Throwing plastic bricks at torturers, because words bounce off

Another brick in the wall

An anonymous artist whose provocative Lego recreations is attracting interest from the art and cinema world gave me their first interview

Legofesto is a British artist who describes herself as “a politicsjunkie and news-hound, with a obsession for lego” and “very, very pissed off about how this War on Terror is being prosecuted.” In response to scenes of war and torture, she works to recreate some of the most notorious images, using Lego, based on photographs and first-hand accounts to make the scenes as accurate as possible. The results are disturbing, showing horrific scenes in this most innocent of children’s toys. The simplicity of the artwork is made more powerful by stripping the original image down to its shocking essentials. Usually the tableau is added to her blog with a cut-and-paste of a news story about the incident, and only rarely does the artist make a direct commentary.

Film director, Brian de Palma is also an admirer and wanted to use her recreation of the rape in Mahmudiya in his film Redacted, she said. Speaking about the film, he said “It started with small things, like the Legofesto site for example. Here’s a site that actually reconstructs the incident with Legos, shows a Lego figure being raped, blood on the floor, etc. and is critical of the event, but the lawyers come and say, we can’t use it because it has a brand name - Lego. Not that they are to blame. If you put it in its real context - an Internet blog using Lego figures to illustrate an event, I could not see the problem, but legal vetting is set to safeguard and in that respect

Who wants the possibility of going to war with Lego?”

Legofesto protects her identity and usually only communicates with the media via email but agreed to give New Europe her first real interview.

What prompted you to make these lego re-creations?

Watching the Iraq war unfolding, Guantanamo filling up and photos and testimony of abuses filtering out, I noticed there was little response from the art world to the horrors that we were seeing. I was playing with my boy one day and he was doing what boys do, playing with knives and soldiers and throwing mini-figures into a toy prison and it made me think about how we’re de-humanising people, we’re treating them as if they had no more moral value than a toy figurine, so I thought it would be interesting to see what happened when I used the language and toys of play to depict the real world at it’s harshest and most unjust.

You say that you’re angry about the Iraq war and counter terror policy. What exactly are you angry about?

The whole damn thing. Not that I disagree that 9/11 needed a response, and a strong one, but it needed to be an effective response and diplomacy wasn’t given a chance, especially with the farce at the UN over the “second resolution” that never happened and the UK’s infamous and discredited “dodgy dossier,” leading to the suspicious suicide of Dr David Kelly, who was a dissenting voice in the run-up to the publication of the dossier. Iraq was the wrong, war at the wrong time, for the wrong reason. I think that for dogmatic reasons the US wanted a war at any cost and Tony Blair was deluded enough to go along with it. I tried blogging, going on marches and writing letters to MP’s but they had no effect. It was the waste of stamps.

Did you get any feedback from British MP’s?

I got some positive replies from a couple of anti-war Labour backbenchers and one managed to ask Tony Blair a question that put him on the spot and embarrassed him, but ultimately it had no effect. I also talked to the Liberal Whips Office who were the only party in parliament trying to stop the war, but the UK parliamentary system marginalises them, so as far as I and the many others who protested against the war felt, the political establishment failed us completely and that is the underlying reason that this expensive and bloody farce went ahead.

What are you trying to achieve?

I want to keep the debate going. To keep it in people’s minds, to remind us of our atrocities because the media has moved on and they don’t want to dwell on the tactics. Too many euphemisms were used. Enhanced interrogation, anyone? We understand what torture and rape mean, yet want to look away and I wanted to keep people’s attention focused on it.

But hasn’t the media kept with the story? Obama has just released the torture memos.

That’s a change in administration. It’s also means that media attention is coming back to torture and we need to take a long hard look at the Bush administration and the moral collapse that is their legacy. We live in a world where the right-wing is saying that waterboarding isn’t torture. Could you imagine their reaction if Iran openly did that to a US soldier? Then it is torture. It takes some gall to claim that you’re the world’s leading force for good whilst creating Abu Graib and a whole network of secret prisons in Europe. We should not lower our own morals and values to those of terrorists and criminals. We need to be better than that.

What has been the reaction to Legofesto?

I’ve been shocked by the response, it’s been huge. It’s been overwhelmingly good and I’ve been exhibiting in a few places in the UK, once alongside work from Guantantamo Bay and Baghram inmates, which was an honour because I was pleased that people who had actually been through the experiences I had recreated understood my motivations. It was touching and profoundly humbling when recently freed prisoner Moazzam Begg told me that he had used Legofesto to explain to his children what he had been through. I have also spoken to ex-guards from Guantanamo Bay.

