CalumCarr on .... Whatever: October 2011

Tuesday, 25 October 2011

Very, Very Occasionally - Faith

Despite my hundreds of posts this is a very strange post to write.

After more than 60 years, most of them being a trenchant atheist, I find myself with faith, a faith which seems to have crept up and snared me. ‘Snared’ and I am not in the least bothered. I am at ease.

How could this happen?

Every logical fibre in my body, and there are many, still tells me that there is no God but logic has no place here.

What has this to do with music?

I was at two church services recently, before last Sunday, and at each I felt apart, outside: the service had no meaning. I stood for each song but didn’t sing. I couldn’t sing when the words were nothing to me. Last Sunday, however, I stood and closed my eyes. The song I had never heard before but at the first singing of two particular lines:

“And I will fall at Your feet.
I will fall at Your feet”

I shivered and had goose-bumps. Throughout all my posting of YouTube videos I must have viewed / listened to more than 2000 videos and, whilst I have been moved, I have never had an experience like Sunday’s.

I had to find the song; I had to remember these lines. Yesterday, I could barely remember but I had enough words and eventually I found:

This is Our God Hillsong

I was engulfed. I listened and listened and listened and listened and still I was engulfed. After many hours and many videos I still couldn’t break away – not that I wanted to.

To help me on my way I need to listen to this, another Hillsong video, which I must have just about worn out!

With All I Am Hillsong

Into Your hand
I commit again
With all I am
For You Lord

You hold my world
In the palm of Your Hand
And I am Yours
Forever

Jesus I believe in You
Jesus I belong to You
You're the reason that I live
The reason that I sing
With all I am

I'll walk with You
Wherever You go
Through tears and Joy
I'll trust in You

And I will live
In all of Your ways
Your promises
Forever

Jesus I believe in You
Jesus I belong to You
You're the reason that I live
The reason that I sing

Jesus I believe in You
Jesus I belong to You
You're the reason that I live
The reason that I sing
With all I am

I will worship
I will worship You

Jesus I believe in You
Jesus I belong to You
You're the reason that I live
The reason that I sing

Jesus I believe in You
Jesus I belong to You
You're the reason that I live
The reason that I sing
With all I am

I will worship
I will worship You

Where am I now?

I don’t know other than I am not where I was only a few days ago …. but that’s OK.

Friday, 14 October 2011

Trafigura – Old Story Pops Up Again

Once again a very interesting article about Trafigura and its super-injunctions appears. There is a difference this time: it is written by a partner, Nigel Tait, in the law firm, Carter-Ruck, who acted for Trafigura.

In case any have forgotten, Trafigura is the oil-trading company which was on receiving end of widespread, and many would say ‘well-deserved’, opprobrium when the waste products of the Probo Koala were dumped in and around Abidjan. The Probo Koala was used, by Trafigura, as a floating treatment plant in which coker naphtha was ‘washed’ with sodium hydroxide to produce gasoline of a quality which didn’t meet European standards but could be sold legitimately in parts of Africa. The waste from this treatment was dumped by Company Tommy in Abidjan.

The main thrust of the article I ignore but the following paragraph is worth picking up on,

‘The injunction concerned a draft report which had been stolen from Trafigura’s offices and then passed to the Guardian – “the Minton report”. The stolen document had been commissioned by Trafigura’s Solicitors, and was prepared by John Minton of an environmental consultancy at their request, in the immediate aftermath of the incident in the Ivory Coast. [Calum’s emphasis] It was also a report based not on any factual investigation or analysis but based on hypothetical ideas as to what may have happened to the slops from the Probo Koala in the Ivory Coast. So, the “report” was in fact a confidential, legally privileged document which had been stolen and illegally passed to the Guardian. The report had also been quickly and authoritatively superseded by a Dutch government analysis of the actual slops themselves, and there had therefore been no need for Trafigura or anyone else to rely on it any further.’

Only after the waste was dumped and the incident became public did Trafigura commission Minton to carry out a desk study of the possible products of the sodium hydroxide washing of the coker naphtha.

But Trafigura knew, before the treatment was carried out on the Probo Koala, that it produced waste which was difficult to dispose of. Their own emails highlight this.

Given this difficulty would it not have been reasonable for Trafigura to have had a

- desk study carried out before treatment started on the Probo Koala

- study carried out on the waste after treatment and before the attempted disposal in Amsterdam

Would a responsible company not have undertaken these two actions?

Trafigura did neither.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Very, Very Occasionally - Moon

Slightly under the weather today, been sitting at pc most of day and so two posts in two days.

Two great songwriters with their versions of the moon.

First up is Jimmy Webb, the writer of many classics such as Up, Up and Away, By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Wichita Lineman, Galveston, and MacArthur Park.

The Moon’s a Harsh Mistress Jimmy Webb