I had a nagging feeling

I log on to the Times-Picayune website nearly every day top read local news. I have even been known to buy a copy at my local coffee shop and peruse the articles. I have never really got a grip on this paper. I know too little, I am ashamed to admit, of local politics to fully get a handle on the quality of reporting from the paper. I did not know how much I should believe of the stories of pumps being fixed, flooding levels etc. But it all seems very rosy ... perhaps too rosy.

The kicker came today. And not from the Times-Picayune. But from this article in the Guardian. It describes the demolishing of the public housing in New Orleans and the political machinations going on behind it. I have always felt uneasy about the demolitions and the claims that these housing projects would be replaced with mixed income housing (that would take a LOT of mixed income housing projects to equal all of those low income units). My uneasy-ness was not reassured by the Times-Picayune articles and even with my poor local political knowledge I sensed that the paper had a bias towards the demolition of the housing projects. Where was the investigative journalism? I sensed that many stones had been left unturned.

I am ashamed that it took an article from a British newspaper to confirm my suspicions. The Times-Picayune cannot be trusted to do the investigative journalism that the people of this city deserve and need. I was extremely pleased to read in this article that it is the NOLA bloggers that fulfill this vital need. This article quotes Dangerblonde!! Yet again survival and information are left to the people of this city to do for themselves. The professionals are incompetent, inadequate and ineffective. It really is pathetic. There are two levels to how things run in this city. One is the official level where very little gets done mixed up in mediocrity, cronyism and bureaucratic bungling. The other level is grass roots where amazing projects sprout and people with passion get things done.

This situation in this city is infuriating. Whilst the grass roots people are inspiring and I am amazed by all they accomplish, it is wrong that it should be this way. Try going to get anything official done in this town. Sure they'll be nice and call you 'baby' or 'sugar' but you'll be led on a merry dance of incompetence.

So it is not surprising that the local paper is infected with the same culture. I hope that more journalists from elsewhere come to help give us a true perspective on what is going on here. I shudder to think what the end result of demolishing these projects is going to be. I find myself in agreement with Ethan Brown in the Guardian:
"The mix of crony capitalism, tasered protesters and a complacent corporate media is sheer Shock Doctrine. " and "For New Orleanians suffering from woes ranging from a sky-high murder rate to a bulldozed public and private housing, it seems, unfortunately, that the post-Katrina tale of hardship and struggle has only just begun."

I get wet, I get dry

I've been neglecting my blogs recently - I've thought of posts, not got round to posting them or quite simply just felt blah.... I'm sure its just my adjustment to my summer....

Anyway....

I've just been to my local (and favourite) coffee shop, Rue De La Course on Magazine St and devoured the Sunday Times Picayune and the Sunday NY Times. Lots of fodder for my grey matter (and future posts..). However I do miss the Observer and Scotland on Sunday - reading them online just isn't the same and the chances of me smearing my forehead with newsprint ink is far less likely. I love having a Sunday to commune with newspapers. I firmly believe that was what God truly intended "His" day for!!

I was walking home along Magazine when it began to drizzle. I thought about how rare it seems in N'awlins to find drizzle, that widely loved and hated Scottish phenomenon. N'awlins Fog there is plenty of - particularly in the Autumn and "Winter". But drizzle, no. And I thought that, other than my newspapers getting a little soggy, how nice it was to walk in warm drizzle.

It made me think of Stefan, one of my parents' friends from Belgium. We went on holiday as a family to Brussels to see Stefan when I was about ten. I remember we went for a walk in the woods and it began to rain. My Mum quickly got out our waterproofs and kitted us out. But Stefan just stood there in his shorts and T-shirt in the rain getting wet. My sister, brother and I used to the bone-chilling aspect of Scottish rain, were shocked. "You'll get wet!!" we cried. "I'll get dry again!" Stefan replied.

So I was walking in the spirit of Stefan when N'awlins decided to defy me and show how rare indeed the event of N'awlins drizzle is, and really rain. Luckily I was spared the usual downpour - when the heavens open and God dumps his bath water on your head! But my newspapers are decidedly soggy!!

Forecasting the Storms of Entergy

Today I did something I haven't done in quite a while. I actually read a hard copy of a newspaper. We have some dear, old friends in town for a few days and we walked to Rue De La Course for coffee (photo) and to peruse the local rag and the NY Times.

In today's paper I found two stories that I found quite alarming. The first was to do with our storm forecasting capabilities in this country. Apparently we have a less than satisfactory means of predicting hurricanes. This is alarming. We need 400 million bucks to put a Quik-SCAT satelllite into orbit. I personally think this is money that would be totally justifiable. However its not going to be spent and on top of that the Feds are already $700,000 below what the funding should be for hurricane research in this country as it is.

Maybe its just me but surely the huge costs ensuing from Katrina would make hurricane awareness, prediction and evacuation a top priority in this country? But that's just little old naive moi!

The second article which made me mutter was an opinion piece about our lovely energy company in N'awlins, Entergy. Our bill was quite shocking last month and some friends of our had even worse ones ($500 - that's Cleveland winter prices - and a big apartment at that!!). So I read this article with interest. The conclusion particularly had my attention:

The Utility Committee is open to exploring any regulatory structure that will bring rates down. We welcome proposals from community groups.

But let's not repeat our past mistakes under some form of statewide regulation that dumps disproportionate costs onto New Orleans ratepayers.

I think I need to read the paper in hard copy more often.