How have Lego responded to you?

Not heard anything from them. I make it clear that Lego do not endorse what I do and that my site is not for children.

What next?

I’m waiting for the new torture memos to come out and will make more pieces.

What do you think you’ve achieved?

I’ve helped to continue the debate. People are using Legofesto to talk about torture and state violence. As an artist I need to use art to raise and provoke debate about the really serious issues affecting us, because what we do in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere does affect us all; our actions have consequenses for others and ourselves.

If we silently acquiesce to torture, what have we as people, become?

The artistic response from the art establishment has been muted as if many are too frightened to engage with these issues or just don’t have anything to say on matters of substance. We must not forget there are hundreds of iraqi artists struggling to practice under a new, supposedly freer regime, yet they are being killed for making art, having to go into exile. We don’t often get to see their art.

Alastair Campbell gives a masterclass

You spin me right round baby, right round / Uni of Salford Press

His surprising model for communications

Alastair Campbell, who was British Prime Minister, Tony Blair's right hand man, arrived at the European Communications Summit in Brussels to give a masterclass in the art of getting your message across.

In his address he accused the media of being focused on the negative and said that there had been a sea change in the media landscape that made the model, pioneered by himself and Lord Mandelson, out of date. He introduced himself modestly, "I'm the guy who was in charge of Blair's press relations and had the worst reputation, being somewhere between asylum seekers and mass murderers." The world of media had changed beyond recognition, he said, leaving financial institutions, politicians and others, feeling that they no longer had control.

Campbell said that we live in "a game changing moment that will change the world forever.  We live in a world defined by the pace of change. The communicators are not in control." adding that business people and politicians had to accept that the outside world often upset their agenda, citing the financial crisis and British Petroleum. In the latter case, he said that, "BP is a successful oil company, gets involved with a crisis and the communications have not been very good and the crisis they are in has been exacerbated by the poor communications."

The new media was also having an effect, according to Campbell, there are "120, million blogs. most will be read by author and few friends. Some will connect and become part of media landscape, as important as newspapers." This was also been shown by recent events, such as the protests in Iran over the recent election and more recently in China, "Iran; most of  us followed that, not with conventional media, I followed on twitter". He said that "one big change is advent of the internet. This means that any organization or individual can have a stake and impact on how that organization is seen. a lot of organizations have not responded well."

In contrast, Campbell expressed his contempt for the traditional media who he repeatedly criticised for "being negative" and described as, "judgemental and aggressive" and saying that this was a worldwide trend, where journalists, often under the influence of proprietors, focused on negative reporting, often with a political agenda.

Political communication

In the political sphere, he praised the Obama Presidential campaign, saying that it "bypassed traditional media to turn people into activists and then empower them to campaign." He also had warm words of praise for President Bill Clinton, who he said was the master strategist.

He did note some changes in the recent British election, especially when the traditional method of campaigning, the political billboard campaign failed to work as before. Campbell noted that, "the Tories spent a lot of money and it went down a black hole because the internet was totally defacing the meaning on them. Thousands of spoof versions appeared that the public preferred." He cited the example of the Conservative poster featuring David Cameron and the slogan, 'We can't go on like this', saying as soon as it appeared a spoof version was produced that added the line, 'with suspicious minds', turning the poster into an Elvis song lyric. He added that, "people were waiting for the response when new poster came out. I think we've seen the end of the traditional political poster."

As an example of a strategic failure he gave Senator McCain's Presidential election campaign as an example, "His message was that he represented experience and that he wasn't George Bush. He was going along quite well, Obama was doing reasonably, then he brought in Sarah Palin. Tactically it was good, people loved it, but strategically it was a disaster. He was saying, I'm not George Bush but my number two is George Bush in a skirt with lipstick."

Britain and Europe

Asked by New Europe, about how well he had communicated Europe, he replied, "Not as well as we would have liked.  There were all sorts of reasons. Some cultural, some to do with the media. The one area, unlike the Tories, who have done some, well, not deals, but some close business there, but I do think we never did policy deals with media organizations to get their support, but we didn't challenge the mainly eurosceptic media as much as we should. when we tried it just became one of those thing where we said let's just park it for a while. I don't think we were successful in explaining Europe as an economic as opposed to political entity."

