Tony Klinger

Madonna’s bid to adopt a three-year-old girl called Mercy, failed in Malawi yesterday. The manner in which the global media reported this sad news was both inhumane and insensitive. Journalists maliciously enjoyed Madonna’s discomfort, relishing the fact that the legal authorities in little, feeble Malawi thwart this woman, who usually gets whatever she wants.

We shouldn’t forget that because of this decision a small child is forced to remain in an orphanage.

The judge denied Madonna’s bid to adopt the child on the basis that she has not lived in Malawi for the required period of residency, which would mean an 18-month stay. The pop diva will appeal the judge’s decision, but appeared to be shocked by the negative decision, as all the signs were that the adoption was purely a formality.

Judge Esme Chombo quoted G. K. Chesterton. “Don’t ever take a fence down until you know the reason it was put up.” She continued, “Residence denotes some degree of permanence. It does not necessarily mean the applicant has a settled headquarters in this country. It seems dangerous to try and define what is meant by residence. In the present case…Ms. Madonna may not be the only person interested in adopting the so-called poor children of Malawi. By removing the very safeguard that is supposed to protect our children, the courts by their pronouncements could actually facilitate trafficking of children by some unscrupulous individuals who would take advantage of the weakness of the law of the land. “

She concluded, “Anyone could come to Malawi and quickly arrange for an adoption that might have grave consequences on the very children the law seeks to protect.”

The judge has taken a legally correct but strict interpretation of her country’s laws, but there was precious little mention of the unfortunate little girl in the middle of this controversy. The same laws were treated very differently by the judge dealing with Madonna’s adoption of her son David, which took place in 2006.

I am not a fan of Madonna musically or an admirer of her strident, diva type character but she is clearly a far superior hope for the well being of Mercy than life in an orphanage.

In the end, Mercy, a lovely little girl will remain in care in Africa and a willing, rich and loving (if not lovable) mother in America are to be forced to live on separate paths. It’s a pity the courts in Malawi don’t show more mercy to this little girl.

An local man carried a sign outside the courthouse, it read, “Adopt me Madonna” which perfectly summed up the situation!

I have come over all Scottish. I spent the last few days in Scotland, staying in a place called Ballachulish, which is on the road by a beautiful loch. Situated not too far from Fort William and Oban.

Don’t ask me how to pronounce the names of anywhere in our northern neighbor. Suffice it to say that the views in this mountainous area are so rich and textured that they fair take your breath away. There’s a softness to the light that you don’t find anywhere else and that complements the color and hue of the rocks, the heather and the bracken. I might live next to a country park but I suppose I’m a suburbanite by upbringing, not having lived in a truly rural setting, but even I can appreciate the luscious settings nature has provided in this gorgeously endowed part of the West Highlands.

From my door to the destination is just about 500 miles, the first four fifths of which I used the motorway system. The drive was easy and without incident, and until you reach England’s Lake District, pretty monotonous. Once there you are reminded of just how pretty the sweep of this part of England is, and how elegantly it juxtaposes itself between England’s northern industrial heartland and the more pastoral lowlands of Scotland. There isn’t, despite devolution, much to indicate you have entered Scotland via Gretna Green after passing Carlisle. There is a simple sign, and the only other indicator is that there seems to be less traffic almost at once.

The road roars through the lowlands past some small towns until you hit places like Hamilton which are effectively part of the metropolitan area surrounding Glasgow. I found this part of the drive very easy in both directions and suffered no hold ups at all as the traffic wasn’t too bad and the roads are good. Very shortly thereafter and you are out the other side of the cityscape and passing the airports on your way north. Very soon you find yourself hard by Loch Lomond, and a prettier scenic road it would be hard to find anywhere in the United Kingdom.

Eventually you leave the highways behind as you enter smaller, even more scenic routes right next to the Loch. This is a drive to savor and appreciate as the views are magnificent and, from a Southern English perspective, they remain strangely unspoilt. There is nothing like the amount of development on the shore line that you would find in any remotely comparable location in England. The buildings are not very attractive and they become less so the further north you travel. Perversely the more historic the building the better the design, with the more recent architecture being, by and large, appalling. I can’t understand how the designers and builders were not inspired to do better by the magnificent natural surroundings.

