister today, and was replaced by Gordon Brown, the former Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Although it’s been fashionable for some time to dislike Tony Blair, I have mixed feelings about his legacy. On the one hand, he’s fulfilled a lot of the promises he made to rejuvenate Britain’s public services, and has pumped billions of pounds into education, transport and the National Health Service. He’s also overseen a long (perhaps the longest?) period of sustained economic growth — although of course many would attribute the economic successes of the last ten years to Gordon Brown anyway.

On the other hand, Britain is now a breathtakingly expensive country to visit, and since I left in 1999 has increasingly become a surveillance society. Big Brother has arrived (and I don’t mean the insanely-popular Endemol reality-TV show) — there are CCTV cameras EVERYWHERE in the UK now. Brixton, the neighbourhood where most of my London-based friends live and where I spend most of my time in the capital, has the highest concentration of CCTV cameras in the World.

(Sidebar rant: This ubiquitous surveillance has the effect of making almost everyone a fine-paying criminal; I rented a car on a recent trip, and three months’ later was dismayed to receive a letter from the rental car company saying that I had incurred a fixed penalty notice from Lambeth Borough Council for parking in a bus stop (for just 30 seconds, when no buses were around). There was even a grainy black and white picture of my rental car on the fixed penalty notice, snapped from a CCTV camera mounted high on a pole across the street! The rental car company paid the 75 quid ticket and charged the cost to my credit card — plus they added an additional 25 pound “administration fee” for their trouble).

Of course, the most problematic aspect of Tony Blair’s decade of leadership was his decision to follow George Bush on his disastrous capers in Afghanistan and Iraq. To this day, almost no-one can offer any explanation why Tony Blair followed Bush. It was extremely damaging to him, to the Labour Party, and to the UK as a whole. All I can think of is that, since Britain is one of the top four arms dealers in the World, the UK generally profits when there is armed conflict. But that doesn’t really account for the almost fanatical zeal with which Blair pushed the Bush agenda.

Perhaps all will be explained in the inevitable Blair biographies, memoirs etc.