Obama Throws the Russians a Bone

In a major foreign policy move, President Obama announced today he is abandoning the Bush Administration's missile defence system plan for Eastern Europe. The plan, which would have seen long-range missiles installed in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic, had infuriated Russia, who saw it as a direct threat. The Bush administration had always insisted it was not meant to threaten Russia but rather to defend Europe from rogue states like Iran, but this seemed dubious to the Russians considering that the missiles themselves would have been pointed at Russia, been far more powerful than needed to take out the small-arms capability of Iran, and were to be placed just a few miles away from Russia’s border.

Obama said today that after a thorough review of the program he had decided that a more “cost-effective" system using land- and sea-based interceptors would be better suited to Iran's short- and medium-range missile threat. Though the administration stressed that this decision is “not about Russia”, the reality is that it largely is, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. While it is true that the system Bush planned to install seemed geared more for the Cold War than for the realities of modern dangers, it is also true that it was proving to be a huge obstacle in US-Russian relations. Considering that those relations are in desperate need of improvement in order to have a peaceful world, dismantling this plan could be good for America’s security in more ways than one.

Shortly after Obama was elected Russia had made a bold move showing that they were serious about their objections to the missile system. President Dmitry Medvedev delivered a speech the day after the historic election saying that if the missile shield were installed Russia would install short-range missiles just off the Polish border in its territory of Kaliningrad, in response to the US "provocation." All indications were that they were serious about this threat, and the resulting tit-for-tat could have resulted in a missile defence arms race that no one wants to see.

Reaction from the American right was predictable, decrying Obama for “selling out” American allies (the narrative for the right seems to be that he is a lilly-livered coward abroad while being some kind of Hitler like tyrant at home). But reaction from the international community, and from Russia in particular, reflected a collective sigh of relief. Russia's ambassador to NATO called it a “breakthrough" for US-Russian relations, saying that with this obstacle removed the two countries could move ahead with talks about reducing their nuclear weapons stockpiles. NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said it was "a positive step", reflecting the fact that few in Europe were excited about this system which was ostensibly meant to protect them. The missile defence system, after all, was going to outside the scope of NATO and completely US-controlled.

And the conservative governments of Poland and the Czech Republic who had agreed these deals with the Bush Administration, although surely disappointed, were muted in their reaction. The Czech public on the other hand have expressed elation today, as the plan was very unpopular there. The Poles were more mixed in how they felt about the plan, but my Polish friend tells me the media reaction there so far hasn't been too dramatic.

So was this a big concession to Russia? As the title suggests, it was a 'bone', an easy gesture to make considering it wasn't in US defense interest to have it anyway. Essentially no one, including the US military, thought the missile defense system made any sense except the American and Polish right-wing. Iran does not have the capability to deploy or make long-range missiles, and it's never been proven that these systems being installed actually work. As Joe Cirincione told MSNBC last night, the Bush Administration was installing "a technology that doesn't work against a threat that doesn't exist".

Of course the missile defence system has just been one aspect of American foreign policy that Russia has seen as a provocation by the US. They've also seen US invitations to the nations of the caucasus and Central Asia to join NATO as an anti-Russian provocation. It's doubtful Obama will recognise the "Soviet sphere of influence" Russia is trying to claim, nor will he rule out the possibility of these nations joining. But he is unlikely to persue the NATO-expanding policy with the same irresponsible gusto that the Bush Administration did. That gusto was largely to blame for the Georgian War, an entirely avoidable conflict brought on by Georgia misinterpreting Bush's neocon rhetoric for actual promises of future military assistance.

So it seems as if everyone is happy with this announcement except the American Neo Conservatives. And as the never-confirmed limited-term ex-UN ambassador John Bolton makes the rounds today describing this as “a concession to the Russians with absolutely nothing in return” (I’ve never seen anyone get so much media exposure for themselves out of such a limited public career) you have to wonder what decade he’s living in. Altering this plan will result in a more cooperative Russia and probably in the long run a more logical defence capability for the United States.

