what you get here

This is not a blog which opines on current events. It rather uses incidents, books (old and new), links and papers to muse about our social endeavours.
So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

The Bucegi mountains - the range I see from the front balcony of my mountain house - are almost 120 kms from Bucharest and cannot normally be seen from the capital but some extraordinary weather conditions allowed this pic to be taken from the top of the Intercontinental Hotel in late Feb 2020

Monday, August 8, 2011

contrasting mayoral styles


I had occasion a few months back to congratulate the mayor of sector 1 in Bucharest who has organised a free rental bike scheme this year in one of the central parks. That contrasts, of course, with the appalling record of Sorin Oprescu – El Supremo of the City - who has (as befits a surgeon) laid about the old buildings of central Bucharest in true Attila the Hun style. Disregarding not only history – but laws. Here in Sofia, we have been talking very positively of the mayoress (Yordanka Fandukova) – first for the way the pavements are being slowly rescued from the cars (with bollards); and, over the week-end, for the freeing of the narrow streets from cars in the evening. One of the problems of central Sofia is the narrowness of the pavements (one-way roads also – but that keeps the speed down) but, for 3 evenings, the streets have been blocked to vehicular traffic; and tables and chairs of the bars and cafes (and kids) have spilled onto the streets. Marvellous!

Craig Murray has been on good form recently – with first a comment on the Chinese reaction to the US downgrading; then a very sensible recommendation on how to deal with the criminal banks
A year ago, I was paying tribute to Tony Judt; and blogging about the greed and incompetence of our leaders

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