Book read: The Gambler

A short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky the troubled 19th century author. I'd read Crime and Punishment and this was not quite in the same league. The characters and their traits are good, as is the backdrop of the random chance of gambling. But I never felt it was particularly focused in telling a story - reading about the book on Wikipedia it seemed to indicate the book was finished quickly to pay gambling debts!

Walk: Southwick to Portsdown Hill

A couple of my friends have started to do some local walks at the weekend in preparation for a coming walking holiday in Wales. We started this walk a couple of weeks back and did the Portsdown Hill to Southwick part but got lost trying to go back on the second part of the walk.

The guide book we were using was a bit imprecise so this time armed with a map we tried to redo the second part of the walk.

It was mostly a success, some very nice countyside on the outskirts of Portsmouth. We made one wrong turn which added a couple of miles to the 5 mile walk. This turned out to be a blessing as it allowed us to do all of the Wayfarer's trail. This then led onto Purbrook Heath road and past Southwick house. The final part of the walk was a hill climb back to the top of Portsdown.

I hardly knew all this countryside existed and it's hard to believe you are less than a mile from one of the densely populated cities in the country (Portsea island).

Train Documents

I find it hard to believe the recent documents left on the train are accidental. It feels more like hard pressed civil service types wanting to expose the goverment. Still if someone managed to leave our Iraq or Afghanistan policy recommendations I'm sure it could do with an airing in the press, just in case it gets over filtered on it's way up to senior ministers.

Suppose these are just genuine mishaps it probably does point to this thing is happening all the time and now the media has become a bit over sensitive to it. Like the personal information problems earlier in the year it doesn't fill me with confidence that someone can even leave the office with this information, it is after all "national security".

Credit Perception

In just a few short months we've gone from the extreme of having people falling over themselves to sign you up for a mortgage or other form of debt to an extreme shortage. Quite strange and indications of a tough rest of year. Add to that the oil and petrol prices and things are not looking quite so rosy for the UK economy.

Increasing debt, repossessions, and presumably rising unemployment and business failure. Have we just had it too good for too long, and now this is the payup time? Would things have always been this way had we not had historically low interest rates.

One thing I'm pleased about, it's the banks who are feeling the pinch first. They are going to have to get used to lower profits for years to come, and many are now forced to devalue their stock with share issues. It has been a long time coming but the economy is going to go back to valuing cash and not credit.

Book read: Man's Search for Meaning Viktor E Frankl

This is a short 150 page book that describes concentration camp life and techniques the author had for survival. It's split into two books, the first part is about the camps which leaves the reader in no doubt about what the camps were like with many observations. It stops short of graphic individual recollections as the author felt this had been covered in many other works.

The second part of the book covers an anaysis technique called logotherapy - really the professional career of the author after the war. In this he tries to define man's search for meaning and applications to his patients (some people contemplating/attempting suicide, some unhappy with their lot and looking for some deeper meaning). If psychotherapy is lying on a couch while a professional tries to coax out your problems then logotherapy could be sitting up straight and maybe having to hear what you do not want to (a little flippant he admits but a good description).

Overall a good book, thought provoking and something to make us realise how reasonably lucky some of us are in today's world.

The final quote of the book is:

So, let us be alert - alert in a twofold state:

Since Auschwitz we know what man is capable of.

And since Hiroshima we know what is at stake.

Portsmouth FA cup winners 2008

A not bad game yesterday, more tense than action packed. Good to see two sides of support who don't do this sort of thing every year actually enjoying the moment.

Still Portsmouth won, lets hope the next war does not start soon.

Lame duck primeminister

Or so the recent headlines would have us believe. It isn't looking good though, you know politicians are in trouble when they say openly they are going to learn from mistakes and listen more. I don't think things ever got that bad for John Major!

I can't imagine there is a career respecting Labour front bencher who would like to take the reins from here. I also feel the votes have been against the party in power rather than for the opposition (it's easier when you don't have to see your policies through).

If Brown wants to survive, he has to simplify - taxes, tax credits, persuade the banks that less profit for a few years isn't such a bad thing. But I can't see this happening - is this the shortest lived PM in history?