Move over Somalia, Sarko's after the cyber-pirates Now

My twitter erupted with activity yesterday as news spread that the French lower house had at long last passed the much-maligned Hadopi bill, the hugely controversial legislation that would ban people from using the internet if they are caught repeatedly downloading files illegally.

This was the third attempt to pass the measure, but the third time was the charm and since it’s already passed the French senate, Sarkozy’s piracy-busting measure will now become law. It will be the toughest anti-internet piracy legislation in the world. The slow journey of this legislation has been closely watched by other European countries and now that the precedent has been set, they will now likely enact their own similar laws.

The bill, named after the new anti-piracy government agency it will create, would permit authorities to impose a variety of penalties on people caught downloading illegally including cutting off their internet connection for a year, imposing fines of hundreds of thousands of euros, and even jailing them for two years.

It’s Official – Five More Years of President Barroso

It’s unusual for an EU commission president to serve more than one term, and many in the parliament and member states opposed him. So how exactly did the former Portuguese prime minister squeak by on re-appointment to the EU’s highest office today?

The short answer is, there wasn’t really any alternative.

Barroso is from the centre-right European People’s Party (EPP), which currently has a majority in the European Parliament and the leadership of most EU member states (including Germany, France and Italy – and though the current British government is not technically centre-right, Brown strongly supported Barroso’s re-appointment). Still, there was great concern about his re-appointment resulting in a “lame duck” commission presidency for the next five years.

Barroso’s first term as president of the EU’s executive body has been fairly lacklustre, having overseen the defeat of both the EU Constitution and the Lisbon Treaty (although the latter will likely soon pass in the Irish re-vote next month). Many have accused him of not having a “grand vision” for Europe, or even a cohesive idea of where the union should go. His tenure has been marked by a drift into Euro-stasis, a paralysation over the past five years that stands in marked contrast to the gung-ho attitude in Brussels before his tenure at the turn of the millennium.

But the fact that he was re-appointed handily despite all these misgivings (he was even able to obtain an absolute majority of 389 votes today – a big triumph for him) shows just how severe the Brussels leadership crisis is. Despite their intense opposition to Borroso’s re-appointment, the Socialists failed to come up with any candidate to oppose him. No candidate emerged from those who had misgivings on the right either, though France’s prime minister did seem to be toying with the idea for a bit earlier this month.

Immediately after the vote the Party of European Socialists (PES) issued this press release saying that as the second largest block in the parliament, they will insist on being given one of the “three key EU posts”. By that they appear to mean the Commission President, the High Representative (which will be empowered by the Lisbon Treaty) and the Council President (a post that will be created by the Lisbon Treaty).

But considering that they weren’t even able to field an opposition candidate for the commission presidency, who exactly are they thinking they could field for the first “president of Europe”? Tony Blair has been floated as an idea, and as a Labourite he is technically in the PES. But considering his support for the Iraq War and his role as a champion of free-market Anglo-Saxon economics, its doubtful continental PES members would be too pleased with this choice.

If Barroso’s second term does indeed turn out to be a “lame duck presidency” it will be interesting to see how this affects the development of the two new positions created by the Lisbon Treaty. Both of them have been really vaguely defined, and their remit and power will be largely shaped by their first holders. If the offices are held by two socialists in opposition to a weak or irrelevant Barroso, it could have the effect of strengthening the Council at the expense of the Commission. This could go some way in satisfying those who complain about Europe’s “democratic deficit”, as the Commission is an unelected institution.

New Photography page

I've updated my portfolio website with a better photography section, revamping the creaky old interface that I hadn't updated since 2003 and replacing it with a picasa album that's more focused on my travels. Picasa lets you geo-tag the photos on Google Earth which I really like, tagging them all this week was like a little trip down memory lane. Check it out if you like,
http://picasaweb.google.com/DavidKeating

Should Turkey Join the EU?

Yesterday’s much-anticipated report from a high-level commission blasting Brussels for its handling of the Turkey accession issue was predictable in many ways. It was perhaps even a little tiresome in the way it relied so heavily on the oft-repeated claim that racism and xenophobia are what drive opposition to Turkey’s membership. But even more predictable still was the very different way the British and continental media covered the report.

