Moving On

I didn't realise how long it is since I've posted. I can only offer the usual excuses - friends from the UK, writing, family obligations (baby sitting really) and pure laziness have all distracted me but I have been keeping a log of things I want to discuss. It's too long to develop in depth here so I'll just list them and expand upon them over the next week or so.

The list includes

Corruption - focussing of the issue of 'land grabbing' that The Daily Star has covered in depth over the past month or so.

Student unrest - Comilla University has been closed down but this is only symptomatic of a deeper problem, which allows me to continue to talk about education.

Traffic congestion - friends tell me it's worse than ever, which has prompted the government to offer solutions like a metro and more extensive flyover system to relive congestion. It always strikes me as passingly strange that nobody will ever address the real issue and that is the utter disregard Dhaka drivers have for the rules of the road. When I went down to Calcutta (I'm a recidivist on Indian names) I was immediately struck by the fact that drivers stopped for traffic lights and this in a city that has a reputation for crazy driving!

There have been reports that LeT (Laksher-e-Talibar), the group allegedly responsible for the Bombay massacres earlier this year, has threatened to attack the US Embassy, which is built like a fort anyway. However, there has been no comment on the threats to the Australian High Commission, which led to the closure of the Recreation Club - a real hardship! There are also reports coming out of the AHC of increased crime in the Gulshan area with an increase in muggings of foreigners.

Unrest continues in the garment industry - a lot of reading and work to be done here.

The Copenhagen climate change meeting is very much on the agenda in Australia where there seems to have been a sharp upward increase in the number of sceptics and deniers and a concomitant decrease in the number of people who see it as an important issue - if the polls are to be believed. It seems to me that the implications of climate change for Bangladesh defy scepticism and when you point this out to Australians you are often met with blankness - what's new they almost say. More research and thinking to be done here as well. However, I will say that living in Bangladesh and visiting the Sundarbans post Sidr really convinced us of the need for action on climate change. Maybe the solution is to ship all the sceptics and deniers to the Sundarbans after a cyclone and present them with a vision of the future that will occur if nothing is done.

Hopefully my posts will return to a more regular patter in the future.