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From Our Own Correspondent
The Art of Seduction
00:28:09
Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem says keep that election bunting close at hand - Israelis...
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- [00:00]
Kate Adie
Hello from the from our own correspondence
- [00:02]
Will Self
studios at Broadcasting House in London, you've downloaded the latest edition of the programme
- [00:07]
Kevin Connolly
broadcast on BBC Radio 4. It's introduced by Kate Ady today.
- [00:12]
Narrator/Presenter
Don't pack up that election bunting. Israel may have to vote again very soon. Death threats, bribery and corruption on Brazil's Amazon frontier. A not in my backyard crowd emerges in China as the authorities confront the great smog of Beijing. And have Frenchmen really lost their touch? We look on as they try to relearn the art of seduction. Now, what exactly does the outcome of this week's Israeli election mean for such pressing regional matters as the deadlocked peace process? And how best to deal with a possible Iranian nuclear threat? Well, the answers will have to wait until Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has concluded what could be the lengthy business of creating a functioning coalition government. The former TV presenter Yair Lapid is certain to play a key role after his party, Yesh Atid, surprised observers by winning 19 of the 120 seats in the Knesset. Mr. Lapid is portrayed here as a centrist, possibly a moderating force in a new administration. But our Jerusalem correspondent Kevin Connolly, wonders if that depiction is entirely accurate.
- [01:26]
Kevin Connolly
There is an old song which struggles to encapsulate the essence of romance in a string of fleeting images. One of them is the sound of a waiter whistling as the last bar closes. The news equivalent, I now discover, is the clatter of the last length of security fencing being loaded onto a pickup truck as a political party's election event winds down. In the small hours of the morning, nothing feels more out of date than the leftover pile of smiling bumper stickers and of a candidate who has just discovered that he does not have much to smile about. Nothing feels more forlorn than a bunch of slowly deflating balloons on which the party logo is shrinking and twisting. It somehow didn't feel as though the Likud Bateinu List, the right wing nationalist grouping led by Benjamin Netanyahu, had won the election, although, broadly speaking, it had. A senior Likud member told me there is no such thing as a disappointing victory. But of course, in politics there is. Mr. Netanyahu had hung on to his job, but his party had lost seats. His aura as the most successful politician of modern times in Israel has been dented just as he embarks on the intensive round of arm twisting and ear bending required to form a government here. Israeli officials have long made the point that theirs is the only democracy in the Middle East, a claim that calls for a little tweaking or qualification, and in the light of Egypt's elections last year. But privately, Israelis sometimes grumble that their system can be a little too democratic. I am told it takes an average of 56 days after the vote to form a government here. In that period, the leaders of various factions, large and small, tell the prospective prime minister what sort of political concessions they want in return for agreeing to join the government. In return, he tells them exactly how far short of their expectations. And he is proposing to fall. The Knesset is a complex kaleidoscope of competing factions that can't be conveniently distributed along the conventional spectrum that runs from right to left. At one point, 34 parties had candidates in this year's election campaign, all vying for the 2% share of the vote, which guarantees you a parliamentary seat. The cannabis movement never made it. Presumably, any party which campaigns for the legalisation of recreational drugs is prone to the odd organisational lapse. And the Jolly Roger won't be flying over the Knesset either. The Pirate Party also failed to make the cut. But there are parties that represent ultra Orthodox Jews of European origin, and separately, those whose roots could be traced to other parts of the Middle east and Persia. And there are Israeli Arab parties too. It's easy to forget that Arabs make up almost a fifth of the population of this country. What's interesting about this election is that the dynamic new force in Parliament comes not from the far right of Israeli politics, as many expected, but from the centre. A new party called There Is A Future is the second largest force in the new Knesset. It's led by a popular television personality called Jayid Lapid. If you're British or American, you'll have to imagine David Dimbleby or David Letterman stepping down from the screen to sort the country out. Having said that, using the term centrist in the context of Israeli politics isn't always helpful. I suspect that to many Europeans, it conjures an image of a leader who would be less tough in negotiations with the Palestinians than would Mr. Netanyahu. But Mr. Lapid does not believe that Israel should have to divide Jerusalem with the Palestinians in a future peace deal, one of the core elements of the two state solution that the wider world continues to believe in. That Mr. Lapid is labelled a centrist perhaps shows you where the centre of gravity of Israeli opinion on such matters lies these days. His big ideas are about Israeli society, not Israeli diplomacy. He wants to end the special treatment enjoyed by ultra Orthodox Jews who are exempt from military service and who often choose to devote their lives to studying scripture on welfare rather than working and paying tax. Mr. Lapid is keen for the burdens of the state to be shared more evenly. The problem for Mr. Netanyahu is that he might need the support both of Mr. Lapid and of those parties who represent those ultra Orthodox communities and who fiercely defend their privileges. That's what happens when you don't get as many seats as you hoped for yourself and have to cast about for partners and build improbable alliances. There was a time when headline writers sometimes referred to Benjamin Netanyahu as as King Bibi, conjuring the image of a colossus bestride the world of modern Israeli politics. In fact, his electoral record is rather patchier than that would suggest. His critics sniff that he's a tactician, not a strategist, a broker of deals, more than a weaver of visions. He will need all those tactical skills to create a stable government out of the rather weak hand that Israeli voters have now dealt him. Plenty of people here think we'll be blowing up balloons, printing bumper stickers and and getting the security fencing back out again for more election rallies before too long.