The Independent Commission on Turkey’s denunciation of Brussels’ foot-dragging was a headline-generator in the British media. Yet it received scant attention on the continent - even in France, the country which took the most punches in the document. Google news English finds 30 stories about the report, while Google News French finds only three working links (one of which is actually a blog). France24, Le Monde, and Le Figaro all seem to have ignored the news. Perhaps not surprising considering the continental powers are opposed to Turkey’s membership, while the UK is in favour. Those national media outlets on the continent that did cover it took a very different angle than their British counterparts, proving much more sceptical of the report’s conclusions.

The commission condemns the EU for delaying accession talks with Turkey, saying it is violating its previous promises that Turkey will eventually become a member while many (perhaps most) in Brussels have no intention of ever seeing this become a reality, preferring to string Turkey along in order to make it friendly to EU interests and more inclined to push through pro-Western reforms at home. The report accuses national political leaders (read: Sarkozy) for coming out strongly against Turkey’s membership in order to exploit domestic concerns about immigration, job security and Islam. It even goes so far as to say that this contradiction between what the EU had previously publicly avowed in the 1990’s and what its national leaders are saying today “put in question EU credibility, reliability and the principle…that agreements are to be honoured.”

To an outsider it might seem bizarre that the traditionally euroskeptic UK would be the one pushing most vocally for Turkey to enter the EU. Indeed, in the British media the issue is often presented as a no-brainer. Of course Turkey should enter the EU, people here seem to think. Any efforts to keep them out, according to the Brits, are just due to continental (read: French) racism and Islamophobia.

So it isn’t surprising that I find most people here are a bit confused about the debate, and some of the larger issues involved. So, I thought I’d make a little Q&A based on some of the questions someone was asking me last night. Whether or not Turkey should join is a very complex issue that essentially goes to the heart of the larger question about what the EU should be – a federal union or a free trade zone. Countries have therefore split on Turkey’s accession based on their feelings about European federalism – the idea that the EU should have supranational power in areas outside of trade. The fact is that the day Turkey joins the EU is the day the dream of a federal Europe is over. A federal Europe is simply not possible in a union with Turkey as a member.

Questions? Shoot.

Is Turkey part of Europe?

A very small part of Turkey (about 5%) is geographically within what has historically been considered Europe. Of course, the issue gets a little tricky because unlike its ocean border to the west, Europe’s eastern border is not as clearly defined (owing to the fact that geologically speaking it is more accurately part of a larger Eurasian continent). But the traditional border has been understood to run from the Mediterranean and Aegean, through the Dardanelles and the Bosporus straight, across the Black Sea, and North along the Ural mountains in Russia. This makes Turkey and Russia the only two countries straddling the two continents of Europe and Asia. However the 10% of Turkey that lies in Europe is relatively sparsely populated because it is not very hospitable terrain.

Some argue that because the Ottoman Empire (Turkey’s progenitor) at one time controlled all of the Balkans up to Vienna, it is culturally part of Europe. However this is a tenuous claim because if such logic were applied across the board the states of North Africa should also be invited to join, as their progenitors once controlled Spain. Historically speaking it would have been a tough sell to convince the Austrian emperor (or anyone else in 15th century Europe for that matter) that the Ottomans were “European”. The successful defence of Vienna which halted the Ottoman advance into Western Europe gave the city the nickname as the ‘savior of Europe’ at the time. Their motivations may have been racist or religionist, but there can be no doubt that during the Ottoman Empire’s many centuries of existence, few in Europe would have considered the Turks to be “European”.

Additionally, the Ottomans never took much of an interest in actively governing their Balkan or Greek territories, preferring to leave the actual administration to local rulers. They were much more preoccupied with their Middle Eastern and North African territories, which constituted the majority of the empire.

As a secular nation, isn’t Turkey more linked to Europe than to the Middle East?

