The View from the Spaghetti Factory (proper redesign coming soon!)

This made me grin…

Anti-junk mail postie loses round

In a nutshell, postman Roger Annies distributed leaflets telling residents how they could opt out of the Royal Mail’s ridiculous and annoying junk mail distribution service. Having been suspended, it looks like he’ll keep his job, although he’s being moved to a different round. Personally, I think he should be in the New Year Honours list.

How ironic that this story appeared on the day that the Dear Leader was giving his emotional farewell speech at the Labour Party conference, in which he listed a number of reforms made by New Labour. Several of them, admittedly, have changed Britain for the better, but Tony’s obsession with private finance makes me wonder how long it’ll be before a crumbling, failing Royal Mail is finally privatised. As Simon Jenkins wrote in the Guardian recently, even Thatcher stopped short of privatising certain things… I fear the same can’t be said of Blair.

In just a few years, an efficient and reliable postal system has crumbled into a hopeless mess. I’ve received packages from the USA and mainland Europe quicker than first class letters from the other side of London. Mail disappears far more than it ever used to. My local post offices are often unusably busy (queues of up to 20 minutes) because so many small local branches are closing. So what do they do? Make money by pushing junk through our doors.

(Incidentally, if you want to stop the stream of unaddressed leaflets and insurance offers that are bulk-delivered by the Royal Mail, write to… Opt-Outs, Royal Mail, Kingsmead House, Oxpens Road, Oxford, OX1 1RX)

Muslim anger grows at Pope speech

Are people’s (supposedly) passionately held religious beliefs so fragile that they can’t cope with a bit of dreary waffle from the other camp? I guess we’re back to the Danish cartoon thing again, aren’t we? I wonder how much of the Muslim anger has been cynically whipped up by travelling clerics this time.

I mean, come on, it’s the Pope. Why get so worked up about something he says? Us non-Muslims don’t take a blind bit of notice of anything he says. Just remember the maxim…

“sticks and stones may break my bones, but racist, sexist, homophobic anachronisms cannot hurt me” :-)

As mentioned a few days ago, we recently went to Hungary. I’ve now edited the 260 photos down to a “for the family” set and an even smaller “for everyone else, particularly those with short attention spans” set. The latter is here…

Hungary photoset on Flickr

(The usual Flickr advice applies… ignore the slideshow feature, as the pictures are too small. Click on the first picture, then navigate by clicking on the thumbnail pictures in the top right-hand corner)

I haven’t written anything substantial about the match-fixing scandal that gripped Italian football for most of the summer. While the trials were underway, I had plenty to write about the World Cup and, to be honest, I couldn’t have kept up with the steady stream of new evidence, conflicting reports and legal appeals. I just watched with interest, wishing that my team (AC Fiorentina) weren’t implicated.

I still don’t know enough to comment at any length, but there was something so wonderfully, poetically KARMIC about prime culprit Juventus’ first match in Serie B since being forcibly relegated…

Rimini 1 - 1 Juventus (report from the Guardian)

With Fiorentina at the bottom of Serie A, their 19-point penalty still undented after an opening-day defeat to Internazionale, I’m hardly in a position to gloat, but… this gloating opportunity is far too good to miss!

Got back yesterday after a holiday in Hungary… just under a week in Budapest and then a couple of days in Esztergom, a town on the “Danube Bend”. To summarise in one sentence, I really, REALLY recommend visiting Hungary.

Like plenty of other central European cities (Prague, Vienna, Berlin) Budapest is always going to be worth visiting purely for its historical significance, and several parts of it resemble both Prague and Vienna (although I only know the latter from photos) in appearance. Magnificent coffee-houses that make a laughing stock of the high prices and poor products of the Starbucks-alikes in our profit-crazed corporate world… solid yet graceful bridges calmly spanning vast, sweeping rivers… opera houses and royal palaces peering aristocratically from their hilltop vantage points… tree-lined boulevards with trams, food stalls and cosmopolitan bustle. It’s that grand mid-1800s central European look.

To me, all of that makes for a Damn Good Holiday. I’m not interested in beaches, anything requiring the word “resort” or even the general concept of “getting away from it all”. Walking/outdoors holidays are great, but I like to have easy access to some sort of village/town life as well, so areas such as our Lake District are ideal for satisfying that requirement. For trips abroad, I’m happiest exploring towns and cities.

Esztergom gave us a chance to see a little bit more of the country, beyond the obvious capital-centric tourist stuff. It’s still a popular place, both as a long-standing religious focal point for the country and in general as a beautifully preserved old town, but the pace of life is noticeably slower than in the capital… driven more by the demands of local life than by tourism and commerce. To get there, we took the five-hour boat trip up the Danube, rather than the ninety-minute train route… it’s a leisurely way to watch the landscape changing, from Budapest’s flat surroundings to the more mountainous areas around the Slovakian border.

Overall, though, what really impressed me was the general “feel” of Hungary. It’s all very easy-going and relaxed, from the bars and restaurants to the churches and museums. There’s no presriptive attitude to tourist enjoyment… just do whatever you want, when you want. The cheap prices are great (most things cost about 50% of the London equivalent) but what’s even better is the extra level of care, service and attention to detail. So many people were prepared to go that little bit further, rather than doing the bare minimum in an attempt to maximise profit, as you see so often here in the UK.