Tag Archives: embra

Cameo

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Evil plans are afoot to transform one of the three remaining real cinemas in Edinburgh* into yet another venue for the suits of the financial district to drink crap lager while trying out lame chat-up lines on each other (equally applicable to males and females). The Cameo, for it is this honorable establishment of which I speak, was home to many a fine evening out for me. I watched many a film in the slightly run-down, but elegant theatre, often preceeded by a pint or two of good beer in the in-house bar.

As others have pointed out, Tollcross is not exactly in need of another bar. So, do with the clickety-click and save the Cameo.

*The Filmhouse and the Dominion being two other cinemas that screen films that aren’t just forced on them by distributors and owners.

A quick look at Lazarowicz’s voting record

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The Public Whip has a detailed record of Mark Lazarowicz’s votes. To his credit, he voted against the declaration of war with Iraq, and supported a failed motion stating that “the case for war against Iraq has not yet been established, especially given the absence of specific United Nations authorisation“. That, however, is pretty much the extent of his rebellion.

Moving on to the issue of fair trade, the motion put forward and supported by the bulk of opposition MPs is extremely broad, but generally of the view that not enough has been done to encourage fairer international trade:

I beg to move,

That this House shares the concern of the Trade Justice Movement about the plight of the poorest people in the world, and congratulates the Movement on bringing their conditions to the attention of the public; notes with concern the fact that a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, that life expectancy in many African countries is declining, and that 30 million people in Africa have HIV/AIDS; believes that rising levels of international trade and trade liberalisation offer the best hope of alleviating poverty in the developing world; calls for high quality legal and economic advice for developing countries on trade issues; further believes that the Government has failed to do enough to promote trade liberalisation, to reform agricultural subsidies and to phase out European trade barriers; and further calls on the Government to use the World Trade Organisation meeting at Cancun to do more to reform the international trade rules to give poor countries a fair deal on international trade.

But the Labour party puts forward this self-congratulatory motion instead:

I beg to move, To leave out from “House” to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:

“congratulates the Trade Justice Movement on bringing the plight of the poorest people in the world to the attention of the public; notes with concern the fact that a billion people live on less than a dollar a day, that life expectancy in many African countries is declining, and that 30 million people in Africa have HIV/AIDS; reaffirms the commitment made in the 2000 White Paper “Eliminating World Poverty: A Challenge for the 21st Century” to improving international trade rules so that they work for all countries, and especially the poorest, in helping to reduce poverty; notes that the successful pursuit of trade reform through the Doha round of multilateral negotiations could contribute substantially to the Millennium Development Goals; welcomes the substantial efforts the Government is making to promote trade liberalisation, reform agricultural subsidies and phase out European trade barriers; believes that significant progress must be made to improve access for developing countries to developed country markets; further believes that a solution to the Agreement on Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and public health negotiations is urgently needed; and welcomes the commitment to ensuring that the Doha round produces real benefits for the poor.”

As I summarised in a previous post, Mark Lazarowicz “supported trade justice and international development, backs Labour’s 0.7% target for overseas aid”. But in this instance, he toes the party line. I think trade justice is one of those issues which the government should never get complacent on. The gulf is so wide that any little improvement is quickly submerged by the overwhelming lack of workers’ rights, dictatorial regimes, trade barriers, falling raw material prices, and the general abuse of poor nations by MNCs and other first world countries. Sure, I too welcome the government’s efforts, but I want more, dammit! Labour cannot afford to pat itself on the back, and a well-meaning MP should have voted for the first, not the second, motion. All the recent campaigning has been about very local, domestic issues. Shouldn’t we be bothered about where the parties stand on issues like fair trade and eradicating poverty?

Noticed an odd thing while browsing the ‘Criminal Justice Bill’ votes: the Tories mainly abstained on most votes. Why was that?

Food nostalgia

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I’ve been reading a few food blogs this evening:

And I was thinking of how much I’m going to miss having a decent sized kitchen, not that there’s even enough space in it now. I’m given to understand that apartments in LA are über-expensive to rent, and we’ll probably have to downsize a lot. I’m going to miss my baking tins/trays, my two drawers of kitchen gadgets and utensils that have taken me 10 years to accumulate, my crazy but effective fan oven, our collection of all sorts of different flavoured alcohols (for cooking, not drinking), a pantry of hard-to-find dried and bottled food, and a whole host of other cooking things. The upside is that there will be plenty of ‘ethnic’ food stores in LA. Whether we’ll be able to find them or get to them without sitting in traffic jams, and polluting the air, is another thing.

I’m sure the restaurants there will be good, but will we have any money to eat out? We’ve not eaten out much in Edinburgh recently… Quite a few of our favourite restaurants have closed in the last year. Among the much-missed are:

  • Fitzhenry’s – replaced with a Smokestack, of all things (sacrilege),
  • JM’s – a honest-to-goodness French bistro run by one man and a rotating waitress, where we spent many a happy evening getting stuffed, and
  • a Chinese restaurant on Inverleith Row – never knew its name, but it had good dim sum (for Edinburgh, that is… still can’t compare to Glasgow/London, let alone Singapore/Hong Kong).

There are still plenty of excellent joints in town, but those places held special memories for us. JM’s in particular was a real find. We’ve had a whole host of French bistro-like places that excel in ‘Scottish-French’ cooking (even though the demise of the Pierre Victoire chain cooled the field a little), but none had the true atmosphere of a man/woman in the kitchen, sweating over several hot stoves to feed a small, but crowded room of regular customers. I wonder where he is now…

Was left to my own devices tonight, so I baked a sole (don’t know which type) with some lemon zest and juice squeezed into a little dashi (Japanese fish stock), with a very wee dram of random alcohol (Martini this time), and a knob of butter. How is it that when I cook, the kitchen looks untouched when I’m done, but when a blokey cooks, it looks like a wee tornado passed through the kitchen?