This excellent article  by Jessica Lockhart -about the dangers and challenges of gift giving was first published in Verge Magazine important advice for anyone planning to give or send gifts to their host family, projects or friends made whilst volunteering?

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Megahn Barr writes in today's Huffington Post
“The clash between tourists and congregants plays out every Sunday at
Mother African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the oldest black church
in New York state. It's one of many Harlem churches that have become
tourist attractions for visitors from all over the world who want to
listen to soulful gospel music at a black church service. With a record
number of tourists descending upon New York City last year, the crowds
of foreigners are becoming a source of irritation among faithful
churchgoers.”

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Today's China Daily explains why fewer Chinese torusts come to Britian than go to Paris.

As Birtain “is not a signatory to the 26-country Schengen Agreement, those wanting
to enter Britain as tourists need to apply for a separate visa. That
means many Chinese tourists who visit the continent give Britain a miss,
and the number of Chinese tourists who go to Paris is five times the
number who go to London.”

“The cost of a British tourist visa for those on the mainland is 800
yuan, compared with the cost of a tourist visa for France of 60 euros
(500 yuan) that allows the holder to cross into other the countries in
the Schengen Area.

In addition, applicants for the British visa are required to lodge
their application in person at one of 12 offices, and this can involve
considerable travel. True, those applying for a Schengen visa can face
the same logistical difficulties, but having to apply for two visas at
two different points must act as some kind of deterrent.”

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Back in November I wrote about finding the exotic in York. A theme may be developing – I spotted this in the New Statesman and thought that it was worth sharing.

Seaside treats
Last weekend I had to choose between
flying to Los Angeles for the Oscars, or driving to Blackpool. Naturally
I chose the latter. We saw an exhilarating cabaret production at Funny
Girls, one of the town's star attractions. A sparsely populated 1970s
concert hall, where the average age was about 80, cheered as butch
transvestites danced to Abba classics and twirled pompoms and peacock
feathers. It felt somewhere between a lost world of vaudeville and Peter
Kay's magnificent Phoenix Nights. For �14 you get the best
seats in the house and a flirtatious waiter (ours may have been a
eunuch). Damp seaside towns will always be among the great thrills of
England and they beat cavorting with the giant egos of LA any day.

http://www.newstatesman.com/newspapers/2012/03/russia-free-sun-tunisia-putin

Eugeny Lebvedev is the son of the Russian tycoon Alexander Lebedev and chairman of the Evenign Standard and of Independent newspapers.

I have just has the privilege of spending a week in Cornwall
staying with CoaST  members and running a series of workshops on
the ways in which tourism contributes to local economic development. It was a
stimulating week of engaged discussion, it demonstrates what a productive and
sustaining organisation the Cornwall Sustainable Tourism network is. Times are
hard in Cornwall but the network in resilient, I came away on the sleeper on
Friday night heartened by what I had seen and heard.

Visitor numbers to Cornwall were down last year, I heard by
one million, but CoaSTies were demonstrating their resilience: adapting their
business strategies and exercising environmental responsibility because it is
the right thing to do and because it cuts their costs as well as ensuring that
their businesses are more resilient.  There
were lots of discussions about going off the grid and ensuring that businesses could adapt to austerity Britain � no one I spoke to in Cornwall was
assuming that they would return to the pattern of business as usual. Resilience requires adaptation.

CoaSTies are bright and willing to look the future in the
face and adapt to face it. They are not unique in that, other individual
businesses are doing it, what distinguishes CoaSTies is the numbers of people
adapting their business models in Cornwall and the mutual support they offer
each other. They have understood the virtues of co-opetition co-operating and competing together as required to create a thriving destination. After a week
with them in Cornwall, and spending time with the indefatigable Manda Brookman, 
one comes away refreshed and with a little more optimism of the will.

I was in Cornwall talking with local tourism businesses, all
CoaST members about how to increase their resilience in austerity Britain and
to encourage them to participate in the research I am doing for my book on
tourism and local economic development. I learnt a lot.

I spent the first night as a guest of Pat Smith at Bosinver Farm
Cottages, I stayed in Lowen
(low energy/Cornish for happy), a straw bale house designed to offer a low
impact high quality experience from the art and beautiful reused furnishing to
the experience of the immediate farm and natural environment. Our discussions focussed
on the many ways in which tourism contributes to the broader local economy
through local sourcing and encouraging visitors to spend on local goods and
services.

