It took a lot of persuasion by Cindy for me to come round to the idea but I'm really glad we went to WOMAD which was on in Wiltshire this past weekend. It was pretty much the perfect music festival having both artists of a high quality and a friendly atmosphere. Perhaps I'm showing my age but I really liked the fact that by Sunday drug-addled teenagers weren't falling over me every thirty seconds as they staggered round like zombies attracted by the brightest / loudest stimulation in the vicinity. The weather was beautiful and I had the privilege of seeing the following highlights:

Altaikai: being a fan of Huun-Huur-Tu made me really keen to see more throat-singing, even more so as these people were from Altai, a country I'd never heard of (another one to add to the list), which is also reportedly where Shambala is believed to exist.

Sa Dingding: I'm not sure I'd sit and listen to one of her albums but the live show was pretty incredible. Best described as frock-tastic with dancers.

GOCOO + GoRo: I love Taiko drumming having seen Yamato earlier this year. GOCOO were a different style and performed with GoRo, a chap playing the didgeridoo, which is usually somthing I wouldn't be able to stand but fitted perfectly in this contest. It was like techno with instruments; a thoroughly physical experience that the crowd responded to with an enthusiasm I've rarely ever seen.

Tashi Lhunpo Monks

From the WOMAD website: Altaikai, Sa Dingding, GOCOO + GoRo

I know what I said in this post but I had a change of mind. I like Apple's product design and with the updated iPhone pegged at a more reasonable price I decided to try and get hold of one via the O2 website last Monday. It was a shambolic experience; the site buckling under the strain of everyone trying to place an order. Oh well. No great loss. I then discovered that the O2 stores would also have stock and would be opening early on Friday morning so, unbelievably for me, I actually got up early and wandered down on my way to work. I guess I'd assumed there'd be a queue but the one that greeted me stretched around the block. It would seem that being ridiculed by Cindy for bounding from bed at an ungodly hour was not enough humiliation for one so critical of our avaricious consumer society.

I, along with other assorted freaks and geeks, were roundly stared at by each new bus-load of the morning rush-hour deposited at the many stops outside the shop. It was looking like a waste of time. At even ten minutes to process an order most people would be standing there for a good chunk of the day. Fortunately I remembered there was another O2 shop in the shopping centre over the road which was opening later. The queue here was smaller but grew quickly at two separate entrances until the doors opened. I have never seen people run to a shop en masse before and I hope I never witness the sight of people debasing themselves in the same way again to buy a consumer product. As to me, well I sprinted like I was in Dawn of the Dead and being quick over a short distance was pretty much first in line. None of the computer systems were working by now so the staff processed everything on paper. I left about half-an-hour later; the switchover of my number to the iPhone occurred later that afternoon.

I gather from reading about other people's experiences that this was a pretty trouble-free encounter with O2 who it seems, following asking people to register their interest had the foreknowledge they were going to get swamped on the Monday, must have also known chaos was going to ensue on the Friday. The store staff where I went were doing their very best to cope but I wonder what they had been briefed to expect. There's been a lot of criticism online of the tone that people expected O2 to prepare for this one-off event. I imagine that there was no way O2 were going to spend time and money on getting the infrastructure in place to deal effectively with the demand. This was massively frustrating for everyone who wanted to get their hands on an iPhone on the launch day and O2's lack of any seeming preparation doesn't speak too highly of their commitment to customer satisfaction but in the long-run they can't lose. The queues I saw stretched past other mobile networks' own shops and if I was them I would dream of having the kind of product that could provoke the scenes I witnessed.

We all know the second Iraq war of recent times was about oil. It wasn't about overthrowing an evil dictator who had fallen out of favour and it wasn't about seizing weapons of mass destruction. Frankly, the tangled interests of Western governments and related corporate interests wouldn't be prepared to pay the exorbitant cost of achieving either of those goals. Oil however, well, that's a different matter. There's been much discussion about how much the war has cost; maybe $500 billion to-date. It may possibly cost as much as $3 trillion. The original estimate was $50 billion and questioning this official line was a sackable offence. The other oft discussed point is Iraq's 115 billion barrels of oil yet to be pumped out of the ground. I've yet to find much conflation of these points but, with Western oil companies circling the spoils of war and the price of a barrel going up and up, maybe it's worth highlighting that at today's prices ($145) that oil is worth $16.68 trillion. So you know what, if you don't shed tears for human suffering and if when someone talks about 'cost' all you see are dollar signs; if all an election  means to you is keeping the whole crumbling edifice of special interests on the road for a few more years then the occupation of Iraq is a resounding bloody success. $500 billion spent. Over $16 trillion to make. You have to spend money to make money. In this case you spend taxpayers money and civilian lives then let the private sector reap the 'rewards'. For our leaders, both government and corporate that cost is cheap at six times the price and more besides.