It is true that the Turkish state founded by Ataturk is rabidly secular, but unlike in Europe, that secularism has had to be enforced through repression and authoritarianism. To this day religious practice is heavily restricted in Turkish public life by law. Ataturk and his successors have considered this necessary because there is a significant amount of the country that is fervently religious, which the ruling class (mainly the military) fears. The rural population is growing increasingly religious with time, following the revival of Islam that has occurred across the Middle East in the past two decades. The recent success of the openly Islamic AKP party demonstrated how much more powerful Islam is becoming as a political force in the country. The fact that secularism has always hung by a thread in Turkey and has had to be guarded by authoritarian means reflects the fact that Turkish secularism does not even resemble the secularism of Europe, which has arisen naturally among the population and not been enforced by the state.

Turkey is the only stable Muslim democracy in the Middle East. Wouldn’t it integrate seamlessly into the EU?

To hear the proponents of Turkey’s accession talk, you would think Turkey was some kind of earthly paradise of humanism and democracy. But while it is true that Turkey is a democracy, it is anything but stable, particularly at the moment. The country is still involved in two ongoing conflicts, one against Kurdish separatists in the East and the other in the Turkish occupation zone of Cyprus to the west, both still unresolved issues. And just this week Turkey took the first move to establish diplomatic ties with its neighbour Armenia for the first time. That tension is unlikely to be resolved any time soon because Turkey still refuses to acknowledge the genocide of ethnic Armenians that took place during World War I.

Turkey doesn’t just have instability in its foreign relations. Its domestic politics are teetering on a wire at the moment as well. With the Islamist AKP taking civilian power in 2007, there is a constant risk of the army staging a coup to preserve Turkey’s secularist code. In the mean time the country maintains one of the Western World’s most authoritarian regimes in the area of human rights. Press freedom is still severely limited in Turkey, where it is still a crime to insult “Turkishness”. Just yesterday Turkey decided it would be the only country in Europe to refuse to sign a resolution in support of a jailed reporter in Kazakhstan, because it contained a provision which stated that journalists, “should be free to report on all issues of interest to the public, including commentary on how the state is run.” Turkey of course couldn’t sign it, because it can technically be a crime in Turkey to criticize how the state is run.

But the EU is taking in Eastern European countries that also have corruption and human rights problems, but who happen to be Christian. Isn’t this hypocrisy?

It is true that the EU took on the countries of Romania and Bulgaria in 2007 despite complicated corruption problems, with an eye to providing support and guidance to those countries to help them transition to being transparent and stable democracies. This has been referred to as the “transformative” strategy of EU enlargement and has been very controversial as an idea in and of itself, especially now that the appetite for enlargement has waned. But though Sarkozy and other opponents of Turkish entry have said that enlargement should stop for now, they have held the door open for Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, Macedonia and Albania (a Muslim country, by the way) to join eventually. Obviously, these are countries with some fairly significant, and recent, problems.

But there is one key difference between all of these post-communist countries and Turkey, and it’s not just that they are Christian or all indisputably in Europe. They also all have very small populations. They are therefore more easily manageable for an EU that is taking on a “transformative” role. Additionally, these countries’ entry would not make a big demographic difference to the EU.

Turkey, on the other hand, has a population of 75 million, larger than either Britain or France. If it entered the EU it would become the second biggest member of the block. And given that Turkey’s population is expected to reach 85 million or more by 2020, by the time it could feasibly enter it would probably be the largest member and have the largest voting block in all decisions of the European Parliament.

So this isn’t just a question of saying, “Oh well, it’s Europe-ish, they respect human rights ok I guess, sure let them in, why not?” Turkey’s entry would fundamentally change the nature of the union itself, leading to the bizarre situation where the most powerful country in the EU has only 5% of its territory actually in Europe! There’s no way the rest of the EU member states would accept that scenario in a federal Europe, therefore Turkey’s entry into the EU would mean a federal EU is an impossibility, and it would have to be scaled back to be just a free trade zone like NAFTA. Of course, British Euroskeptics would like nothing more than to see this happen.