When it came to communicating, he said that, "the Queen is very popular and has never given an interview, so that's a model..."

On condition

Tim Farron lives in paradise already / Liberal Democrats

Is there anything in today's political life that is more willfully misunderstood than religion?

This is what I thought when a hatchet job was written after Tim Farron's ascension to the Liberal Democrat throne, for they had elected a Christian, one suspected of being evangelical.

Interviewed on BBC's Today programme, the aural morning mass to the movers and shakers, Farron was asked if he prayed, to which he replied that of course he did. What about? thundered the presenter. Farron said that he asked for wisdom to make the right choices, adding, "I don't ask him to present the answer to me". He pointed out that all people make value judgments, not just the religious.

This has been made into a call that we should be "suspicious" of the new Liberal leader in an article that uses cheap hack tricks, by setting out an emotional analysis, designed for the writers own value judgments with an edited version of the transcript tacked to the end of the piece.

For my sins, I know a cheap trick when I see one and this was one.

It's not hard to see why, in particular evangelicalism is treated with such wariness, I prefer the quiet solitude of the Quakers rather than the loud bleatings of those that remind more of the Pharisee than the widow and her mite.

The problem is that, looking for certainty and validation, man often makes God into his own image.

This is most noticeable in the American right, where God, guns and apple pie seems to be the eleventh commandment. Our vanity will lead us all to easily from asking "What should I do?" and hearing the answer from within, not without, that agrees with the values and judgments of the petitioner.

It's not a giant leap from believing you're doing God's work, how he wants it, to a full blown messiah complex, that Achilles heel of Tony Blair. Not even the most devout can truly know they are obeying divine commands exactly right, not that this stops the tele-evangelists or on the other side, ISIS.

Far better to ask for wisdom, to have the courage to admit uncertainty, the humility to know you need to consider, to learn.

The writer Karen Armstrong, who has a deep knowledge of the worlds religions told me that people were complaining her books were too difficult, "Of course they're difficult," she said, "They're about God!"

I've found that religion has been the most difficult part of life, brought up in a faith I just didn't understand then switched into a world of the charismatics, the expressive, the emotional, I walked away as far as I could, then began slowly to walk back in darkness and confusion.

It would have been easy to start attending one of the established churches and go along with their views, to adopt them as a shield against a world I found increasingly difficult, but it was this sense of certainty that dissuaded, for I've heard many spiritual questions answered with the phrase, 'Well, the church says this or that'.

I've no idea why I started going to Quaker meetings several years ago, but for me, it seems the right place, and that's the only person I can say that for, as the internet says, 'Your mileage may vary'.

The founder, George Fox was a troubled man and wandered over England looking for spiritual solace, but found none. As he wrote in his journal, "But as I had forsaken the priests, so I left the separate preachers also, and those esteemed the most experienced people; for I saw there was none among them all that could speak to my condition. When all my hopes in them and in all men were gone, so that I had nothing outwardly to help me, nor could I tell what to do, then, oh, then, I heard a voice which said, "There is one, even Christ Jesus, that can speak to thy condition";and when I heard it, my heart did leap for joy."

 His insight was that the divine could be experienced directly, without going through priests, pastors or clergy. The phrase "speak to my condition" is a revealing one, for it refers to the whole person, not thoughts, worries or dreams or a mere aspect of a person.

We've all experienced it, that moment when something strikes with clarity, the words or phrase that grabs the whole of your attention and I've learned to pay attention to it, even occasionally hearing clues.

This is how my memory was alerted after a Quaker meeting, when the name Gerald Priestland was raised and I recalled the cover of a book of his in the family home. We had a lot of books but all theological apart from, oddly enough 'The Moon's A Balloon,' David Niven's autobiography.

Google reminded me that he was a BBC foreign correspondent who had a breakdown, oppressed by the troubles he saw and then became a Quaker and a religious correspondent. There was something speaking to my condition there, I thought.

So, I'm reading his autobiography, full of cracking anecdotes from the golden age or reporting and his collections of his religious broadcasts and I'm finding humour, kindness and a mischievousness that may not be the first thing that comes to mind when considering his religious affiliation, but as he said, the "distressingly virtuous reputation" of the Quakers "can only be healthily undermined by putting up a gin-drinking hack like me. If they'll let me in, they will let anyone in. Maybe even you."