I had been warned by many friends not to expect too friendly a welcome from the Highland people but everyone we met were warm, hospitable and helpful. In fact it reminded me of how people used to be when I grew up in the more friendly  and caring London of my youth. The food everywhere was fair to good but the prices were very steep. For example, three sandwiches and two cups of tea for £23 (approx. $33) seemed way too much. Every meal was at London prices, and that’s too high when the amenities are not as good and overheads are much lower.

The historic town of Fort William is a major disaster area. I would rate it as Three Crossed Coffins in the Tony Klinger Guide of places to give a wide berth. Parking is not easy, located as it is at the end of the town, and not clearly signposted until you are on top of it. The recession has bitten hard here and many of the shops  operate as charitable concerns. I visited on a Sunday and almost the entire place was closed for business. What does remain open is for the lower end of the market and despite being a willing customer there was absolutely nothing available for me to purchase. I couldn’t even locate a cup of tea and a piece of cake at tea time!

One of the only places open was the Scotland Tourist Office which afforded us the opportunity to find out something about the local attractions in a well appointed environment. The local museum was closed otherwise I would be able to share more of the town’s fascinating history.

Even worse than this is the town of Oban. This was so unattractive a place I drove straight through it and went back in the other direction. Nothing can prepare  you for the sheer unattractiveness of this unsightly place which truly deserves the title, a blot on the landscape.

I also visited the museum in the mountainous region near Glencoe and it was charming and well conceived. However with the rich history of the place they could do well to visit the museum at St. Albans in Hertfordshire, to learn how to improve their offering still further. Nevertheless it is still worth a visit even if the £11 (approx $15) entry fee per adult is too high for what the National Trust of Scotland is providing at this site.

But if you are a walker, naturalist, historian, mountaineer, photographer or simply a collector of beautiful landscapes to hold in your memories, the area around Ballachulish is a must.

There is a huge new problem hitting the big film studios presently.

When times were fat the studios had their old film libraries valued at huge multiples of the then considerable revenue streams and were consequently able to borrow huge sums of money using this asset as security. But now times are hard and the bankers who did the lending are checking the small print on the loan documents. As a consequence they are having another, closer look at these assets and coming up with very different and difficult conclusions. You see there were conditions attaching to these loans and the most important ones related to earning streams derived from the libraries. The fact is that piracy is taking a major toll now, and its a situation that will only get worse. Just as with the music industry the old days are gone forever and the new financial models are going to be very different. This is made worse by the generally terrible and uncertain economic world of which the media industry is just a small component.

The result of the downwards revaluation is that banks are calling either for the loans to be repaid or more likely for the studios concerned to sell assets to get the original loan back performing at the right rate of leverage. Hence there are elements of a major fire sale beginning in Hollywood. Once prized assets like video retail outlets are now on the block and this will filter down the line and affect all aspects of the media industries.

This has the makings of a very dangerous spiral because it is against a background where national TV broadcasters are also already having to cut back on all areas of production because advertising revenues are still plummeting  and look set to continue downwards.

These things have the habit of becoming a self fulfilling prophecy as job losses increase, salaries are capped or slashed and overheads minimized.

In the end all this blood letting must and will pass as the media machine eventually will realize it simply has to produce a quantity and quality of viewable material for audiences to be satisfied. Value and system re-adjustments occur quite regularly in the history of the media sector as the methodology , marketing and output levels are fine tuned to meet the demands of both the audience and finance. There have always been more reasons for the media industry to fail than there were to succeed, but despite this it always re-invents itself and prospers in its new form. The same will happen now even if we don’t know exactly what that form will be.

It is going to be uncomfortable for those working at the middle and upper echelons of the media sector but could prove to be more exciting for the industry’s new recruits since there will be new opportunities in a less centralized economic model as there might be more creative  control coming both from the bottom up and from new sources of finance emanating from new cultural centers.