So when I see the British media go on and on about how Germany and France’s objection to Turkish entry is motivated by racism and Islamophobia, I’m left rather perplexed. If the Independent Commission on Turkey was being a bit more intellectually honest, they really should have pinned more of the blame for the EU’s Turkey double-speak on the British, who are really the ones stringing the Turks along. Using Turkish entry as a backhanded way of changing the EU is hardly a fair thing to do to Turkey, considering that they are promising them membership in a union that would cease to exist as a result of their very entry.

The commission is right about one thing – Brussels needs to stop stringing Turkey along and give them a firm yes or no. But it is wrong in concluding that the recent vocal objection to Turkey’s entry is some kind of populist political ploy by national leaders. It is a legitimate concern and goes to the very heart of what the EU is meant to be. And in that way, this debate really had very little to do with Turkey and much more to do with the conflict between federalists and euroskeptics. And until that conflict is resolved, it is likely Turkey will continue to be unfairly strung along.

Ye Olde York

Driving up the A1 motorway yesterday, my friend and I had our eyes glued to the horizon, each of us hoping to be the first one to see the giant steel angel come soaring into the sky from beyond the hill. Considering my friend was driving, we realized this gazing perhaps wasn’t the smartest strategy as he had to slam on the brakes to avoid a rapid traffic slowdown ahead of us. Searching for angels in the sky can be dangerous!

Eventually the massive Angel of the North, which has come to be a symbol of Northern England since it was erected outside Newcastle in 1998, did at last emerge. If I’m honest, I was a bit underwhelmed. Having been told that with its wingspan it’s as wide as the Statue of Liberty is tall, I was expecting something much bigger. I suppose it was big, sure, but not BIG! Perhaps that’s just my American expectations creeping in.

We were approaching Newcastle, the last stop on an eight-city tour of the Northern England, usually referred to in the UK both affectionately and derisively as just “the North.” It’s a strange land of rolling green meadows, windy moors and bulging dunes – a place where the local accent changes every 10 miles and people cling to their locality and roots with a fierce pride rarely seen in the South. It’s also a land of striking contrasts. This was the industrial heart of Victorian England, a place whose abundance of raw materials gave rise to a rapid overdevelopment, turning small villages like Manchester, Liverpool and Middlesbrough into bulging metropolises virtually overnight. That flurry of industrial activity has long since faded away, leaving the relics of a poverty-stricken rust belt concentrated around the Mersey river on the Irish Sea coast and the Tees river on the North Sea coast.

At the same time the North, particularly Yorkshire, played a hugely important part in British history before industrialisation, and in between the urban conurbations lies some of the most beautiful, history-filled countryside in Britain. It was that contrast that I wanted to discover on this road trip.

Proud Manchester

I made the journey with two American friends who I know from New York but who are now fellow ex-pats in London with me. We first took a train up to Manchester, exploring the city Saturday morning before being entertained by the festivities of the annual Manchester Gay Pride in the afternoon. It’s universally acknowledged as Britain’s biggest and best pride celebration, and I have to say that description bore true. The dinky little London pride paled in comparison to this, and the city’s relatively small size meant that the pride celebration almost seemed to take it over. It was also clearly an activity for the whole city, with lots of straight families turning out for the parade and plenty of straight people at the pride celebration on Canal Street. Actually the whole area around Canal Street ws closed off and you had to pay 20 quid to get in! I had never heard of having to pay to get into Pride festivities, but my friend Lori says that's the way it's done in DC.

There were those in the parade who weren’t so happy with the increasingly celebratory/commercialised nature of gay pride, coming as it does now with corporate sponsorships and such. But when you take a step back, tt is pretty amazing how different a gay pride parade is in the UK than in Eastern Europe, for example, where the parades are still largely an expression of protest and are often met with violence (as happened last year in Budapest). I can sympathise with these marchers’ (pictured left) frustrations about the increasing commercialisation of the gay community and the phenomenon of the ‘pink pound’, but perhaps if they considered the alternative it wouldn’t seem so bad.