Monday night I spent with Chris Jones at Woodland Valley 
an organic farm with a residential study centre and
group accommodation in the parish of Ladock. Chris showed me over the farm and
gave me a master class in wind turbines and community benefit and the way he is
adapting Woodland Valley in the face of climate change, peak oil and austerity
Britain. Our conversation with the CoaSTies ranged widely over alternative
energy, local sourcing and the creation of local activities as additional
livelihoods as well as the importance of ensuring that the disadvantages can
also access the best of Cornwall�s countryside.

Sally and Chris Searle put me up in the Thomas Hardy room 
at The Old Rectory  in St Juliot�s. It was at The Rectory that
Hardy stayed when he was restoring the church at St Juliot�s and met his first
wife. Sally showed round the Victorian vegetable garden and Chis explained the
success he is having with solar energy � they are well on the way to self-sufficiency
in food and electricity. Our discussions ranges over buyers groups and the
contributions which self-catering and B&Bs can make to the local economy
and how adversities, like the Boscastle flood,  can build co-operation.

Wednesday night I was accommodated at the Bedruthan Steps,  a hotel with a well justified big reputation for the work
it has done on its economic, social and environmental responsibility. The hotel
has just had a major refurbishment in the public areas as it adapts to changing
market trends and continues to improve its environmental performance. I spent
time with Emma Stratton and Claire Beard learning about the way the business
continues to adapt in order to ensure its resilience. Our discussions with
CoaSTies ranged over community developments in Wadebridge, the contribution to
the local economy or large businesses like Bedruthan Steps and Perran Sands and
small B&B�s in St Ives

Simon and Rosie offered accommodation at Little White Alice www.littlewhitealice.co.uk I
stayed in The Oak House, Duir, 
proof that environmental sustainability and luxury are not incompatible. Our
discussions focused on the challenge of finding ways of ensuring that tourists
who visit Cornwall and the businesses which benefit from the tourism which is
attracted by the landscape contribute to its maintenance.

I leave Cornwall feeling that I
benefited more than they did, it was an immensely stimulating week, one which
has left me rejuvenated but the passion and enthusiasm of CoaSTies � it rubs
off.

Join their One Planet Tourism network – you will gain from it.

Taking Responsibility
for Tourism � A working week on responsible tourism planning in Myanmar

It was back in May that the democratic opposition in Myanmar
announced that it welcomed Responsible Tourism and other forms of tourism based
on respect. When I was asked in November whether I would be willing to travel
to Myanmar to lead a week of workshops and a conference on Responsible
Tourism I enthusiastically accepted. I spent last week in Myanmar arriving and
departing from Yangon via Bangkok and travelling to the new capital Nay Pyi Taw,
only recently opened to foreigners ,this entirely new city boasts 12 lane
highways and monumental buildings, the largest Parliament I have seen; a new
capital reflecting the ambition of its leaders for Myanmar in the C21st.

The Ministry of Hotels and Tourism invited all of the
ministries to attend, to hear about Responsible Tourism and to consider what the
contribution of their ministry was to ensuring that tourism in Myanmar becomes
and remains responsible. There was enthusiastic participation by all of the
government staff who came to represent no less than 22 ministries in a day of discussions
about the issues and what individual ministries needed to do to exercise their responsibility
for making tourism sustainable in Myanmar. There is both recognition of the
need for a whole of government approach to the sustainable development of tourism
in Myanmar and enthusiasm in the ministries to play their role, to take and
exercise responsibility.

The private sector workshop also brought a good attendance;
the Myanmar Tourism Board was formed less than a year ago to bring together the
various private sector associations which have emerged to represent the
interests of guides, hotels, agencies and operators. The industry was also enthusiastic
about adopting Responsible Tourism

The concluding conference brought the public and private
sector together to hear reports from each of the workshops. Opened by H. E. U
Tint Hasan, Union Minister Ministry of Hotels and Tourism & Ministry of Sports
and with a welcoming address from Dr Khin Shwe, Chairman of the Myanmar Tourism
Board, there was a meeting of minds between the public and private sector and a
willingness to take responsibility. The quality of the presentations from each
of the workshop days was high. There was recognition of the advantage which Myanmar
had in the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of others and to work to
ensure that the host guest encounter in Myanmar continued to be founded upon respect
and the realisation of the ambition to provide �a Warm Welcome to Tourists and
Take Good Care of Them.�

The Deputy Minister, H E U Htay Aung,  in his closing remarks said that �the mission
was accomplished, we did it and we succeeded� adding as he spoke to the public
and private   �if you don�t want to change you cannot
succeed.�

The Nay Pyi Taw Responsible Tourism Statement on Taking Responsibility
for Tourism is available on line

The statement concludes that there are two priorities the
development of a Responsible Tourism Policy and Strategy for the next couple of
years, this to be followed by the development of a Responsible Tourism Master Plan;
and a capacity building, in vocational and Higher Education and perhaps most
urgently Continuing Professional Development at Masters level for this in the public
and private sectors and in education, whose challenge it is to achieve the
aspiration for Responsible Tourism Planning in Myanmar.

Schumpeter in The Economsit reviews success amongst entrepreneurs and suggests that “Experience continues to count for a great deal, in business as in other
walks of life�or, to borrow a phrase from P.J. O�Rourke, age and guile
can still beat �youth, innocence and a bad haircut�.

“The evidence that older people are if anything becoming more
enterprising should help to calm two of the biggest worries that hang
over the West (and indeed over an ageing China). One is that the greying
of the population will inevitably produce economic sluggishness. The
second is that older people will face hard times as companies shed older
workers in the name of efficiency and welfare states cut back on their
pensions.

Here, Mr Cohen is a man for our times. In 2004 he faced financial
ruin when he discovered that his manager, Kelley Lynch, had
misappropriated most of his savings. He sued successfully but could not
lay his hands on the money. So he had no choice but to go back to work.
Mr Cohen told the New York Times that
reconnecting with �living musicians� and �living audiences� had �warmed
some part of my heart that had taken a chill�. Let us hope the same is
true of the ageing boomers who will have little choice but to embrace
self-employment as the West�s welfare states discover that they cannot
keep their promises.”

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There is a report in today's Daily Telegraph, by Andrew Gilligan, that the Department for International Development  has committed almost �9 million to send
1,250 British teenagers and young people overseas for �projects of
development value�. But from internal DFID evaluations seen by The Sunday
Telegraph, the main beneficiaries of Cameron's flagship International Citizen Service appear to be the British youngsters
themselves, rather than the people of the developing world.

This is the kind of thing that gets gap years and volunteering abroad a bad name:

Gordon Bridger has 40 years of experience working for the UN and for the British Government – his critique of the aid industry should be heard. His book How I Failed to Save the World is a must read for anyone interested in why aid fails and may cause harm.
In contrast to large scale aid small scale initiatives and people to people aid can work he argues.

Listen to what he had to say on Radio 4 today http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console/b01bm0py

The green thing ………….

She was right — our generation didn't have the green thing in its day.
Back then, we returned milk bottles, pop bottles and beer bottles to the
store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized
and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really
were recycled. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new
pen, and we replaced the razor blades in a razor instead of throwing away
the whole razor just because the blade got dull.


But we didn't have the green thing back in our day.

We walked up stairs, because we didn't have an escalator in every shop
and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into
a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

 

But she was right.
We didn't have the green thing in our day.

Back then, we washed the baby's nappies because we didn't have the throw-away
kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy gobbling machine burning
up 220 volts — wind and solar power really did dry our clothes back in
our early days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters,
not always brand-new clothing.


But that young lady is right. We didn't have the green thing back in our
day.

Back then, we had one TV, or radio, in the house — not a TV in every room.
And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?),
not a screen the size of the county of Yorkshire.  In the kitchen,
we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines
to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile
item to send in the post, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it,
not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine
and burn petrol just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on
human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health
club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.


But she's right. We didn't have the green thing back then.

We drank water from a fountain or a tap when we were thirsty instead of
demanding a plastic bottle flown in from another country. We accepted that
a lot of food was seasonal and didn't expect that to be bucked by flying
it thousands of air miles around the world. We actually cooked food that
didn't come out of a packet, tin or plastic wrap and we could even wash
our own vegetables and chop our own salad.


But we didn't have the green thing back then.

Please forward this on to another selfish old person who needs a lesson
in conservation from a smart-ass young person.


Remember: Don't make old people mad. We don't like being old in the first
place, so it doesn't take much to hack us off.