- [06:30]
Narrator/Presenter
Kevin Connolly in Jerusalem Millions of Romanians and Bulgarians will soon be able to live and work in Britain. Curbs which had been imposed to protect the UK jobs market are due to expire in December this year. Romania joined the European Union in 2007, 17 years after the fall of communism and the killing of the country's despised leader, Nicolae Ceausescu. But economic prosperity has proved elusive, and last year the government lost an election after its draconian austerity measures led to violent clashes between police and demonstrators. Will Self has been to the Romanian capital to observe how democracy's faring there today.
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Will Self
Aigner hert ist golde werth. That was the slogan inscribed on a raised tile plaque on the white tiled surface of the 12 foot high stove that loomed in the dark and dusty corner of the president of the Romanian Writers Union's immense office. Loosely translated, this corresponds to the English sentiment there's no place like home. But during a brief sojourn in Bucharest, I felt there were few other cities I had ever visited quite so unhomelike. It began at Heathrow, where the boarding of my Taron flight was delayed. At the gate I asked the heavily bearded man at the desk what was going on, and he explained a little wearily, that some deportees were being taken aboard by the back entrance. Does this happen often? I inquired. He shrugged and said pretty frequently. That evening, in a city centre that felt uncannily empty considering that Bucharest is the most densely inhabited European capital. I ate dinner with my Romanian editor, Bogdan Stanescu. The legislative elections, postponed due to a stalemate that ensued when Mircea Joanna, the president of the Senate, refused to step aside, were slated for the coming Sunday. But it was difficult to detect much democratic enthusiasm emanating from the otherwise ebullient Bogdan. He spoke of Romanian politics as if they were a shadow play behind which the real business of exercising power went on without the pesky need for a people's mandate. True, there had been demonstrations, some violent, in the early months of the year as the government's draconian health care cuts began to bite. But by and large, or so Bogdan said, the protesters had been older people, Veterans of the 1989 overthrow of the Ceausescu regime. He laughed bitterly at the idea of Romania joining the euro and spoke of a friend who had qualified with an MBA from Harvard who, when she returned home and got a job, was asked by her boss the best way of firing workers who'd got pregnant. As for health care, if he wanted to be examined by a doctor in one of the state hospitals, a €100 presentation was necessary, followed by similar gifts for nurses, radiographers, and so forth. In the morning I awoke and parted the floor length net curtains to be confronted by a bustling boulevard and beyond it, a mouldering building completely wrapped in a trompe l' oeil tarpaulin depicting the same building beautifully restored to its early 19th century prime. Now the city bears the aspect of a slightly grotty palimpsest worked over and over again by the troubled agency of regime change, the stately 19th century structures and system built flats of the Communist era interpolated with the duff arabesques of imported post modernism. Real incomes have fallen by more than 25% since 2008, and the Romanian exodus continues unabated, many families only surviving on what relatives send back from abroad. And so to the Writers Union, a huge and decaying mansion that its former owners are in the process of reclaiming, although it seems unlikely that they'll be able to sustain the gold leaf plaster ceilings, the icy caryatids and dusty silk hangings, let alone the huge tiled stoves which, as we processed from room to room, I felt compelled to hug for warmth, much to the amusement of my Romanian hosts. On the way back to the airport the following day, we passed a building of a similar vintage, but this one had been refurbished with compelling vulgarity, oodles of gold leaf on its picots and finials and a life size gold saviour crucified in the front yard. This, my driver explained, was the home of George Gigi Bakali, a near illiterate wheeler dealing mogul from shepherding Vlach stock in the south east, who made his first fortune flogging genes before taking over the Sti Awa football team. Not that Bekali's ambitions were confined to football. Since 2009 he has, of course, been an MEP. It would seem that when it comes to homemaking in Bucharest, abroad is definitely the place to go. Not that everyone can get there. When my Tarom flight arrived at Heathrow, there was an uncomfortable pause. Then two burly and armed Metropolitan Police officers tramped on board. They left with an equally burly Romanian man in tow. Presumably he'd be on the next return flight back home in time to exercise his vote.
