clubsodaandsalt’s posterous

I happened across this article on travel myths while looking at flights for a trip to Europe (well targeted, Bing). Most of the myths the author cites are, in fact, myth, and the debunking is well executed. However, the myth that serves as the jumping off point was irritating:

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Two travel professionals, my dinner companions in Coventry, England, had just told me that they hadn’t been to London in years. Just a two-hour train ride away from shopping, theater and royal pageantry, and they didn’t go every other weekend?

 

“It’s cheaper and easier to get on a plane to Spain out of Birmingham, to tell the truth,” one explained. “Way cheaper, really. So, London versus Costa Brava? Two hundred pounds versus 50? Rain, sun?” He held his hands up in the universal shifting-weight scale.

 

That was my first clue that the famous axiom about getting around Europe — that trains are best — is a fable from simpler times. I later verified the truth of this on a three-week family trek around Scandinavia. We rented a car, spent less (far less) than it would have cost us on trains, and had infinitely more flexibility to wander up and down little country lanes.

 

When I did a little more research, I confirmed that my friends were right after all. The advent of low-cost airlines has made air travel cheaper, quicker and more convenient than rail. For instance, a flight on Easyjet from London to Paris in September costs $108; passage through the Chunnel on the Eurostar is $195.

A follow up to yesterday's complaint:

Attorney General John Jeremie is expected to advise Government on whether Chaguanas MP Jack Warner can pay the wages of 54 workers of the Chaguanas Borough Corporation. This was revealed yesterday by Local Government Minister Hazel Manning. Speaking to reporters at Claxton Bay during a tour of flood affected areas yesterday, Manning said a big issue had arisen following Warner’s decision to hand over a cheque for $309,000 to pay the workers.

“We have just got information that a private citizen has paid money towards the payment of salaries and we have gone to the attorney general to get guidance on this. “That is not the norm. We are concerned that this region has obtained over $300,000 from a private citizen to pay wages. That money is not in our books and we have now gone to the attorney general to get advice on what should be done. The attorney general will be able to guide us,” Manning said.
She said it was in May that the Government found out the corporation, under the former mayor, had hired more staff.

Articles like this make me crazy. They couldn't find a single person to question the ethics of a borough accepting a massive donation from a private citizen? What if Jack Warner needs approval from Chaguanas to build something in the future? Are we to expect that he will be treated just like anyone else? Isn't the fact that he obviously won't a problem?

These are questions that our journalists should be asking, but instead they are meeting with Manning to learn how to sit down and shut up.

Whenever I hear Americans whinging about the rare occasions on which they need to get a visa to go somewhere, I just roll my eyes. They usually think they are going to impress me with their tale of woe dealing with Brazilian bureaucrats, and I end up brusting their bubble by explaining to them that whatever they've told me is basically the same thing the US does to visitors, if they're lucky. Anyway, that came to mind when reading this article about a Trinidadian Muslim organization having a representative from the US embassy at their event yesterday. Specifically, the representative, Len Kusnitz, is told this (all too common) story by an attendee:

One of those who complained of victimisation to Kusnitz yesterday was Farouk Khan, public relations officer of the Trinidad Muslim League (TML).

Khan, a former primary school principal, told Kusnitz that during one of his annual vacation visits to the US in December last year, he and his family, including his 83-year-old mother, were interrogated by US security officials for hours, eventually had their visas revoked, and then, were sent back home.

"It is not my intention to make you uncomfortable; I'm not even begging for my visa back, but I just need to have my good name cleared," Khan said.

Great graphic from the NYT about the decline of the big mall chains (although, are there a lot of Costcos in malls?). (via CR)

Have we really been reduced to celebrating positive second derivatives when it comes to the economy?

Another reminder in the Times today that irrational drug policy and illegal guns are two of America's biggest exports, and together, they produce disastrous results in Latin America and the Caribbean. It's amazing to me that Trinis spend time whinging about the supposed threat of deportees (who commit a vanishingly small percentage of our crime), but continue to support drug prohibition, and are pretty silent about the guns coming in from Miami and such.

I wonder if anyone will ask Obama about America's destructive drug policy at the Summit, rather than focusing everything on Cuba? Don't get me wrong, I think US Cuba policy is terrible, but I also think the impact on say, Trinidad, of lifting the embargo will be limited (if not slightly negative, since Cuba will become competition for outsourcing and tourists). To be honest, the talk about Cuba strikes me as a lot of grandstanding -- it's a very easy way to look like you are "standing up" to the powerful Americans. A more cynical person than me might even think that that's why the embargo is still around - it gives both American and Latin politicians a nice punching bag to exploit.

In any case, a rational conversation about drug policy in our hemisphere would be nice. I'm not going to hold my breath.

One really annoying thing about transit policy is the way that budgets get closed. Frequently, you have a budget gap, and since we hate transit in this country, the state/local govt will insist that the department close it. It seems to me (based on casual observation) that the bias in closing these gaps is to cut service, rather than to raise fares (or cut salaries/admin). I think there are a couple of reasons for this: 1) fare hikes are felt by everyone, and service cuts only by a small percentage of riders. It's like the reason we get protectionism, but in reverse, which is kind of odd to me. This is like the only place where concentrated harms lose out. (2) Fare hikes (much like tolls) are pretty intuitive to grasp for the dim-witted people who are in local govt. Service cuts are less easy. If I'm a local pol and drive everywhere (and they all fucking drive because they get free parking and are massive hypocrites) I don't really understand the impact of making someone walk an extra 5 minutes to get a different bus, for example, or how much time having to transfer adds to a commute. As a result, I think pols are less likely to vote for fare hikes than might be ideal.