Last night on British television there was a program entitled “The Hottest Place On Earth”. It showed us a team of intrepid explorers visiting the Danaki Desert in northern Ehtopia to investigate the geology of the area and the amazing people who survive in this impossibly hostile environment.

This was followed on BBC 1 with a program entitled “Nature’s Great Events” in which, again on mainstream TV, at peak viewing time, we were shown the growth of phytoplankton along the coastal waters of Alaska and Canada’s British Columbia. This attracts whales, sea lions and dolphins who enjoy feasting on billions of herring.

Then programed against The Antiques Roadshow, on the BBC’s other main station, BBC2, there was yet another program of a similar nature, “Yellowstone” which showed us the changing seasons in that great park as the new born animals make their way into the light.

I am not seeking to criticize the scheduling of these programs which attests to the fact that the British are both quirky and still see the purpose of their main broadcaster as a force for the betterment of mankind. I had thought it was also to entertain people not seeking to become environmentalists or geographers.

There is something a bit too worthy, patronizing and lofty about this list of programs which tells you much more about the broadcasters than it does about the public. This is a clear example of “we’ll tell you what’s good for you.”

The evidence of this was ably if unintentionally demonstrated by the lovely Kate Humble who was the lead presenter of “The Hottest Place On Earth”. Now I stand behind no man in my admiration for the entirely lovely and bright Kate, who is not only cleverer than almost anyone on the planet, but who also manages to look great whatever her circumstance. Her enthusiasm and sheer Head Girl blond goodness fair oozes out of her every pore.

I am not an anthropologist myself, but like these scientists, and the officers and men of the Starship Enterprise I had always thought that the first rule when you came into contact with a primitive civilization was that you must not interfere with their way of life. The consequences can be horrific.

It was therefore very surprising to note that these rules of engagement were almost immediately broken by Kate and her colleagues. Kate was soon telling the local women that they shouldn’t be letting the men get away with sitting around whilst the women did all the work. No bra burning and a few centuries of women’s liberation via universal suffrage here. It’s straight from the stone age to emancipation in a single leap!

Naturally the local men were soon looking aghast and more than a bit threatening as they heard what Kate was stirring up for them. “Ignore her.” they were soon muttering as they sharpened up some implements of war mentally.

This is everything that is awful about British political correctness come to dreadful life. It is everything as bad as those terrible missionaries arriving a couple of hundred years back in Africa and telling the locals that their culture was wrong because it was different from ours. It appears as if we have not learned any lessons.

I would enjoy a show made by people from some distant land where they did the same in reverse and watch us squirm out of our comfort zone.

It is obvious that there is an audience to watch programs about the wider world from a British perspective, but they should be about the world that exists and not the world we wish to create in our own image.

This week has not gone as planned. The problem started when I went for a walk with my wife into the park. The sun was shining, the temperature appealing and there were a few precious minutes to enjoy the air. We went striding out to our next door neighbor, the River Lea in Lee Valley Park and barely had we crossed one of the bridges when Avril, my wife, missed her footing in a hole. She hit the ground hard and we were to discover a whole series of things about modern day British life that might dispel or confirm your own opinions.

The path had simply not been properly maintained. Despite our living in an area being prepared for the 2012 Olympics kayak and canoe events the authorities seem to have overlooked the quality of some of their work. This is not a problem unknown elsewhere in this country as the general level of workmanship, previously so high is now lamentably low. There is an obvious solution that used to work in this country and still does in some others, like Germany. It is called an apprenticeship, if young men and women had a proper supervised experience whilst learning their trade the work they produce would be higher quality. It clearly still works in Germany where the general level of building and construction is far better.

Next for a big plus are the British people. We have all heard those awful stories of people walking by when someone is in trouble. That wasn’t our experience. As I tended to my wife several people signaled their readiness to assist. One couple came over. The lady, a teacher, provided water, glucose tablets and a helping hand. Another man came over with wet wipes and offered to run my wife, clearly a bit distressed and in pain, to hospital or wherever we needed to go.