- [12:13]
Narrator/Presenter
And that was will self. Brazil, so long regarded as the country of the future, has finally become an economic power to be reckoned with, even if it's currently struggling with uncompetitive industries, rising consumer debt and falling investment. Today it's a big player on the regional stage. It's had a democratically elected government since 1985. The days when it languished under military control are but a distant memory. But this is a huge country. The dramatic changes it's undergone in recent years are certainly evident in the big cities. But how much has life altered out in the Wild West Amazon region? Sue Branford, who first visited this corner of Brazil more than 20 years ago, has been back to find out.
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Sue Branford
We met him again by chance on the Earth Road as we were coming back from a visit to his community in the eastern Amazon. He's called Miguel Padre, and he grinned broadly when he saw us. He, his wife, two of his children, and numerous packages were crammed on a small motorbike. We too were on motorbikes, the favourite form of transport in these parts, and we beckoned to him to stop. We climbed off our bikes and sought shade under some of the huge trees in the tropical forest beside the road. We'd met Miguel Padre a few days earlier in the hot and unpleasant town of Uruara on on the Trans Amazon highway, the road that cuts across the Amazon basin from east to west. And now we had some news for him, news that we knew he'd find very upsetting. Miguel had told us his story the first time we'd met him. We sat on a bench in the shade of a mango tree outside the Catholic church, a quick witted and warm hearted man, he'd had a tough life. He'd come to the Amazon as a child with his family. Like thousands of others, they'd come in search of land, fleeing the poverty of the drought ridden north east of Brazil. But for them, it hadn't worked out. Miguel had finished up as a virtual slave, felling trees for a big landowner. He'd eventually been freed by one of the government's special anti slavery teams. But he still couldn't find a decent job. He'd ended up working for one of the large logging companies that was spreading terror in the region and was stealing valuable timber from the forest. Finally, life changed when Miguel was given a plot of land of his own on an agrarian reform settlement. For the first time, he and his family had a future. For a while, he'd practiced the only kind of farming he knew. Slash and burn agriculture. That meant cutting down forest, burning the felled vegetation and planting subsistence crops to take advantage of the temporary fertility. But then, with some encouragement from the Catholic church, Miguel and others began to ask themselves whether they should be treating the wonderful Amazon forest in this way. As Miguel put it, it fell into our heads that we should be planting trees, not cutting them down. So that's how their projects, Cementis da Floresta Seeds of the Forest, was born. Their idea is to use the resources the forest provides without destroying it. So they're collecting Brazil nuts, they're extracting oil from the seeds of the andiroba tree, they're collecting oil from the copaiba tree. And they're also cultivating seedlings so they can replant. But there's a lot to learn. They've been receiving advice from other communities, communities that have lived much longer in the forest. And some of them are going to college to train in sustainable forest management. Which is why Miguel was living in Uruara, that baking hot town where economic and political power is firmly in the hands of the big logging companies. We talked to some of the loggers in the town and they didn't conceal their hostility towards the Seeds of the Forest project. And their anger increased. Recently, when the community had asked the authorities if they could work another large area forest. Miguel and some of the others have received death threats. That's why when we stopped Miguel on the road, we felt worried about the news we had to give him. We'd just been to his plot and discovered that while he was away, loggers had invaded his land and felled some of his most valuable trees. The export value of the felled timber was some £40,000 a huge amount of money. But it wasn't this that upset Miguel. It was the way the loggers were riding roughshod over his future and the future of his children. It didn't occur to him to turn to the authorities for help. Ill call him my uncle, the one who foams like a wild pig, he said with a grim smile. I first visited the Amazon region when the Trans Amazon highway was being built almost 40 years ago. It was a really wild west then, as indigenous groups and peasant families were brutally driven off their land. Brazil has made huge advances since then. It's become a democracy. Millions have been lifted out of absolute poverty. But on the Amazon frontier, might is still right. The logging companies act like modern day rubber barons, bribing the authorities and making a mockery of the justice system. When Miguel's basic rights are infringed, the only thing he can think of doing is to call in the men of his family to protect him.
