Experimentally, the symbol ‘@’ will be used after all tongue-in-cheek comments
WHEN I was a young man doing my Coffeeshop Studies degree at university, I had a lecturer, who was a Guardian reader stereotype. He had a beard, wore John Lennon specs, tweed jackets bought from Oxfam, corduroy jeans and shoes chosen for comfort rather than style (sandals in the summer, of course); he never wore a tie but occasionally sported a scarf.
ANOTHER international ratings agency downgraded Cyprus’ rating by two notches on Thursday. Moody’s was the second agency to do so in the last three months, Standard and Poor’s having cut Cyprus’ rating to A in November. A third, Fitch, meanwhile, has announced that it had placed the economy’s AA rating on review for a downgrade.
Moody’s announcement was widely expected given the government’s abject failure to undertake the structural reforms that would put state finances on a healthier basis. The other concern of the rating agencies, about which the government can do nothing, is the exposure of the Cypriot banks in Greece. If problems from the banking sector’s Greek exposure were to increase, another downgrade could be expected said Moody’s.
Despite repeated warnings by the IMF and many others, including myself (in The Economist, and the Cyprus Mail), to the government that drastic action is needed to avoid the downgrade of our credibility the present government has failed to listen. As a result we have suffered our greatest ever downgrade by Moody’s Credit Rating agency, down two pips to A2.
IT’S NEW Year’s Day, about five in the morning, and I’m at a huge Nicosia warehouse where everyone is dancing. A serious contender on the dance floor is a young woman. Amongst the general craziness, you probably wouldn’t look twice at her, except for this: she’s heavily pregnant.
A month later, the woman, 29-year-old economist Nefeli, and her 31-year-old partner, Phivos, invite their friends over for brunch. The couple, both in jeans and T-shirts, are sharing knowing looks.
After everyone has had their fill of all sorts of wonderful food, the couple then drop the bombshell. “We’re getting married right now. Will you walk with us to the Registrar’s office so we can get on with it?”
THIS week a team of UNFICYP personnel will embark on an epic charity challenge – to run the full length of the buffer zone in just 60 hours.
The four man team – comprising three British soldiers, Wayne Rowett, Andy Gillies and Simon Thomson, and one UN civilian, Max Dyck – will set off from near Famagusta at 6am on Wednesday, hoping to arrive in Kato Pyrgos area by 6pm on Friday.
In that time they aim to cover 240 kilometres – or 5½ marathons – of varying terrain in temperatures ranging from minus seven degrees to +12. What is more, they’re doing it all with just three hours of sleep.
THERE’S certainly no shortage of local directors putting their talent into short films, but it’s rarer to find a short which features an international cast that also comes with a sizeable publicity push.
Inspired by a true story, The Fiddler will be screened before a select audience this Wednesday evening at the K Cineplex in Nicosia while the film – produced by Green Olive and supported by the Ministry of Education and Culture – is being sent off to a wide range of top film festivals abroad.
The Fiddler was directed and written by Stelana Kliris, who was inspired to make a film about a young man who dreams of becoming a fiddler after her grandfather let her in on a secret he had never spoken about to anyone before.
THE USA, with a population of 300 million, consumes as much oil as China, Japan, Russia, Germany and India put together, their populations combined exceeding almost 10 times that of the USA. Words like amoral, greedy, indifferent, and downright criminal come to mind in these times of climate change and disingenuous promises to reduce carbon emissions while maintaining outrageously high levels of consumption.
Economies addicted to oil, like junkies to heroin, employ any manner of means to protect their supply which, apart from home production, comes to the US (in order of importance) from Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Nigeria. Imports to the US originating from Columbia, Algeria and Iraq equate in total with those from Saudi Arabia.
ANYONE who has read The Yacoubian Building, a novel published in 2002 by the Egyptian author Alaa-al-Aswany, will regard the revolution in Egypt as long overdue. The novel’s readers will not have been astonished by the ease with which the rotting hulk of Hosni Mubarak’s regime was dashed against the rocks, nor by the spirit and courage of those who engineered this extraordinary piece of history.
EVERY time I read a new report about the Cyprus problem by the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank one question comes to mind. Have the members of the Group not figured us out yet?
All the time that the ICG has been dealing with Cyprus, has it not yet realised we are not interested in a settlement and that it was wasting its time suggesting steps in the direction of an agreement. Is it not futile trying to persuade someone to adopt suggestions aimed at achieving a result he does not want to be achieved?
LAST week, Nicosia’s Criminal Court passed its final decision regarding two young men who took nine police officers to court for violation of their duty to protect and police brutality. In December 2005, Markos Papageorgiou and Yiannos Nicolaou were severely beaten by five plain clothes police and several members of the Mobile Rapid Reaction and Drug Law Enforcement Units. The case has been controversial – the young men filed a complaint of police brutality in 2005. The officers counter-claimed they had been defending themselves against the ‘hooligans’, who supposedly had spat, sworn at, and attacked them after being pulled over for a ‘routine’ ID check. The police department issued an immediate statement after the event supporting its officers.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