Being attentive to what speaks to your condition is a step towards wisdom, something that a burned out hack and a leading politician both need more of, and it's there if you look beyond yourself.

The Towering Inferno - an investigation into the Berlaymont fire

The vanity of the bonfire

In 2009, there was a fire at the Commission HQ, we investigated

As eurocrats scuttled away from the flames, apocalyptic preachers roamed around Schuman quoting the more excitable passages from the Book of Revelations but the emergency services were feeling the pressure, as one senior policeman said, off the record, "We've got to hush this up, there's a lot at stake". Despite press releases trying to minimise the incident, others were beginning secret enquiries. The police source explained, "We've got suspects and there is already a lot of evidence gathering going on, but, " he tapped his nose knowingly, "there isn't any prospect of a court case, if you know what I mean".

A highly confidential list of suspects was shown to New Europe and we can exclusively reveal the lines of inquiry and why the authorities are suspicious:

Nigel Farage - An obvious suspect, but he appeared on UK TV saying he had an alibi. The CCTV cameras at the Gare du Midi are being examined as there may be a possibility that Farage lit the fire and quickly caught the Eurostar to give himself an alibi.

Robert Kilroy-Silk - Witnesses speak of a man in the inferno who appeared to be horribly burned. Police suspect this could have been the notoriously orange skinned ex-TV presenter. Also, his claim on election of "destroying the European Union" makes him a suspect. "We think he knew his career was over and he wanted to go out on a bang".

Guy Verhofstat - the ex Belgian PM was known to be angry by his failure to become Commission President and "may have acted out of a jealous rage".

Günter Verheugen - Long discussed making a bonfire of regulations. "We think this may have been what he was doing and it all went wrong, directives are highly flammable". He, allegedly, was spotted running naked through the corridors shortly after the fire began. A spokesman said "This in not unusual, he does that every now and then".

INTEL - There is a theory that they might have "sent the boys round" after being fined by the Commission recently. "The timing is suspicious".

Jöse Manuel Barroso - After reportedly losing support of some socialist parties, he may have become disillusioned. According to insiders, he has a bust of Nero in his office that he gazes at longingly. However his security team deny this, commenting on his departure from the burning building, "We've never seen him move so fast. In fact, we've rarely seen him move".

RELEX - Unverified reports suggest that Berlaymont was the target of a storm of blazing arrows, fired from the Charlemagne building's roof. "RELEX have been envious of the bigger building, especially as it's harder to see through the windows, where Charlemagne is more open and it's easier for people to see us sleeping at our desks or find out exactly long our lunches are. We're sick and tired of people in the LEX building waving at us and holding rude notices to us at the windows." said a source in RELEX

Lord Mandelson - It seems that after the UK MP's expenses storm a tabloid journalist broke into the strongrooms containing the ex-Commissioner's expenses claims. The suspicion is that the hack was so outraged he spontaneously combusted, thus starting the fire. Mandelson expressed "deep, heartfelt sorrow" that his expenses had been destroyed. He then asked if he could re-submit them.

Although nobody was hurt, there will be serious consequences. The biggest casualty was the Lisbon Treaty, which was burned beyond recognition. An official explained, "We were using it to prop open a door, but it has been destroyed. This means that every member state will have to sign it again, once we get a new one printed. This could cause problems".

The Commission is to be closed for six months as the entire staff have been signed off sick by doctors. Compensation claims are expected to reach over 3 billion euros as employees claim for trauma, inhalation of second hand smoke and tinnitus caused by "too loud" fire alarms. In brighter news, the Bada Bing Lap dancing club has offered alternative employment to some stagieres. There has been an appeal launched to refurbish the Commission headquarters, so far Microsoft has offered "extensive support" and claim that their investigations reveal that one of the press had a laptop running Linux and this was the probable cause of the fire.

One heroic moment during the crisis was that of an unknown functionary, in a desperate attempt to halt the blaze, urinated on a pile of burning Commission Directives, before being overcome by the smoke. This heroism is planned to be commemorated in a 10 metre high statue of this selfless act, to be mounted on the Commission roof, overlooking Schuman roundabout. It's going to be called the Berlaymont Pis.

Meet A Guerrilla Diplomat

Should diplomacy come out of the shadows?

