Flying over Berlin in 1991 – aerial shots taken by a helicopter
Berlin 1990 the end of the war (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) – home movies shot by Derek Williams, who was in Berlin to see the Pink Floyd concert.
The BBC has a very useful web resource on Tunnel 29. The excellent podcast Criminal covers it in this episode:
Here I am visiting the Berlin wall in 2023:
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Collective (2020) – a heart wrenching account of how public officials and investigative journalists sought to bring awareness and justice for the 64 people who were killed, and 146 who were injured, in a preventable nightclub fire in 2015.
To see Ceausescu’s speech on December 21st and the exact moment where he realised that it was all over, see here; to see him being tried, and shot, see here.
We have a 2 bedroom apartment in the family-friendly ski resort of La Plagne Montalbert. It has a master bedroom and a smaller bunk room making it perfect for a family of 4, and the sofa bed in the lounge means that it can cater for 6. Located on the second floor, the balcony overlooks the piste and provides hours of entertainment and afternoon sun.
❇️ How to get there
Montalbert is a 2 hour drive from Lyon or just over 2 hours from Geneva. Both airports are served by low cost flights with usual car rentals available.
Aime station is at the bottom of the valley (11km away), and easy to reach either by taxi (15 minutes) or a regular bus service (via Altibus). During the ski season there are often direct trains from St Pancras, however return journeys depart from Bourg-St-Maurice, which is twice as far from Aime (this is because only Bourg has the security equipment that allows it to have international passengers). A good option is to get a standard Eurostar to France and then change for a TGV to Aime. There is a regular (and cheap) service from Paris Gare du Lyon but – top tip – you can also change at Lille, which means you avoid having to cross Paris! For more see the Man in Seat 61.
We are 976km from Calais which is around 9 hours of driving. It can be done in one day, but France has plenty of clean and affordable hotels at convenient stops along the way (we use Novotels). The toll roads are fast and efficient and it’s much more pleasant to drive through France than the UK. There are two ways to reach Calais:
There are regular and cheap ferry services from Dover, from £80 per trip (see P&O or DFDS)
The Eurotunnel (now known as Le Shuttle) is usually around £140 but takes just 35 minutes and goes from Folkestone.
❄️ Winter
La Plagne is world famous for its size and array of runs. Best suited for all rounders and families, there are enough black runs to challenge serious skiers but the main places are accessible via blue runs. Best of all the Vanoise Express connects La Plagne with Les Arc, providing over 400km of ski runs, 70% of which are above 2,000ft. There are also 18 separate “fun zones” and new activities and lifts are added each year.
Image: https://en.la-plagne.com/discover/ski-area/piste-map
☀️ Summer
Montalbert is a charming mountain village which makes it a suitable place to vacation all year round. Outside of the ski season there are plenty of amenities and the summer wildflowers are stunning. The gondola still operates and this allows walkers to reach the higher mountains. Mountain bikers can take ski lifts up several runs and enjoy the descent. For more see this summer guide, or a trail map for Mont Jovet.
Photo: https://www.savoie-mont-blanc.com/en/walking/mont-jovet-loop-146925/
️ How to book
You can check availability or make enquiries through all the usual platforms. And the cheapest way is to book direct with Montalbert Ski.
I have been to the Bank of England Museum several times and highly recommend it. It provides a good overview of the Bank’s history, contains interactive content, and has special exhibitions. Situated in the basement of the Bank (and therefore very close to the eponymous underground station) it’s open on every weekday and even opens late every third Thursday. The best part: it is totally free!
My most recent visit was in June 2024.
I started by looking at early examples of currency. Gold coins originate from c7th bc in Lydia (now in modern Turkey) and here is my photo of one of the first:
The museum has a section on the historic non monetary uses of gold. Here is a photo of a gold-plated visor from a metal workers helmet:
The bank’s notes originate from 1743 and the most popular types served as a type of payable receipt, that would enable the holder to redeem coin deposits. Here are some examples of early bank notes:
Notice how some are torn in the bottom corner. As this page explains, this shows that the balance has been paid.
