A few final snaps from Hugh
in the place I'm not allowed to refer to on air as Honkers.
He writes:
Rupert tucks in. Chilli fish soup. Hot, hot, hot.
Rain rain rain. Even when it's not raining, it's been 94% relative humdity.
Chinese soldier on a Hong Kong tram.
She's still here - in Victoria Park.
Falun Gong members protesting in Hong Kong. When they try to do this in mainland China, they are bundled away.
Memo: Letter to K. Livingstone There is also No Eating or Drinking on the underground, so no burger or pasty odours.
"Quite a challenge"
Fab Fireworks at the end of the celebrations of the 10th Anniversary of the reunification of Hong Kong with the 'motherland'
I didn't know I was so famous - front page!
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So, Hugh, they're onto you already? Glad to see you made the headlines.
And thanks for your lovely pictures, very evocative. You'll probably know that it's rain rain rain over here too.
Where do you go next? Will Rupert be allowed along too?
By the way, I found your reports very stimulating. I don't know why they bothered to send Jonathan Bumblebee over when they had you there .....
Lovely pics, excellent comments and reports. I also enjoyed the Dimblebum's reports from Honkers and Al Gore this morning on Today.
There is hope.
xx
ed
Blog Prince Mark or other competent soul,
Did you know the link from the blog page to the main PM page doesn't work and returns a 404?
Has done so for several days.
xx
ed
Hugh,
Have you got any Geisha Girl pictures...?
Thanks for nice comments Big Sis and Ed.
I just spotted a typo.
94% humdity.
At least it wasn't 94% hum ditty....
Al Gore this morning (13:25 onward)
xx
ed
The PM newsletter has just asked if the reader is excited about eu tube. I expect you've all seen before. I could not help thinking about it every time Gordon Brown mentioned change.
Good pictures. Got tired of Honkers when nearly all The World This Weekend was given over to it, though. Nearly as bad as 91Èȱ¬1 allowing a pop concert to delay the News. All the lines were busy, no doubt with complaints.
Vyle (7),
Thanks for the reminder! I loved it then and I still do.
And, from the same page, , fortunately no longer as topical.
Slainte
ed
The pictures were excellent. What I noticed in one of the photos was the Chinese Soldier had a Russian Cap on.
On EU tube --isn't it the nearest there is to a racy sequence from the otherwise perfectly anodyne film Amélie?
Bisous
C
ed - thanks for the heads up. I shall have a word with the grown-ups and get it fixed
Ed (8) Thank you. I hadn't seen it before.
Ah Rupert...
changed the brown and yellow checked trousers (?) and scarf for a similarly patterened shirt.
Good.
Being around "Hooters" at this time of year, one can experience high humidity...
Rupert come back - all is forgiven. One of the other editors called us Pavlovian dogs. You may have been 99.8% incapable of getting the newsletter to us but at least you didn't call us nasty names!
Hugh the Hack,
Nice to see you're lurking about. Have you perchance been listening to Christy Moore - humdity humdity? He's 100%!
Vyle, Always glad to be of service in diverting us from more serious matters..;-)
Marc, Ditto.
xx
ed
From my experience of Malaysia humidity of 70% is like getting out of a hot shower in a closed/sealed bathroom, tring to get dry and then trying to climb into your clothes.
Lovely photos! I've never been to Honkers. I've been to lots of places but have still more on my list -- I think Hugh's reports and photos have pushed it further up. Oh, I've been to Nice and the isle of Greece when I sipped champagne on a yacht. In fact, I moved like Harlow in Monte Carlo and showed them what I've got. To be be frank, I've been to paradise but I've never been to me...
Sorry, don't know what I'm on today... It's definitely better than whatever I had yesterday though...
Heh heh, Appy(17) :) I've flickered the last(?) of my photos from St P now. Got to say that the pnly time I went to Honkers it was on my way to Taiwan for work, so I only spent a couple of hours in the old airport (kai tak, I believe?). Now that was a scary landing!
Ap (17) I note that you didn't say:
"I've been undressed by kings and I've seen some things
That a woman ain't s'posed to see"
Not coy, surely?
Every time you think the 91Èȱ¬ hit the lowest point, it keeps proving you wrong: "Inshallah": The 91Èȱ¬ "goes native".
The identification with Islam by some (non-Muslim) 91Èȱ¬ staff seems to grow by the day, as is shown by the following email exchange between a 91Èȱ¬ listener and news executive on the use of the word inshallah -- an Arabic phrase meaning "God willing" or "If it is God's will" -- by a star 91Èȱ¬ Mideast reporter on the station's Radio Four's PM program.
Throughout the correspondence, the 91Èȱ¬'s Assistant Editor at Broadcasting House in London, Roger Sawyer, strongly defends his reporter's use of the term.
It might be uncontroversial for a 91Èȱ¬ journalist to say inshallah to his Arab friends when having a chat, though 91Èȱ¬ reporters in Israel don't tend to say baruch hashem, the Hebrew equivalent, to Israeli Jews.
