Read through the Nepal Diaries, you could reach the end thinking I hate the place, presenting as they do an endless parade of poverty, frustration and half-empty glasses. But it’s a cracking country, a ramshackle would-be paradise packed full of friendly, generous people, packed full of culture and tradition and cracking food, packed full of energy and activity and ambition. It’s just a shame so much of it gives me the shits.
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Being as how education is the route out of poverty, and being as how Nepal has poverty like Facebook has banality, it’s been interesting to see how education goes here; how it works, how it’s funded, what good it does anyone…
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One of the hardest things about visiting Nepal is being surrounded by poverty, knowing you could do something to help, knowing your something wouldn’t get very far. There are so many people here living below the poverty line you could blow your life savings a hundred metres from the airport and feel you’ve made a dent on nothing, walk another metre and find someone else you should have given to.
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Like Bryan Adams before me, my talent, wealth and international fame bring me much attention when in Nepal, but unless my fans speak English our conversations struggle to go beyond their names, how they are and if they know the way to the nearest emergency diarrhea clinic. And so it is I’ve started to learn Nepali. It serves as another example of how anything in life can be turned into a moral dilemma if you’re principled, determined to live ethically and short of ideas for blog entries.
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Having submitted my Nepal field report to the UN I’m back home and so jetlagged if someone suggested Carol Thatcher was the world’s most beautiful woman I couldn’t muster brains enough for a decent rebuttal. With that in mind, in place of the standard witty, informative and peerlessly researched entry I’m getting out the projector for a holiday slideshow. These should give you a taste of life in a poor-as-Mickey-Rourke-in-the-90s country. You get the lights, I’ll get the Twiglets.
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As responsible, upstanding Zeroes we’ve always got an eye on water conservation. We boil just enough for the cup of tea we’re making, we take showers instead of baths, we’ve stuck hippos or bottles in our cisterns to use less when we flush and we only bother washing when we know we’re going to score. It’s been interesting to look at these ideas in the context of Nepal, where water is scarce and conservation a necessity rather than a fad for right-ons.
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Travel from the UK to a country like Nepal you’re likely to notice one or two differences. Here, they watch Indian Idol not The X Factor, they have less vegetable oil in their chocolate, and also their infrastructure, utilities, healthcare and education are about as screwed as you’re going to get this side of an apocalypse. Generations of corrupt government, a decade of civil war and insufficient foreign aid have left a beautiful, vibrant country on its knees and among the poorest 20 in the world.
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If Rosebank goes ahead, it would produce more CO2 than the yearly emissions of the 28 poorest countries in the world combined.
That's more carbon pollution than:
🇦🇫Afghanistan
🇧🇫Burkina Faso
🇧🇮Burundi
🇨🇫Central African Republic
🇹🇩Chad
🇨🇩Democratic Republic of the Congo
⬇️⬇️⬇️
No one should grudge NI its ‘unbelievably special position’ - peace is precious. But it underlines the unbelievably compromised position 🏴 has been left in since being ripped out of EU against our will and denied chance to stay in single market. Indy is now the only route back https://twitter.com/ITVNewsPolitics/status/1630517445369688065
'Northern Ireland is in the unbelievably special position - unique position in the entire world - in having privileged access not just to the UK market… but also the EU single market'
'Nobody else has that. No one. Only you guys, only here’
Rishi Sunak hails his Brexit deal
Don't vote for homophobes. This isn't difficult.