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Narrator/Presenter
Sue Branford there. Trying to end the chronic pollution in parts of China won't be easy. But the authorities in Beijing say they are trying. Smoke from factories, coupled with emissions from millions of cars and lorries, combines with winds off the Gobi Desert to leave cities, particularly those in the north, shrouded in dense clouds of pungent fumes. But now, according to the official Xinhua news agency, the government is banning some vehicles from the roads and hopes to produce cleaner fuel. Martin Patience says any improvements will be very welcome, but he doesn't expect much to change, at least in the short term.
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Kate Adie
When I wake up in the morning, I pause briefly before opening my curtains and what I see out of my window is likely to set the tone for the rest of the day. I'm not checking up on the weather. Instead, I want to know exactly how bad the pollution is going to be. On some mornings, it's truly appalling. It's as if the whole city's been turned into a smoker's lounge, with a yellowish nicotine colour staining the sky. And this month, pollution in Beijing went from bad to, well, dangerous. A quick disclaimer here. I was actually in the sunny island of Hainan, breathing in fresh sea air when the smoke hit the capital. But back in Beijing, hospitals were overrun by the young and the old suffering from respiratory problems. People were warned to stay indoors. The capital streets were unusually quiet. Sales of air purifiers for homes as well as face masks rocketed, and some stores simply ran out. Even for a city that is used to pollution, this was an emergency. After my Return to the capital, you could still taste the pollution. You could see it. And for that reason, the authorities can no longer deny it. For years, they've tried. The government often played down the pollution in the capital, insisting it was merely fog, despite evidence to the contrary that was plain for all to see. It was a position, of course, they could never hold. And following public pressure, the authorities introduced new pollution readings at the beginning of this year. And so, when this smog hit the state media for the first time on this issue, the barrelled in the pollution story led China's main evening TV bulletin. Even the People's Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, ran a headline asking, what's wrong with our air? Well, the straightforward answer is quite a lot. The problems are caused by the country developing at a speed and scale unprecedented in history. It's been growth at all costs, resulting in widespread environmental degradation. Coal burning energy plants power the country's factories. They provide the heat for hundreds of millions of homes. But they also spew out toxins into the air. In Beijing alone, 5 million cars choke the streets, an illustration of the country's growing prosperity. But all these vehicles, normally bumper to bumper, are also a sign of a country that isn't coming to terms with pollution. And it's not just the air quality. China's lakes, rivers, its underground water supplies have all been badly polluted by lightly regulated industry. Almost no one in Beijing trusts the water that comes out of their taps. So maybe, just maybe, the great smog of Beijing in recent days will mark a turning point. A time when the Chinese say, you know what? Enough is enough. We need to prioritize quality of life over economic growth. In recent months, there have been several large scale demonstrations against factories being built in various cities. Slowly, a not in my backyard crowd is emerging in China. But a huge sea change looks unlikely. For now anyway, economic growth remains the government's top priority. Without it, the authorities worry about instability if large numbers of people are left unemployed. And there are still hundreds of millions of Chinese who want the keys to their first car, their first air conditioner, even a fridge. Who's going to be the one to deny them their dream? For that reason, clean air is likely to remain a rarity in Beijing for years to come. Some wealthy Chinese are voting with their feet and taking their kids to live in Canada or Australia. But for most, that's not an option. As for me, after two and a half years of living here, I've ordered my first air purifier and I now wear a face mask for my bike ride to work. And every morning before opening my curtains, I pause and hope that the wind has blown the pollution away.