Diplomacy has to change in today's world

Daryl Copeland has served in the Canadian Diplomatic service for almost three decades and has traveled on six continents as a backpacker. He sees the traditional diplomacy institutions as not being able to cope with the complexities of a global world and suggests a radical approach in his book, Guerrilla Diplomacy. In this interview he talks about where diplomacy should be going

The central theme in your book is that diplomacy needs to change. In what way does it need to change?
If diplomacy is going to be effective, relevant and capable of transforming the world into a better place, it will have to take on board this; if development is the new security in the age of globalisation, then diplomacy must displace defence at the centre of international policy. I think governments have been all too prone to reach for the largest policy instrument which is the military, when if fact the sorts of issues that represent the most profound threats to human survival in the 21st Century are not suited to the use of armed force. you can’t garrison against pandemic disease, you can’t call in an air strike on global warming. These can only be approached through diplomacy.

Like the Churchillian maxim that “jaw, jaw is better than war, war”. But there is more to it?
There is, but the underlying approach is that talking is better than fighting but it is also a more cost effective instrument for the management of international relations. I think the reason we’ve carried over this knee jerk reaction to reach for the gun is that the Cold War has morphed into the long war, that is the war on terror. We carried over three pieces of inappropriate intellectual and psychological baggage from the Cold War; One was a binary view of the world, black and white, good and evil, with little in between, no room for subtlety or nuance.

Secondly, there is a characterisation of the threat. During the Cold War communism was seen as universal and undifferentiated. We saw no difference between Soviet, Chinese or Nicaraguan communism. The red menace was omnipresent and all the same. In the present world, the threat of religious violence and terrorism is seen in exactly the same way. Thirdly, the response has been to militarise policy. In the Cold War it was containment and deterrence. Now its the global war on terror. The underlying structures have stayed the same and this has got us into a terrible mess.

There are also ongoing and intractable conflicts in the world, like Sudan, Cyprus etc. How would a guerrilla diplomat approach these problems?
This is where you get into the fundamental distinction between policy instruments and the difference is that diplomacy, and guerrilla diplomats act smarter, faster than traditional diplomats, tend to be extremely cross culturally enabled, with a skill set that includes language and detailed knowledge of cultures and peoples that allows them to sink down into local systems of power and influence, navigating pathways that are closed to others. Its a grass roots networked-centric approach that doesn’t require the overheads of state centered diplomacy. we would find a group of practitioners that have acuity, agility and autonomy. They are very high functioning, adaptable and can solve problems without constantly referring upwards.

Current practice is authoritarian, inflexible and this produces people who are risk adverse. Autonomy means that diplomats enjoy the confidence and trust, not just of their superiors, but also of their clients. I’m not talking about rogues or secret agents, but people who have some traditional skills like tact, discretion, but operating withing broad parameters, they are trusted to get results.

A diplomat also needs to have authority. Are states ready to allow diplomats to act more independently?
I haven’t seen much evidence of it but I think it’s inevitable because at the moment diplomacy isn’t working. It has been sidelined with disastrous results so I think the transfer of authority is bound to come, not least because nothing else is working.

Is this also a call for outsourcing diplomacy, with the arrival of organisations like Independent Diplomat?
Diplomacy is an approach to management of international relations, using negotiation and dialogue. It is also connected to government and the achievement of policy objectives. This does give us room for maneuver and allows us to enter into partnerships with a wide range of actors who don’t work for government, like ID, NGO’s, business people.

How well is your message going down with policy makers and diplomats?
I have to say, very well. People seem keen to hear me. Amongst practitioners there is pretty wide ranging recognition that these reforms are necessary, but at the political level, I’m less sure.

The old hands are in despair

At the end of the Barroso Commission, the most experienced staff are heading for the exit after seeing Europe crumble and lose its purpose

It’s widely accepted in the EU institutions that a challenge is often an opportunity that went horribly wrong, indeed this was a motivation behind becoming the first Chief Happiness Officer to the EU.

 

While some do carp and complain, the need for the care and nurturing of the staff in the institutions, the little nuts and bolts that keep the whole show on the road, has been neglected for too long.

 

If that wasn’t bad enough, the member states are sticking the boot into the civil service, instead of doing something actually useful, like shutting down Strasbourg and saving real cash.

 

There is still much gloom around, especially with the more mature end of the staffing spectrum. Some of whom have been looking at the future with concern and have been making arrangements... to get themselves shuffled off into areas that look like being atrophied, yet can’t be shut off.

 

There are increasing numbers moving to obscure rooms, where they will have no duties at all and can sit it out till pension day. It’s an old practice, think of it as moving to DG DIGNITAS.

