"Good things come in small packages"

From yesterday's Guardian, on e-government.

"Old Estonians"

From an article in yesterday's Guardian about the British public school Eton:

"There were Etonians in Thatcher's first cabinet, but it appears that she didn't feel easy in their presence. In 1983, she sacked four of the most prominent Tory Etonians, prompting Macmillan's snobbish (and anti-semitic) mot about there being more Old Estonians than Old Etonians in the cabinet."

The point is that the UK cabinet (committee of senior government ministers) has, in the past, such as under the Prime Minister Harold Macillan (a.k.a. "Supermac") in the 1960s included many former pupils of Eton. Healthy government, eh? And it could happen again. David Cameron, likely Tory leader, is an Old Etonian, as is Oliver Letwin, former Shadow Chancellor (meaning he spoke for the Tories on finance issues, and is Gordon Brown's "opposite number"), though currently in the political wilderness, it seems. The current Shadow Chancellor, Cameron's mate, George Osborne only went to St. Paul's school. Educational, this site, isn't it?

Perhaps someone could explain why Macmillan's remark is "anti-semitic", though?

PS Just found (here) that Letwin is currently just Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs. Funny how his CV doesn't mention Eton.

Nice revolutions

The Guardian's List of the day (print edition only, it seems) has 9 "Nice revolutions":
1. Carnation revolution: Portugal, 1974;
2. Singing revolution: Estonia, 1988;
3. Velvet revolution: Czechoslovakia, 1989;
4. Orange revolution: Ukraine, 2004 (also known as the Chestnut revolution);
5. Rose revolution: Georgia, 2004;
6. Cedar revolution: Lebanon, 2005;
7. Tulip revolution: Kyrgystan, 2005;
8. Purple revolution: Iraq, 2005 (disputed usage);
9. Blue revolution: Kuwait, 2005. [Missed that one: must have been watching the football on the other channel].

Black Nights

I know I said that finding references to Estonia in travel articles was too easy, but I was impressed to see Sean Dodson mention the forthcoming Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn in his "How to DIY it" column in Saturday's Guardian travel section. Can't do it this time, but maybe we'll make it there next year...

Estonia causes its share of climate change!

Glad to see Estonia made it onto the "Climate change: Countries' share of world carbon dioxide emissions 2000" section of the Independent's "Environmental Map of the World" free with yesterday's edition. Latvia and Lithuania (and Macedonia aka FYROM for that matter) did not. This is probably because Estonia managed to fill out the paperwork for whatever figures the chart is based on and the other countries didn't. For the record Estonia had a small orange box (indicating a small overall amount of CO2, but quite a bit per head - similar to Germany & Russia, but below US and above UK & France).

Careful with those European extremities!

It seems Estonia is hardly out of the news in the last few days.

I was skimming through the Independent on Sunday's travel section and out of an article on "10 Essential Raod Trips", in the company of "The American dream trip" and "Australia's open road" jumped... wait for it... "fly-drive to the Baltic"! What particularly amused me was the idea of visiting "Saaremaa Island, before crossing into Estonia...".

While in that region, I just caught a snippet of a Euronews piece at the weekend, reporting from the extremities of Europe. There was some chat from, I think, Hiiumaa, then a shot of some coastline bathed in sunshine. I remarked how nice it looked, only to be told that we were now in the Med. somewhere, Malta perhaps. Oh, well!

And then just now I was catching up on my emails, finding easyJet offering trips to...

Fabulous festive markets in Eastern Europe!
Fares from £14.99*
Catch the Christmas spirit in our wonderful Eastern European cities! Prague, Tallinn and Ljubljana are famous for their colourful Christmas markets - stroll in the crisp air with a mug of mulled wine and discover a whole range of beautiful and unusual handcrafted items, traditional gifts and delicious food.
Add a regional flavour to your Christmas shopping from just £14.99* one way - book now!

Perhaps travel articles and adverts is too easy, though, so in future take it as read that you can't pick up a travel section these days without finding articles and travel offers about Estonia, usually Tallinn... Perhaps I'll just report any more howlers I spot.

Andy McNab's Estonian plumber

Finally for today, I've been carrying around a page torn out of the London Evening Standard magazine a couple of weeks ago (the ES, perhaps because it's a monopoly, seemingly doesn't see the need to bother trying to win new customers with an online edition). Andy McNab writes:

"I don't have any problem with Eastern Europeans coming over to London to work, and I am sick of hearing people complain they are taking our jobs. If the work wasn't available for them, they simply wouldn't be here, they would be working somewhere else in Europe instead. Besides, the local Russian pharmacy opens a lot longer hours than most, and my Estonian plumber not only turns up for work on time, his quote for the job doesn't suddenly increase because of 'a problem with the piping'."

Bravo! (Sorry, pun is explained below...)

Of course, Andy McNab isn't someone to mess around: he's ex-SAS and first came to fame with his book Bravo Two Zero, the account of an ill-fated behind-the-lines operation in the first Gulf war. Curiously his is one of at least 3 books about the operation (by Andy McNab, Chris Ryan, another member of the patrol and, not so easy to find, Michael Asher, ex-SAS, but not on the patrol). Each of them is a jolly good yarn, and reading all 3 gives different perspectives, like one of those movies with different constructions of the same events ("The Usual Suspects" and the recently previewed "Where the Truth Lies" come to mind).

Euronews and e-government

And while I'm at it I should mention that Euronews have been running a piece about how advanced Estonian e-government is. Best in Europe, with Portugal apparently. Not online unfortunately, but here's a BBC story along the same lines.

Let's move to... Tallinn, Estonia

Spotted in last Saturday's Guardian magazine. £110,000 for a bijou apartrment in the old town, apparently. Just found that you can read all about it online, here.

Hotspots

The British half of the team has been invited to join, and has accepted the request, but Blogger doesn't seem to have noticed this yet. He says he's used to things happening instantly. Anyway, this was one of the articles that prompted this blog - read carefully and you'll see that "... you'd be better off again in Estonia". Yet, again Estonia leads the world!

And the Estonian half of the team added, with feeling (and we quote from an email):

"Maybe you can tell about our banking system as well. That if you need account you just go to bank with your ID card or passport and it will take 10 min not 3 weeks or months... That you can take money out from bank machines 24 h and not from 7 a.m until 23 p.m. That paying with mobile phones are starting to be normal in everyday life etc. etc."

Just to get things started...

The Estonian half of the team was sent this Economist article last week.