Beyond the Pride festivities, which were great, I was very impressed with Manchester as a city. Once a rotting industrial corpse just 15 years ago, today the city’s undergone a complete renovation that has made it England’s unrivalled second city. We went down to the old canals, which in the 19th century would have been heaving with ships bringing coals in to the factories, to find them completely fixed up into a beautiful business and entertainment district. The massive intersection of train tracks, roads and canals at Castlefields is actually quite beautiful, a truly stunning site hovering over the ruins of an ancient Roman fort. And though parts of the interior of the city have been turned into massive indoor shopping complexes, they were architecturally interesting and forgivable. The conversion of city centre spaces into massive indoor shopping malls was to be a theme for the rest of the trip.

On the Road

On Sunday we rented a car to begin our slow journey northeast, diverting first over to Liverpool. Although some redevelopment has been undertaken, notably along the waterfront in preparation for the city’s year as a “European Capital of Culture” in 2008, the city is still a marked contrast to Manchester because it has retained much of its post-industrial squalor. Albert Dock has been the main focus of regeneration, and the area is now rife with Beatles kitsch. In addition to seeing a performance by the ‘Cheatles” right on the dock (pictured) you can also take a Beatles tour of the city to see the houses in which the Liverpool lads grew up (we declined, though we did go to the Beatles experience museum). We also visited the Tate Liverpool, which was otherwise unremarkable save for an AWESOME floor where you listened to disco music in headphones while looking at sexually suggestive sculptures, surrounded by countless disco balls, flashing lights, and even a light-up disco floor in the centre. I kind of wanted it to be my apartment.

Aside from the dock, the other main thing to see in the city is the two cathedrals, one Anglican and one Catholic, facing each other on opposite ends of Hope Street. They were both built at a feverish pace during a time of increasing conflict between Anglican Protestants of Liverpool, native English, and the Roman Catholics, descendants of the Irish immigrants who had flooded into the city during the industrial revolution (cousins of the Irish who left at the same time for America during the potato famine). Both the cathedrals are massive, with the two sides desperate to outdo each other. But looking at the two today, it’s clear who won. Though it is the fifth largest cathedral in the world, the Anglican Liverpool Cathedral is pretty bland and uninteresting, clearly trying to mimic older architectural styles even though it was just completed in the 1950’s. The Catholic Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, on the other hand, is a stunning modernist achievement. The outside is rather strange-looking, with locals often deriding it as the “Liverpool funnel”, but I thought the inside was beautiful. It has a theatre-in-the-round style, with stunning lighting leading up the interior of the cone to the roof. I was very impressed. I have to say, the most interesting modernist cathedrals I’ve seen in Europe have all been Roman Catholic – defying that denomination’s reputation for a staid rigidity in embracing new ideas.

We then checked out the inevitable massive indoor shopping centre complex next to the water, completed just a year ago. My friend Josh, who is an architect, was eager to see it. However it was pretty uninspiring, and in some parts heinously ugly.

However if we thought that was bad, we hadn’t seen anything yet. Our next stop was Leeds, which I can report has to be one of the most characterless cities I’ve ever seen in Europe. Like some of its Northern neighbours, Leeds has also undertaken a redevelopment project. However theirs has involved turning the city centre into a giant shopping mall. Almost the whole place has been turned into the massive indoor complexes. We arrived at night around six when the indoor centres were all closed. We found to our frustration that all of the restaurants were actually located inside the malls, so we had a hell of a time finding anywhere to eat. All we could find was street after street of bland high street chain stores, all closed. I suppose if you needed to do a whole lot of shopping in one day, Leeds would be a good place to go. Otherwise, the city seemed like a total waste of time to me. But then again, I don’t like shopping.

I enquired of my friend Josh if any rust belt cities in the US were considering turning their empty city centres into indoor shopping malls. “What city centres?” he responded. It’s true, Americans don’t want to go into a city centre even if it’s to buy things, they prefer their shopping malls to be out in the suburbs where they live. And judging by the results of such a redevelopment in Leeds, I’m not sure I would endorse such a plan for cities in the US. Josh says the problem is that all these redevelopment plans are centred around shopping, and when something like the recession hits it puts the breaks on the whole project. It’s not that the developers can’t get financing any more. Since the only thing they’ve planned for development are shops, the plan is going to hit a hurdle when people stop shopping. From what we saw of Leeds, it appears the recession is having a pretty bad effect on the city. The place was deserted.