 

There are many of the ‘old school’ feeling despondent after a career in occasionally asbestos smothered offices for decades, trying to build a peaceful Europe that was good for both trade and those on the lower rungs of the social ladder.

 

It’s these people, whose work routinely involved trying to transform the whims of the great and good into something real, they know that the member states never let the union develop, that Europe was being strangled by incessant squabble over national interest. These will be the `special forces` of the drive to cheer up the institutions.

 

Leaders come and go and the continent somehow survives their meddling. Although we are in strange days, where the cry of “More Europe!” has morphed into “More Barroso!” and may be become simply “More More!” shortly, we are in a fortunate moment and it’s up to each one of us to use it.

 

It’s time to begin work on EU 2.0. We have had a system crash. We need a new operating system installed. Take a look at Linux. The open source model might be a better way forward. What makes this time different is that it might just work. The situation, short, mid and long term is so bleak that a reboot might happen, admittedly because all else failed.

 

We have a year at most. So far, around 25% of voters are looking away from the main political parties, this varies, but the trends are not good. When it comes to increasing support for eurosceptics, we should consider if people are voting against, not Europe, but austerity Europe.

This may not be the most optimistic report by a Happiness Officer, even a junior one, but this is no time for games or silly gimmicks. Being a Chief Happiness Officer is not just a job, it is a moral calling and there is only one way to be happy, by living up to your potential and contributing to the betterment of the world.

 

This is what must be done.

 

Berlaymont workers, do not be distracted by the caterwauling of those whose ineptitude has brought the continent to the edge of extinction.

 

Don’t mourn, organise!

Peak fitness

form an orderly queue please / Nucksfan64

The mountaineering world is turning Everest into a gymnasium

Sixty years ago, a New Zealand mountaineer, with a Nepalese Sherpa climbed Mount Everest, the highest point on the Earth’s surface and brought an end to the quest to conquest nature’s high spot.

Today, the Nepalese government is considering putting a ladder on the mountain, to help a long and lucrative string of adventure tourists enjoy the view without having to do anything too tricky, at least compared to the men and women of courage who preceded them.

Many years ago, in the British Lake District, the home of rock climbing, a friend had made a remarkable ascent of a route on Raven Crag, behind one of the land’s finest pubs, the Old Dungeon Ghyll.

The climb was so difficult, it was awarded the first in a new highest technical grade, but there was more to it than that. The crux, or hardest move, was at a full rope length and and on an overhang above a blank wall, a fall would certainly lead to the severest injury or death.

My friend was from a long line of climbers in his family, but he had an idea. Knowing the almost certain risk of death would put off many, indeed some of his climbs have not had a second ascent, he decided to drill a bolt in the cliff to protect the hardest moves.

The result was fury, as adding anything to a mountain climb has been severely frowned upon. Angry climbers abseiled down and cut off the bolt. However good the route was, the general feeling was, as this is a very traditional climbing scene. It should be climbed in the original manner and if you weren’t good and bold enough, then tough.

This view remains today and the sport, and mountains are the better for it.

Everest has many ladders and fixed ropes and all manner of junk on its sides. Much early exploration was made by large teams, often with military precision and military quantities of rubbish left behind.

Then the purists started, like future MEP Reinhold Messner and low impact expeditions became more common. Then the commercial groups started and the trouble began.

Nepal uses the mountains to obtain large sums of hard currency and they loved the sight of all these ‘dollars on legs’ staggering incompetently on the mountain, the fees increased, the commercial expeditions increased.

People died, but, you know the fees had been paid, so, tough.

Now a ladder is to be put in place to stop overcrowding. Why not simply sell fewer permits? Of course not, why do that when your economy is partially based on treating your sacred peaks as cash cows.

The tourist route is a pretty major slog, but not difficult, from a technical perspective. It’s the Khumbu glacier that terrifies those smart enough to recognise danger themselves, but the ladder is going near the summit, on the Hillary Step, a small rock wall above the South Col, the most challenging part of the climb.

Perhaps this will open the hill to more tourists, essentially rich people who can be dragged to the top by others, The Nepalese can no longer be trusted to look after this special place, but we can only help those who want to keep it special, and the way to do that is to stop the over commercialising, which is already killing Sherpas and their visitors.

In the meantime, let’s start a reward scheme to the heroic mountaineer who will throw the bloody ladder into the oblivion it deserves.