I was very pleased to see a section marking the history of women at the bank. The first female employees started in 1894, and the bank was one of the first institutions in the City to employ them.
My favourite part of the museum is the attempt to explain how monetary policy works. This machine gives visitors the chance to play the role of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) and move interest rates up or down depending on how close inflation is to the target.
As you can see, I wasn’t very good!
But I did get it in the end!
While I was visiting there was a special exhibit on slavery and the bank. Over a 300 year period the global slave trade took over 12 million Africans from their homes, and this map reveals the scale.
I didn’t learn much about the banks role, but I was encouraged to reflect:
I hope you enjoyed my tour as much as I did. Please consider visiting the museum for yourself!
You can take a short quiz to test your knowledge here:
I was saddened to learn that The Museum of Neoliberalism is closing (see here). It is located near Lewisham and I visited in November 2023.
In this article I wanted to share 5 points that came to mind as I looked around.
(1) There is a tendency for critics of neoliberalism to present a conspiracy theory view of the movement. The museum presents this in the following way:
I mean, they even used red thread!
The serious point is that these outside accounts don’t match my inside knowledge, and I don’t believe that’s due to naivety on my part. I’m a senior fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and disagree that they constitute a “total perversion of Smith’s ideas”, but welcome an intellectual conversation about that claim. Back in 2016 Sam Bowman (then Executive Director at the ASI) wrote an article called “I’m a neoliberal. Maybe you are too” and yet I’ve not seen an honest engagement with that.
Ultimately, I think that the truth is less exciting than the museum depicts – these think tanks are transparent with their objectives and activities, punch above their weight in terms of resources, but have little direct power or influence. It’s an error to present them as something they are not.
(2) There is lots to be said about what has happened to economic inequality (and why) over the course of the twentieth century (my teaching materials are here). But the idea that governments responded to falling inequality by increasing prices is simply wrong.
Milton Friedman’s monetarist prescriptions were a response to the prevalent inflation, and succeeded in controlling it. That inflation was a result of excessive money creation, in part due to the fiscal profligacy of government spending. The chronology is clear – neoliberalism gained dominance within the context of high inflation, and sought to combat it. It did not generate inflation as a means to reverse declining inequality.
(3) There is a long list of notable moments of privatisation in the UK. I suspect the assumption is that because privatisation is unpopular, this is persuasive. However, the paradox of privatization is that although most people believe that the process by which assets are returned to private ownership is often flawed, they typically do not want the state to control those industries. (Note that the solution, therefore, is to avoid nationalisation in the first place.)
But when you actually look at these companies – Lunn Poly, Thomas Cook – does anyone really want state ownership of travel agents? Is Rolls Royce really a company that the UK government should run? Really?
(4) The section on “bullshit jobs” exposes poor working practices and elicits sympathy for workers who lack certain employment rights.
In my view, though, the last thing you should do in such situations is to remove options. And yet this is what higher labour standards, by imposing costs on employers, tend to do. Ultimately I find these sorts of judgments elitist and snobbish. There’s a million jobs I’d hate to do, but any job that someone voluntarily agrees to, because they view it as an improvement over their next best alternative, is ok by me. Generally speaking, the gig economy has been a liberation within the context of excessive restrictions on labour.
(5) And what’s the conclusion? Well this final panel, called “there is an alternative” sums things up nicely.
Apparently
“the current crisis is an open moment of possibility in which the world will step beyond it into something else. What that ‘something else’ looks like is up to you.”
Forgive me, but I do not see an articulation of an alternative. This does nothing to dispense the fear that the only plausible alternative to a free market system of private property rights is a utopian nonsense.
So although I take issue with the presentation of evidence and the underlying narrative, I admire the concept of a Museum of Neoliberalism and I am sorry that it is closing.
