In and beyond transition - some blogs

I’ve already remarked (in more of the French sense of noticing!) that, for a blog from the Carpathian mountains, I do not say very much about the life going on here and I have vowed to do something about this. Three reasons make this difficult – first I have not so far found very much on the internet about Romania or neighbouring countries in the English language. Secondly I do live a bit of a hermit’s life both here in the fairly remote mountain village and in Bucharest and rarely therefore pick up much about what is happening in the wider society – although it is difficult not to notice the growing angry demonstrations against the austerity measures which are a feature of central Bucharest. And I am, finally, spending a lot of time with the new books which keep arriving here - so many still unread (I like the reference in Nassim Taleb’s great The Black Swan to Umberto Eco’s antilibrary – „read books are far less valuable than unread ones” ).
So, with these excuses, let me mention some blogs I have recently discovered which do try to cover issues in my part of the world. First a useful (if intermittent) one by someone who seems to live in America but has a deep interest in Romania
Her latest posts are about the judicial system here. Then an excellent blog on central europe as a whole by an Economist journalist, Edward Lucas And a Brit living in Poland has a blog about Polish politics - with some interesting recent blogs about the continuing influence in that country of neo-liberalism (and the damage it has done) and an overview of how the various central european economies have been hit recently. Today’s Spiegel has a worrying piece about the new level which neo-nazism has reached in Budapest.
Ironically – despite the geographical distance and the censorship - I can follow in much more easily events and discussions in China than I can in the (wider) Balkans here! There are so many excellent blogs, sites and, indeed, photojournalism. Every day China Digital Times sends me references and angry chinese blogger is one of the more powerful of literally hundreds blogs in English. I particularly like the blog from a female traveller in the Chinese countryside. But the easy access I have to English documents means inevitably I spend most of my time following the scribblings from UK Think Tanks – and today I came across what looks a very useful analysis of the quango phenomenon

Cheese, windows, babies and saints

I needed to stock up on the glorious burdurf cheese – and, on my way back from picking up the windows from the glazier at Fundata, dropped in to the shop down the hill from our house which stocks the local stuff. A small group was in fact working in the garden packing the cheese into the woodbark which holds it. And I was proudly shown a small baby which was born 4 month ago to the couple who live opposite the shop – a very rare event in this geriatric village!
It’s another saint day (Parascheva – protector of Moldavia) – and so Viciu can do no work on the windows I brought back to him yesterday complete with their glass panes. I will check that he has at least put the putty on which would anyway need to dry today. Tomorrow the varnish – and Saturday or Monday the fitting?
Checking which saint day it was, I got a very strange entry on the Chursch’s website -

The Righteous Mother Parascheva lived in the first half of the 19th century. Having been raised in a Christian family in the village of Epivat in the region of Thrace, near Constantinople, it is said that at ten years of age, when standing in a church, she heard the call of the Savior: Whoever wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me (Mark 8:34). She began to deny herself and took the path of solitude from the world, heading first to Constantinople, followed by a monastery in Pontus, and then to the Jordanian desert. Around the age of 25, an angel came to her in a dream and revealed to her the divine call to return to her native place. She returned to Epivat and passed away into eternity unknown by anyone. But God prepared her for great glorification, and in miraculous manner her body did not decompose rather it remained uncorrupt and became greatly sweet-smelling. Her body was soon unburied and placed with honor in the Church of the Holy Apostles in Epivat. Her holy relics have been moved first to Tarnovo, Bulgaria, then to Belgrade, Serbia and thirdly to Constantinople until they reached their final repose in 1641 in Iasi, Romania.

In what sense therefore can she be Protector of Moldavia?
And how could someone born in the 19th century have their relics placed in 1641?
Answers on a postcard please.

performance management

I’ve written before about my search for the holy grail and it was in that spirit that I was eager to read Colin Talbot’s latest book onTheories of Performance – organisational and service improvement in the public sector which, hot off the press, winged its way to me this week. Although an academic, he does consultancy, writes in a clear and stimulating way about public management, makes no secret of his youthful Marxism (indeed Trotskysm) and has a blogIt was therefore with some impatience that I galloped through the book and now pause to make sense of it. It is indeed an impressive tour de force – which surveys both the very extensive academic literature and also the global government endeavours in this field over the past few decades. As befits an academic, he roots his contribution conceptually before moving on to survey the field – and this is an important contribution in what is all too often a shamefully theoretically-lite field. For the first time I read a reasonably analytical treatment of the various quality measures which have developed in the last decade such as The Common Assessment Framework. His references to the literature are invaluable (I have, for example, now two new acronyms to set against NPM – PSM (public service motivationand new PSL – public service leadership
I am also grateful to him for introduction to the concept of clumsy solutions – which uses culture theory to help develop a better way of dealing with public problems.
On the downside, however, I found the basic focus frustrating – I had hoped (the title notwithstanding) that it would be on the senior manager charged to make things happen. After all, his equally academic colleague Chris Pollit gave us The Essential Public Manager– so it would be nice to have someone with Talbot’s experience, reading and coherence write something for senior managers – and for different cultures. Those trying to design improvement systems in Germany, Romania, China, Estonia, Scotland and France, for example, all confront very different contexts.
And, despite, his introductory references to his consultancy work, the few references he makes are apologetic ("it's not research"). I appreciated his critical comments about the suggestions about gaming responses to the target regime – but was disappointed to find no reference to Gerry Stoker’s important article about the deficiencies of New Labour’s target regime; a paragraph about Michael Barber’s Deliverology book which gives no sense of the dubious assumptions behind his approach; and, finally, really surprised to find no reference to John Seddon’s systems critiques
However, it will (I am sure) quickly become the best book on the subject.

