[EN] No comment / [RO] Fără comentarii (25) – A facelift / Un lifting facial

[EN] Even Big Brother needs a facelift from time to time. [RO] Chiar şi Big Brother are nevoie de un lifting facial din când în când.

[EN] As these images – taken in London, in the Whitehall area, somewhere near the HM Treasury – prove. [RO] După cum aceste imagini – făcute la Londra, în zona Whitehall, undeva lângă HM Treasury – dovedesc.

[EN] The wolf may change his hair but not his surveilling nature. [RO] Şi-o fi schimba lupul părul, dar nu şi năravul supraveghetor.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (20) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

What are the chances of a ‘peaceful and a prosperous world’ that political leaders in most (all?!) countries keep promising to their voters and to foreign counterparts?

How succesful can lengthy diplomatic endeavours turn out to be, as long as they are not only undermined by ‘revolutionaries’ like Julian Assange and his WikiLeaks gang, but also underfunded?

What is the greatest likelihood for ‘rogue’ leaders – to be wisely persuaded by diplomats or to be outrightly silenced by bombs?

I don’t have answers to these questions. I have another ‘witty bit’ that I picked in Britain, which could serve my readers to find their own answers.

From all the taxes (and loans increasing the public debt!) collected in Her Majesty’s Treasury’s accounts, considerably less money goes to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO – in these four pics)…

…in comparison to the Ministry of Defence (MoD) of the Perfidious Albion, a country whose military budget ranks fourth among world countries:

Every year, the FCO’s budget represents merely the 20th part of what the MoD gets.

This was before thesevere budgetary cuts of 2010 that affected the British Armed Forces, nevertheless, I assume that the proportion was left unchanged.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

A royal irrelevance [O irelevanţă regală]

Is an event about which over two billion people (from all over, even the remotes corners of the world) talk about these days really relevant?

There’s no doubt that a massive hysteria has engulfed the country (a funny approach to it in The Independent) for the past months, but let’s assume this is not necessarily something bad. 

As long as Americans feed on the ‘presidential myth’ (resuscitated by Obamania in 2008), why shouldn’t the Brits have their own ‘royal myth’ revived?

Nevertheless, I dare ask: will this royal wedding boast British national pride, will it help weave back the national fabric torn by decades of multiculturalism? Will it change anything for the better for this nation? 

Is Great Britain’s Monarchy “a public relations stunt for British capitalism,” as the Trotskyists from The Socialist Worker claim?

To what extent is the Royal Family an asset or a burdening liability? Will the royal subjects feel duped when the news of a royal divorce will break? 

Would anyone invoke the cost of the ceremony – tens of millions of pounds, taken from HM Treasury’s (the taxpayers’) coffers, not from Her Majesty’s purse – if the country were to sink deeper into the economic crisis it has endured for the past years?

There’s hardly any doubt that a royal ceremony is an astonishing thing to watch – worth exploiting as a ‘great show’. Yet how relevant it actually is for today’s Britain?

May the Lord – Whose name was often invoked by Anglican wedding ceremony – bless Prince William and his wife Catherine! ...but I’m afraid no blessing ever comes from such ‘great shows’.

Especially if the ‘blessing’ was given by a dying institution (the Church of England) which is so far from truly knowing the Lord Whom the last Orthodox kings of England (before 1066) were serving.

[For all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]

Witty bits from what I learned in the UK (17) [Vorbe de duh din ce am învăţat în UK]

Here’s another bit of sad truth, not only about Britain, but concerning any other ‘civilised nation’ in the EU.

I would come across it at HM Treasury, on Horse Guards Road, Westminster, close to Whitehall, the famous London street packed with British government offices running from the UK Parliament to Trafalgar Square.

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The following message was written on a wall in the men’s toilet inside the Treasury building:

“Are you water wise? In the UK, every person uses on average 155 liters of water a day, compared to developing countries that only use 20 liters.”

Do such wise people, as I assume those working for Her Majesty’s Treasury are, need such pieces of advice that the photoholic I couldn’t miss?

And if even they are ‘water unwise’ what about the rest of us?! I wonder who truly understands that these ‘little mistakes’ we make, such as leaving the tap running for a minutes at a time, are costlier than our ‘carbon footprint’.

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It is it pretty hypocritical that people everywhere are concerned with global problems, yet remain unable to solve ‘little problems’ like saving water.

[For all the episodes of this series, and all the posts on this blog go to/Pentru toate episoadele din această serie şi toate postările de pe acest blog mergi la: Contents/Cuprins]