- [22:54]
Narrator/Presenter
And that was Martin Patience. Now, when it comes to romance, there's no denying the French have a certain reputation. Perhaps their films are partly responsible. There are countless scenes in the movies of Francois Truffaut and Jean Luc Godard, for example, of men eyeing up women in the streets. And examples of what today seem like distinctly cheesy chat up lines. So has the Frenchman of today lost his touch? John Laurenson in Paris reckons that if the proliferation of books, DVDs and coaching sessions which promise to improve his technique, are anything to go by, many do seem to have lost their way.
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John Laurenson
A sunny afternoon outside Paris's Pompidou Centre Art Museum, Nicolas breaks into a run. He and his coach have spied a target sparkly t shirt at 2 o'. Clock. Excuse me, he says. I've just seen you and I think that with that T shirt with sequins on, you must be a gold digger or something. Your style is really not bad. Listening in thanks to a discreet microphone clipped to Nicolas shirt, coach Alex Roth stares blankly in front of him. This isn't the first time he's heard one of his students make a hash of it. That's kind, says the girl, but I have a lover. Roth shrugs. Rejection's okay. Toughens you up. What's not OK is not daring to have a go. He's been there himself. That's why he founded his company, Lifestyle Conseil, four years ago. When I was younger, I was kind of a beast, he explains. I was kind of lonely. Not so many friends. And one day I said ok, I'm going to lose some weight, go out, make some friends, have a girlfriend. It was quite a hard job. But now I can help other men do the same because I did the job before. The goal is to turn the timid, the burbling and the clumsy, the crass, the mute and the downright creepy into what lifestyle conseil considers to be the winning combination. The gentleman bastard. Suave but determined. Well mannered but carnivorous. Once upon a time, seduction was something French men were good at, while those of other nations, one might think of, had to drink for several hours before saying hello. But is it still true of the French today? Down in Paris's Luxembourg Garden, hunting ground for seducers past and present, I went to find out by asking French women to describe the best and worst attempts to woo them. The result? Good news, like the pain of childbirth, born botched Efforts to pick them up are things women are programmed to forget. They only remember the good ones. The man who managed to chat up a woman from the other side of a shop window, for example. Very French, with the Marcel Marceau mimes. Or the one who went up to a girl who was waiting for her friend and said, I'm sorry I'm late. Takes a bit of thinking about, but this is clever French stuff. I have a friend who met the mother of his child while working as a waiter. She was a customer out with friends. Under each dish he brought to the table for her, he left her a written note. By the time they got to dessert, she was, as they say, over here, conquered. And then there's Stefan, an old friend of my wife's. And no, they didn't. Thank you for asking. He's a dog trainer by profession. Not really a lady. Killer job, you might think. Stefan, though, is a seducteur extollinaire. In the street, in bars, in shops, wherever they might go, they cannot hide from Stephane, the seducteur extraordinaire. He is, it must be said, pretty good looking. Tall, slim, stubbly. But above all, he has what a French girlfriend of mine once called a bedroom voice. Deep, warm, calm, soft. His advice? Be natural. Although that may not work so well as it does for Stefan if you are, say, ugly, fat and stupid. Any other advice, then? The roles of men and women are a little confused nowadays, he says. But a lot of women tell me they like romantic stuff. Someone who talks to them in the street. Flowers. They like it. And many men have forgotten this. Chat up lines, okay? Sometimes, if a woman resists, I insist a little, he says. I say, just come for a coffee. If you don't like me, it's okay. But I must know who is the this beautiful woman? Back at the Pompidou Center, Nicolas still has a long way to go. A seduction ant at the foot of a seduction mountain. How many girls has he approached this afternoon? Everybody's lost count. Possibly suffering from charm fatigue, he begins an umpteenth offensive with, excuse me, I think you're not bad looking. To which the young woman replies, oh, yeah? How Many out of 10? But despite these inauspicious beginnings, when he asks for her number, she replies, no problem. And when he comes back to receive his coach's congratulations, his smile, perhaps for the first time this afternoon, is a real one.
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Narrator/Presenter
Success at last. John Laurenson at a French seduction school. Bringing this edition to a close. There'll be more educational material from our own correspondence on Thursday and Saturday next week. Until then, goodbye.