Today is the 90th birthday of Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama . To celebrate this I am republishing, without further editing, the 2014 photo essay about my close encounter with His Holiness at the Kalachakra Initiation in Ladakh, northern India. The Paradox of Our Age , a short but powerful essay credited to the present Dalai Lama, is widely available in Ladakh in northern India, a region known as 'Little Tibet'. The text ends with the observation that: 'These are times of fast foods but slow digestion/Tall men but short characters/Steep profits but shallow relationships/It’s a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room'. Tibetan Buddhism is widely viewed as an appealing alternative to materialistic Western society, so, not surprisingly, The Paradox of Our Age is widely circulated on the internet and Twitter - see photo tweet below . I bought The Paradox of Our Age on an exquisitely printed little scroll in the Tibetan refugee market in the re...
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The glimpse at what BBC executives claim as expenses and receive in terms of corporate hospitality does not include anything that relates to "journalism, art or literature".
This is because of exemptions within the UK Freedom of Information Act 2000, as explained on the BBC website:
It is important to bear this in mind when considering the Freedom of Information Act and how it applies to the BBC. The Act does not apply to the BBC in the way it does to most public authorities in one significant respect. It recognises the different position of the BBC (as well as Channel 4, S4C and the Gaelic Media Service) by providing that it covers information “held for purposes other than those of journalism, art or literature”. This means the Act does not apply to information held for the purposes of creating the BBC’s output (TV, radio, online etc), or information that supports and is closely associated with these activities.
As the BBC's main purpose is to create output for TV, radio, online etc this means the great part of the BBC's activities are exempt from the Freedom of Information Act. An interesting situation when one considers that the BBC's annual income is more than £3 billion, and that the income is raised by a legally enforced poll tax.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/foi/about.shtml
My view of the good Sir Nicholas is forever coloured by a lunch I had with him 20 years ago, when he was editor of, I believe, that soaraway publication Early Music News.
Lunch was on my expense account and, if I remember rightly, Mr Kenyon (as he was then) ordered the most expensive items on the menu and a big cigar afterwards. He was clearly thinking big in those days too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbradio3/F7497566?thread=4922946
Plus ça change. BBC Radio 3 controller Roger Wright's contribution to the Guardian Stockhausen tribute was to namedrop the London restaurant he took the composer to -
http://music.guardian.co.uk/electronic/story/0,,2226684,00.html