It is completely different, however, when a 91Èȱ¬ reporter uses inshallah as part of an English language broadcast to 91Èȱ¬ listeners broadcast throughout England. 91Èȱ¬ journalists would never say baruch hashem on the 91Èȱ¬ in England.
In the following, 91Èȱ¬ listener Brian Gilbert provides an account of his correspondence with Roger Sawyer.
Dear 91Èȱ¬,
Please find below copies of the e-mails I have exchanged with Roger Sawyer of the PM programme regarding Hugh Sykes's casual use of inshallah in a report to his British audience on March 23, 2007.
I find it extraordinary that a reporter for the 91Èȱ¬ can so casually use inshallah as an equivalent for 'God willing' or 'with any luck' when addressing a British audience. Why should he do this? As a special effort at empathy? You must remember that many of those hoping to kill British and American soldiers, as well as innocent Iraqis, will be using the same expression regularly, and with religious intent. I have heard such fanatics do the same when interviewed by the 91Èȱ¬.
Using inshallah to show empathy to Muslim Iraqis is something, I suspect, that is quite lost on Sykes's British audience, who will not hear it as a simple bonjour or 'goodbye' as Mr Sawyer asserts, but rather as a devout wish by a believer in Islam.
Sykes's inshallah is an example of cultural cringe, or sycophancy, or simply adopting the psychology of the adversary - a mental strategy well-known in times of stress - but to be avoided, especially when, for example, a young student at Clare College, Cambridge, remains in hiding for fear of his life because he dared crack a joke about Islam in his college paper...
His head will still be on his neck in the months to come, inshallah!
Yours Sincerely
Brian Gilbert
The correspondence follows:
Dear PM,
Did I hear correctly - did Hugh Sykes in his report from Baghdad on Friday 23.3.07 say inshallah, personally, and not as a quotation? Has he converted to Islam? I think we should know. Or is he using inshallah casually as one might the English phrase 'God willing' which in contemporary usage has little religious content? Can inshallah be so used - drained of religious content? Or does Sykes intend it piously?
It is shocking to hear 91Èȱ¬ reporters, who have a duty of impartiality, using religious phrases as their own from faiths they do not in fact share. Is it to become the fashion for non-Muslim reporters (many of whom may be atheists), to say 'The Prophet, Peace be upon him'? The 91Èȱ¬ should be clear to its listeners about this. If there is to be a mouthing of religious phrases in an effort at cultural ingratiation this should be a declared policy, and you should inform your listeners about it.
Yours sincerely
Brian Gilbert
Dear Mr Gilbert,
Thank you for your email. I don't agree that Hugh's use of inshallah was shocking. As I am sure you are aware, the phrase is used constantly, very often fatalistically, as an expression of hope that a certain course of events comes to pass and is not necessarily religiously loaded. It was not inappropriate for Hugh to use it.
If you wish to take your complaint further, details of how to do so can be found at: www.bbc.co.uk/complaints
Yours sincerely,
Roger Sawyer
Dear Roger,
When I hear reporters on Al Jazeera using 'For Jesus Christ's sake' or Deo volente or Shalom I might begin to regard inshallah as value neutral. Until then, you're kidding yourself and your listeners - and poor old sentimental, lugubrious Hugh Sykes has, in the old unfortunate phrase, 'gone native' ...
Sincerely
Brian Gilbert
Dear Mr Gilbert,
I've heard Hugh say Shalom to someone during an interview. It's about empathy and has no more significance than his using bonjour in a piece from France. Or indeed, a foreign reporter saying 'goodbye' in English, meaning as it does 'God be with you'.
As I mentioned in my first email, there is a mechanism for you to escalate your complaint.
Yours sincerely,
Roger Sawyer
Dear Roger,
Thanks for your reply. Empathy is good, although in this case Hugh was not speaking to his Iraqi but to his Radio 4 audience. Let's hope Al Jazeera's reporters show similar cultural empathy in their dealings....
Best wishes
Brian Gilbert
Great pics and reports Hugh and Rupes.
Aperitif :-
Hey, you know what paradise is
It's a lie, a fantasy
We create about people and places
As we'd like them to be
But you know what truth is
It's that little baby your holding
And it's that man you fought with this morning
The same one you're going to make love with tonight
That's truth, that's love
(pass the bucket) ;-)
Thank God for #20!
xx
ed
On that last pic - I can't resist channelling Reeves and Mortimer on Shooting Stars (via Abbot and Costello) -
Bob (to Ulrika): "Who is the President of China?"
Ulrika: "I don't know"
Bob (chuckling): "Hu" (knowing laughs around panel)
(Vic chuckles vacantly. Whispered aside to Bob): "So who is it then?"
Bob: "Hu"
Vic: "The president of China."
Bob: "Hu is the president of China!"
Vic: "I don't know!"
(etc.)
Oh dear RJD, Jonnie, you know far too much about that "song"...