Winding, Windy Moors

Nearby the city of York, our next stop, couldn’t have been more of a contrast. A hugely important city from the 11th to the 18th century, it was almost entirely bypassed by the Industrial Revolution and remains remarkably preserved. Even the city walls (pictured) remain standing, as do an original Norman castle and a stunning, massive cathedral. It’s all a bit Disney, but it is truly beautiful.

The Romans founded York about 2,000 years ago, and since then it’s had a sucession of rulers – first the Anglo-Saxons, then the Vikings, then the Normans. Each of the four rulers left their mark on the city (and progressively changed its name along the way – from Eboracum to Eoforwic to Jorvik to York. It was without a doubt the highlight of the trip, and a particular delight for us New Yorkers – an interesting view of the former glory of our city’s namesake.

We also stopped off at Harrogate, a town that was the first thing out of everyone’s mouths when I asked them what they recommended to do in Yorkshire. I have to say I don’t get why everyone was recommending it. It’s cute I guess, but there’s nothing to do there. We stopped and had the requisite tea and scones at Betty’s, and then headed over to the Royal Baths only to find the building had been taken over by a Chinese restaurant! So we headed out. Harrogate- am I missing something?

From York we drove up to Castle Howard, the sprawling estate of one of Yorkshire’s most famous aristocratic families. The grounds are massive – I particularly enjoyed frolicking with the cows next to the ‘Temple of the Four Winds’. The Howard family still lives in the castle, though most of it has now been opened to visitors. As we entered the main staircase we learned about the current owner of the house, the Baron Howard who lives there with his wife and two daughters (he’s in the portrait on the left in the photo below in a rather funny aristocratic outfit). Later on the tour the guide remarked casually as he looked out the window, “ah there he is now.” Sure enough, there was the guy from the portrait out in front of the house playing with his dog. Weird!

Like many aristocratic families, the current owner’s father Baron George Howard opened up the house to the public in the 1960’s, knowing it was the only way to be able to maintain ownership of it. For the most part, those aristocratic families who didn’t open up their massive estates for public viewing back in the 50’s and 60’s later found that it was too late to do so and had to sell them to the state. Interesting foresight on George Howard’s part. He came back from fighting in WW2 to find his estate burned down and his two surviving brothers dead. He decided to open up the house to the public and to this day the family still lives there. I guess the lack of privacy for the Howard family is a small price to pay to live in such an amazing home.

Next we drove through the North York moors, which were stunningly beautiful. I still don’t quite understand what a moor is, I just know that the Kate Bush song ‘Wuthering Heights’ refers to them as being wild and windy. I’ve never read the book but I’m thinking maybe I should. At least now I can picture the landscape in which it takes place. Or maybe I’ll rent the movie. The film Brideshead Revisted was shot at Castle Howard, so many I can watch the two of them some time as some kind of Yorkshire double bill.

We got the full moors experience at a little village called Hutton-le-Hole, where we stopped and had yet more tea and scones. The place was literally crawling with sheep, not fenced in or anything. One came up behind me while we were taking our tea and let out a deafening “BAAAAA!” right in my ear. It nearly scared the guts out of me.

We also stopped at Rievaulx Abbey in the moors as well, which was pretty amazing. It was established in the 12th century by a group of Cistercian monks from France, shortly after the Norman conquest. The ruins are in surprisingly good shape, and you’re really able to get a feel for the layout of the monastery as you walk around. The abbey was destroyed during the reformation by Henry VIII after he split from the Roman Catholic church and confiscated the property from most of the monasteries. This seemed to have a traumatic effect on the North akin to the “harrying of the North” by the Normans judging by the way it is described by the guides at the churches and monasteries up there. They all seemed ready to spit at the ground every time they mentioned Henry VIII’s name.