literary detective

White frost on the grass and the study feels particularly cold after the heat of the marvellous stove in the bedroom. The bricks retain their heat for more than a day. Today I have to get new windows in the study here organised. The originals are still in – and one gets a bit drafty at this time of year. My old neighbour Viciu has cut me the new windows and frame – and I now have to persuade a local to fit the glass and find the appropriate hinges before they are fitted.
The Chinese detective book Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong is a really excellent read – a highly intelligent mix of narrative, of description of life in 1990 Shanghai with the new market system coexisting uneasily with the privileges of the communist elite – and of Chinese literary and cooking insights
The author has been an American academic for the past 15 years or so and this is one a series about Inspector Chen which knocks the Stieg Larsson Millennium series into a cocked hat. An excellent review - with excerpts - here

Village life

A lazy Sundayin the Bucharest flat – demonstrating the dangers of television. The saving grace was another sight of the amazing (Danish) Babette’s Feast with my favourite actress Stephane Audran in the unusual role of a destitute French émigrée in a remote Danish village at the beginning of the 20th century who served an old couple for years, won a small amount on the French Lottery and used it all to cook an incredible meal for the villagers.
I left the flat this morning while it was not still light – and enjoyed the start of a brilliant October day as I drove into the mountains. My reward was 20 books – for once an equal number of novels - and a large number of DVDs waiting for me in 5 Amazon packets. Difficult to know where to begin – but a Chinese detective book won the day (with Geert Mak’s An Island in Time also enticing). It's apparently the story of the author's Dutch village - to which he returned to chart its recent decline. So many Romanian villages like mine are also dying...

snow and gutters

For the first time in ten years snow prevented me yesterday from getting to the mountain house. My misfortune was to go into the mountains just as the weather was changing – and before the snowplows had a chance to get working. I was astonished to find the rain turn into flakes of snow as I hit Sinaia – the first resort from the plain (where the royal family had a great castle). As I turned off the main road at Predeal (some15 kilomtres short of Brasov) to take the serpentine road own to Rasnov, the police warned me that I needed winter wheeltracks – but I did not expect the conditions to deteriorate so quickly on the short incline! Discretion got the better part of valour – and I scuttled back to the comfort of the Bucharest flat. I couldn’t face the anonymity of a gueshouse in Brasov or Rasnov!
For the moment I have no thoughts to offer – just some visuals of older Romanian gutter ornaments
and the scenery around my old haunts on the River Clyde
The painting is a Dobre Dobrev one. Seems I have a (small) new project in Bulgaria - which pleases me very much!

Romanian art and the financial crisis

Bucharest is not conducive to thinking and blogging. Too many distractions (TV, Museums and bookshops) and too little space in the flat. Wednesday we visited the National Gallery – for about the third time – and it did this time open my eyes. Not only to the Grigorescu paintings which I had previously overlooked – but also other 19th century artists such as Theodor Aman and Ion Andreescu. Josef Iser and Sam Muetzner are also intersting examples of mid 20th century painters.
Another reason for my recent blog silence is that I have been trying to understand the latest financial catastrophe which has overtaken our economic system – realising that Marxism had much more offer to offer than I had thought. Let me qualify that – I always realised that Marxist analysis was superior to any other but could not go along with the simplistic prescriptions associated with that. Karl Popper was the guy who put me on the pluralist path. In the last few weeks I have rattled through David Harvey’s Enigma of Capitaland Robert Peston’s Who Runs Britain?Each complements the other. The first book supplies the long-term and more abtract perspective. Surplus capital always requires innovation to restore profits – whether from immigration, privatisation, out-sourcing etc. And Peston – as the BBC financial correspondent – shows us how it all works in practice (eg the story of Marks and Spencers)
And am looking forward to Arrighi’s theoretical tour de force Adam Smith in Beijing when I return shortly to cold Sirnea.
Yesterday I came across a very useful publication about the Future of bankingwhich offers an overdue consumer's view of the crisis and what should be done. Finally an article which exposes the corruption of the economics profession in the USA
The painting is a Grigorescu.

recent literary greats

Still in Bucharest – but an American article bemoaning the “fodder” (as the author put it) which the “urban middle class proletariat” there has been fed with over the past 20 years
encouraged me to review my list of literary greats drawn up in March.
I had noticed then that European writers constituted about half of the list and, on review today, I could add only Amos Oz and Andrew Greig from my recent reading – as well as the catalogue of travelogues. North American writers were represented by only Carol Shields (Canada) and Richard Yates (Saul Bellow should certainly be on the list but I would still resist John Updike). Some of the respondents failed to spot that the author was in fact focussing on the poverty of modern USA writing and suggested, sensibly, that he would be better off with a less parochial reading list which would include Latin American, European, Chinese and middle eastern literature. Their recommendations referred me to writers such as WG Sebald, John Banville and Qiu Xiaolong whose books I have not so far read – and which I have now ordered from Amazon.
On more critical matters, two articles about the difficult scenarios we now face – on such basic respources as waterand food