Going up in the world!

Street 251 Takhmau - our new concrete road elevated 1 metre above surrounding land

The idea behind this blog had been in my mind for a long time.  Apart from the sad case of the Boeung Kak Lake community who had lost their homes, and Phnom Penh city a wonderful amenity, the way we have been treated in Takhmau illustrates just what keeps going wrong.  There is a dedicated up-to-date blog about our own case.

May 2019 - Robin Spiess in the SE Asia Globe has written a great relevant article about Takhmau.

Going up in the world?  Or from one extreme to the other?

A blog continuing the theme of comparing and contrasting Northumberland (UK) with Cambodia, and how things can be done better, lessons learned, if there is the good will to do so.

Planning permission to build or change land use in the United Kingdom is often a long-winded process, if for good reasons.  In Cambodia it’s the exact opposite and for reasons known only to a select few.

When the cat's away the mouse will play

The Governing Council of a local Cambodian NGO, elected representatives of community self-help groups of disabled people, who pursued a complaint against a UK charity 2008-13 on behalf of their members, 800 families in Tuok Phos District, Kampong Chhnang province, Cambodia. Photograph John Lowrie.

Foreword:

Public life comes under scrutiny and fire whenever someone falls from expected standards. In developed democracies where there is good knowledge of standards, usually people falling well-short - and superiors responsible for them - can be held to account. Those are the advantages of an educated population; a system of checks and balances; rule of law and a free press to try to bring about accountability.
  

When it comes to “#foreignaid” and charities operating abroad, such as OXFAM and Save the Children who were recently caught up in scandals, those advantages don't usually exist. It's where all kinds of malfeasance can occur.

Fascinating Back Streets and Coal-Shed Doors

Alnwick – one of the backstreets we would use often as children. Today you don't see children playing there. The old tin dustbins are gone, replaced by wheelie-bins but one family is still using the old-fashioned clothes- line instead of the modern  indoor electric clothes-drier.  It was fun to cycle or run through all washing lines pegged with clothes hung out to dry to the shouts of many a woman upset we were soiling her washing.  Quite often soot from chimneys did a better job than us.  This picture was taken from beside the once railway line near Alnwick Station, now housing Barter Books - I write about them and their "Keep Calm and Carry On" fame here.

Despite suffering a pique of jealousy – because a friend got there before me – I want to relate my fascination with back streets. I was pipped at the post to extol the virtues of the “The Run” in Jamestown Saint Helena. [See poem below] It must, however, be one of the best, possibly the very best of back alleyways in the world.  I have come across a few other candidates for the title.  Some like the ones I talk about here in Alnwick, Northumberland, qualify because of their past glory, hence this blog. Others like our current street in Takhmau, Cambodia, make the list because in many respects they are today like others were in the [good] old days.

"Your mission is over. You go!"

The fine levied on me for overstaying my visa Cambodia

"Your mission is over. You go!"

Those were not the words anyone would want said to them after 20 years of service, half an entire working professional career in Cambodia, but those were the final words in impeccable English delivered by the grim-faced Immigration Official, a senior uniformed and well-decorated Police Chief, at Phnom Penh Airport on 23 February 2018.  I had to pay my fine of US$220 to him for the privilege too.  That is more than a week's of my UK state pension, the source of income that enables me to continue to give voluntary support to causes in Cambodia.

UK: Should Human Rights Matter More than Trade?

A still from this video capturing the live-fire shooting by Cambodian Security Forces on demonstrators. GR or GRK as worn on uniforms is the acronym for Royal Gendarmerie. You can see a report by VoA.  VoA broadcasts to the domestic audiences have been curtailed  because  many independent radio stations have been forced to cease airing in 2017.

In July 2005 armed police killed a young unarmed Brazilian outside Stockwell train station in London.

In January 2014 armed military police killed 4 o 5 young unarmed Cambodians near a factory in VengSreng Street, Phnom Penh. The whereabouts to this day of one person there Khem Sophath is unknown and therefore regarded as an "enforced disappearance."

So much older then I’m younger than that now

Kingston University Lecture Theatre

There’s no mistaking Kingston University’s Penrhyn Road building.  Its outward appearance is much as it was in our days of the 1970s.  You see the same main entrance; foyer; refectory, door-ways to corridors and stair-ways that are intact down to the exact same unpolished brass rails.

Cambodia:Turning the Clock Back

The Kampong Chhnang disabled people at the inaugural AGM of their own NGO in 2009. Their elected Governing Council took the stage ready for new advocacy initiatives as well as livelihood improvement activities.

“Cambodia: Turning the Clock Back”

For the second time in 40 years a Cambodian regime is determined to turn the clock back.

Like the infamous Khmer Rouge regime, present rulers want to revert to a previous simpler existence, even if less extreme than the Utopian dream Pol Pot yearned for.