Northumbrian by Nature

As we headed further North, the local accents became more and more difficult to understand. We had already been struggling to understand Manc, Scouse, and Tyke accents, and we were hardly prepared for the Teesside, Pitmatic and Geordie accents waiting for us in the Northeast. Luckily I recently discovered this handy guide to the 37 different English accents in the UK) The Teesside accent we encountered in Darlington was particularly difficult to understand. The whole Tees Valley was kind of a nasty place, a blighted post-Industrial conurbation.

We spent the next night in Durham, another old city first set up by the Normans, with a remarkable Norman Castle and Cathedral. The Castle is in surprisingly good shape, but it is completely owned by the university at Durham and options to see it are fairly limited. As a town Durham was kind of underwhelming, it’s a university town and the fall term hasn’t yet started. Durham is considered the third best British university with a collegiate system (after Oxford and Cambridge), often derided as a fallback choice for people who didn’t get in to the first two (what we call “safety schools” in the US). I have to say if you were planning to go to Oxford or Cambridge and ended up at Durham instead, it would probably be a bit of a disappointment. The town is alright, but it just doesn’t compare to Oxford or Cambridge (and is obviously a lot further to London!).

We spent the first half of our last day looking at the ruins of Hadrian’s Wall, the defensive ramparts that marked the Northern boundary of the Roman Empire. The wall basically runs straight west from Newcastle to Carlisle, in the neck section of Great Britain that gets quite narrow before it becomes Scotland. We explored the ruins of a Roman Fort at Chesters, one of the border crossing points on the wall that would have served as a sort of immigration check and customs house of Celtic travellers wishing to enter and leave the Empire. Looking at the wall I thought a bit of the US-Mexico border, trying to imagine this line as the dividing point between wilderness and the greatest empire the world had ever seen to that point. The comparison probably isn’t too apt though because Mexico isn’t exactly barbarian wilderness, and even the areas to the South of the wall were still dangerous, wild places during Roman times. In fact the better comparison looking at the fort would probably have been to a small US base in Afghanistan, an outpost in the middle of a dangerous wilderness where the empire tried to recreate the comforts of home for the Roman troops. The bathhouse of the fort, located just to the side and by the river, is remarkably well-preserved. One can only imagine what the native Celtic population thought of these strange Romans and their bathing rituals. Perhaps it’s the same as what Afghanis think of the supermarkets and movie theatres set up on American bases. From my brother’s description of his time at Bagram Air Force Base, this is what it sounds like anyway.

The last stop was Newcastle, where we encountered the slightly underwhelming Angel offering us a greeting. Newcastle was pretty grimey, but they have made clear efforts to fix up the riverfront section along the Tyne. They’ve built this massive concert hall on the Gateshead side of the river that looks like some kind of giant glass worm. Neither me my architect friend cared for it.

The thing in Newcastle that will stick in my head the most though is the bizarre situation of the Norman Castle, which gave the town its name when it was built as a “new castle” by William the Conquerer’s son shortly after the Norman conquest (an event featured in the Bayeux Tapestry). However all that is left of the castle today is the central keep, and it is now surrounded by a dizzying intersection of Victorian-era railway bridges, under which it is almost lost (pictured below). It would be a bit as if the only thing left of the Tower of London complex was the central keep (the tower itself), and the City of London completely surrounded it with motorways and rail tracks. Not exactly picturesque! Still, it was interesting to go inside, and to learn about all of the various strange uses the Geordies have put it to through the centuries (it at various points held a barber shop, brothel, mansion home, cess pit and trash heap).

We then took the three-hour train ride back, which I mostly spent grumbling about the lack of high-speed railways in Britain. People often fly from Newcastle to London actually, as absurd as that may seem.

All in all it was a great trip, and I was able to experience a part of the UK I had very little knowledge of before. Living in London it often feels like you’re not really in England, and you can often feel like you’re in a little bubble separated from the rest of the country. So it’s good to get out into real Britain every once in awhile and see the sights.

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