I’ve been regularly visiting Zagreb for over a decade, and have noticed that it is unique for three main reasons:
(1) The old town – all nice European cities have an old town, but five things make Zagreb’s particularly memorable.
The Funicular is the shortest in the world and Zagreb’s first form of public transit.
©Vladographer/Getty Images Plus
The Gric cannon fires at 12:00pm every day, and has done for for over a century. Kaboom!
The Stone Gate is in the upper town and displays an icon that supposedly survived a fire in 1731 (see here). Here is a photo of the stone gate from the 1940s:
The Gric tunnels are handy ways to pass through parts of the centre. I first heard about them from an episode of one of my favourite YouTube series, Cockpit Casual.
Croatia (as in “cravat”) invented the tie. See more here.
(2) Weird museums – Zagreb is home to several bizarre sounding museums, all in the centre of town. I’ve been to most, but am not sure what order to list them here. The perfect night out?
(3) Festival of light – held in March each year, the festival marks the arrival of Spring and includes installations throughout the city. The use of light in public spaces is a theme in Zagreb, as you can see from the display on the Hendrix bridge:
Finally, here are some ad hoc recommendations:
Music
Movies
Do you ever copy and paste an online essay into a word document, delete the photos, resize the text, print out a hard copy, find a pub in a strange city, order a pint of beer and a Jack Daniel’s, put in some earbuds to dampen the noise, and relax? I do. Here are a collection of slightly longer newspaper articles that I’ve found absorbing and well worth reading:
For more of this genre, see Best of 2023: Personal Essays.
It’s 15 years since my first trip to Belgrade. Here’s a collection of cultural artifacts that have contributed to my understanding of, and affection for, Serbia.
The most important books in terms of history and culture, are:
The Belgrade panorama:
The Belgrade phantom:
In 2019 I went to the Belgrade derby for the second time, and British YouTuber Thogden was also there. If you look carefully you might spot me in the crowd
This NBA documentary showing the importance of basketball:
This tour can be conducted on foot, but links to virtual resources are also provided.
55 Broadway, SW1H 0BD
This is a grade 1 art deco building near St James’ park, originally home to the London Underground. It’s not particularly tall (it’s only slightly bigger than Big Ben, and half the height of St Paul’s Cathedral) but given that it has a steel frame it is not only a skyscraper, but London’s first! (It doesn’t look like a skyscraper, but the stone encasing provides no structural integrity. Sadly, it closed in January 2020.
If you visit, try to spot the naked sculptures, Night and Day, on the outside of the building. (For controversy on this, see here).
HM Treasury, SW1A 2HQ
The Treasury is responsible for public finance and economic policy of the UK. It is located within the Government Offices in Great George Street, near Parliament Square. It has a large internal courtyard and the basement is home to the Churchill War Rooms (part of the Imperial War Museum).
Fun fact: It served as the headquarters for MI6 in the Bond movie, Spectre, and was the starting point of the street race in Fast And Furious 6.
11 Downing Street, SW1A 2AB
Next door to the most famous address in the UK (10 Downing Street is the government headquarters and traditionally the private residence of the Prime Minister), 11 Downing Street is the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer. This is the equivalent of a “Minister of Finance”, which is the person responsible for fiscal policy.
Fun fact: Because the private living space is larger at no. 11 than no. 10, when Tony Blair became prime minister in 1997 he decided to live there instead. Every subsequent prime minster has done the same thing.
Take a virtual tour here: https://artsandculture.google.com/u/0/partner/10-downing-street
Bank of England, EC2R 8AH
Established in 1694 this is one of the oldest banks in the world and a model for central banks. It was nationalised in 1946. It has a monopoly on producing banknotes in England and Wales, and is responsible for the conduct of UK monetary policy.
There is an excellent museum in the basement, and several online exhibits, including this one on banknotes. The basement also houses the Bank of England vaults, which contain over 400,000 bars of gold.