I rushed back to our home to get a car so that Avril didn’t have to walk as she had a badly cut left knee and very bad pain in her right foot. Whilst I was on route another man offered to take her to hospital.

I picked her up and we went to the nearest Accident and Emergency Hospital Unit. Unbelievably it is now in Harlow, a 25 minute drive. I used to joke that if this government continued to rationalize the National Health service we would end up with two gigantic general hospitals just south and north of the middle of the country. It’s getting that way plus a myriad number of specialist hospitals that don’t cater for everyday problems.

Checking into the A&E unit is quite an experience. First, even though it was a Sunday, the parking had to be paid for. It cost us £3 for 6 hours and is, without a doubt a disgrace to the people who had originally created a health service which had as its ethos free at the point of delivery to everyone.

Entering the newly built and part refurbished department your eye is first deceived into believing that all the nightmare anecdotes are unfounded. It looks clean, calm and well ordered, but looks can be misleading. A man in a suit, who we understood to be a doctor saw us and took down some details without bothering to look us in the eye. We were then passed along the line to a receptionist, a perfectly friendly and smiling young lady, who took more details and cross checked these with the hospital data base. We were told to take a seat and we would be called to see a nurse within the hour, and after that, if necessary we would be called to see a doctor, within a further three hours!

There is nothing you can say or do to protest at any of this unless you want security staff to escort you from the place as was the case with a young chap outside who was shouting loudly down his mobile phone for someone from his unfortunate family to “bleeding come and get me!”

We sat down, now hungry, thirsty and fed up. There didn’t seem too many people waiting but perhaps there weren’t many staff on a Sunday. I sneaked a look and there seemed to be an abundance of doctors and nurses, most of them chatting with one another but hey, what do I know? I decided we could employ the time with some refreshment. There is no cafe in this part of the hospital but there are vending machines. We wanted some tea and I duly placed our coins in the machine which dispensed plain boiling water and nothing else. The selection of sandwiches made me think there must be food rationing in this part of Harlow as the choices were awful.

I decided to go and get nourishment from the local shops on foot and this was another mistake. Have you ever tried to walk from Harlow hospital to find a shop that sells food, it was a near impossibility on that Sunday. Two shops had broken freezers and therefore no fresh food and I was reduced to buying chocolate, pre-packed cheese and fizzy drinks.

The common experience with fellow patients and their companions bonded us into groups of disaffected complainers. Most of us were joking but the feeling soon became more depressed and angry as there was no further communication or indication of what was happening from the hospital staff.

After an hour or so a nurse did so my wife and cleaned up her cut and put her into X ray. There they discovered what appeared to be a chipped bone in her foot. She was sent back into a second, interior waiting area, where, with other fellow sufferers we waited for a further three hours. We were amongst many others who took a peek into the casualty treatment areas where the medical staff were clearly in no particular hurry to move through their list of patients. Many of these staff clearly had English as their second language which is fine if they can speak clearly in English. We had the unfortunate experience of nurses coming into the waiting area to call the name of the next patient and no one could understand a word they said.

Our turn came and treatment was dispensed. At the point of delivery the doctor was fine even if his staff were mostly unhelpful and lethargic. The experience was awful and I straw polled all the other people waiting around us and there was not a single person who thought the situation was satisfactory. However most British people are slow to complain and are too shy to do so in front of others.

That is why it was especially galling for a spokesman for the National Health Service to come on TV this morning to try and explain away various gross problems in various hospitals with the lame excuse, “you must understand that the NHS employs upwards of 1.5 million people and there are relatively few complaints when you consider the sheer scope and scale of the organization.” The truth is sir, that you don’t listen. Your service is a disgrace, particularly in light of the fact that billions of pounds of additional taxpayers has been poured into it. Of course there are noble exceptions of fantastic service from outstanding and well motivated staff. But the generality is terrible and if anyone doubts me let them try and get treatment in an average place on a regular day.

Today it is my wife’s fate to go back to the same hospital’s Fracture Clinic for her follow up visit. Her appointment was due nearly two hours ago and she is still not home!