"I work in the film business, where schmoozing is an art form, lunch hour lasts from 12:30 until 3, and every meeting takes an hour whether there's an hour's worth of business or not. Not so at Vogue, where meetings are long if they go more than seven minutes and everyone knows to show up on time, prepared and ready to dive in. In Anna's world, meetings often start a few minutes before they're scheduled. If you arrive five minutes late, chances are you'll have missed it entirely. Imagine the hours of time that are saved every day by not wasting so much of it in meetings."

"Is the UK a bully?" That's what Gavin Hewitt, the BBC's Europe editor asked on his blog. And it's a valid question, but Rainy Day posed it a bit more adroitly when speaking to Alda Sigmundsdóttir. She's the proprietor of the excellent Iceland Weather Report blog and she kindly agreed to a quick Q&A on Icesave. Oh, and if you read to end you'll find out what goes nicely with whale meat. Over to Reykjavík.

Rainy Day: What's the "morning-after-feeling" like? Apprehension? Elation? Gloom? Party time?

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "No change, really. The referendum was kind of pointless because the deal that was being voted on was already obsolete. If anything, it's a slight sense of apprehension as to what might happen with the government as a result."

Rainy Day: Do Icelanders revel in their new role as the poster children of the anti-City movement, or are people embarrassed that it has come to this?

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "I never know how to answer questions relating to 'the Icelanders' because there is such a division of opinion and experiences in this country. But SOME people are definitely reveling in it — and I don't know many people who are embarrassed that it's come to this."

Rainy Day: After the crisis broke, the comforting embrace of the EU seemed attractive to many in Iceland, but seeing how member states such as Greece and Ireland are barely keeping their heads above water, is there a re-thinking of the EU euphoria?

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "Most definitely, but it has not much to do with Greece and Ireland, and almost everything to do with the fact that the EU has been seen as a debt collector for the UK and Holland in the Icesave deal. That's definitely turned people off, bigtime."

Rainy Day: Given that Norway seems to be sailing blithely through the global crisis, would it not be better for Reykjavik to seek an alliance with Oslo than with Brussels at this dangerous moment. Or are there issues between the two capitals that we are unaware of?

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "I don't believe Oslo is interested. They have said as much."

Rainy Day: Who do the Icelanders blame most for the Icesave mess: themselves, the British or the Dutch?"

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "Icelanders blame Icelandic, British and Dutch regulators, more or less equally."

Rainy Day: What's next for Iceland? Do people think the country can get through this or are they looking for an exit?

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "Iceland and Icelanders can get through anything. They've survived volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, famine, extreme poverty, oppression — and now an economic meltdown. Pfft."

Rainy Day: Finally, how should one cook whale meat? Fry it, boil it, grill it? And which veg go best with it: broccoli, cauliflower,
carrots, potatoes...

Alda Sigmundsdóttir: "Grill it, or fry over high heat, like steak. Serve rare, with baked potatoes, a mushroom-pepper sauce and salad. Delish!"

Yummy! Thanks, Alda. By the way, there's more Alda over at the Guardian.

"What really mattered was free-market fundamentalism. This is what led Ronald Reagan to declare that deregulation would solve the problems of thrift institutions — the actual result was huge losses, followed by a gigantic taxpayer bailout — and Alan Greenspan to insist that the proliferation of derivatives had actually strengthened the financial system. It was largely thanks to this ideology that regulators ignored the mounting risks."

What's needed, says Krugman, is more regulators and an independent agency protecting financial consumers along with "a recognition that letting bankers do what they want is a recipe for disaster." But what's really needed is something else entirely. In the case of Ireland, and maybe the USA as well, what's needed is an acceptance that the biggest problem is one that the regulators cannot regulate, namely decadence. All that's required is a reading of another story in another newspaper, the Irish Independent, which is headlined "Dockland chiefs ran up €600,000 travel bill" to make this clear. We're talking about the Dublin Docklands Development Authority and the article contains tasty morsels about its executives running up "A €2,578 bill from the Noble Nest restaurant in St Petersburg featured Bollinger champagne and caviar", while "On another occasion, the DDDA was billed for more than €1,000 worth of tickets to a West End show in London." But it gets even more Neroesque: "Costs of €7,785 were incurred in just one day at Dunbrody Country House Hotel in 2006, while €10,733 was spent in a single day at Marlfield House the following year. Dinner at Marlfield was accompanied by €85 bottles of wine."

Neither Ronald Reagan nor Alan Greenspan can be held responsible for this. We are talking about an atmosphere in which the most rapacious greed was condoned and every decency was abandoned. The shameful, disgusting excesses that marked business life in Ireland over the past decade did not result because there was no independent agency protecting financial consumers or an absence of regulators. In fact, there were regulators a-plenty, but they, too, were part of the crime spree that the country got caught up in.

The easy option is to blame Ronald Reagan and Alan Greenspan. The more painful task to recognize what the mirror really reflects. But because it's too frightening to look at, we blame others.

"The Hurt Locker" earned $12.6 million in the US, not a bad showing really for an independent film with no big names. Still, it is the lowest-grossing best-picture winner of the modern era. Hence, the headline gong for the great Matt Drudge.

Into the debate has stepped Austrian filmmaker Günter Schwaiger with Arena, which has been attacked by the anti-bullfighting lobby, although they haven't seen it yet. Says Schwaiger:

"Nowadays, political correctness often leads to dogmatic, intolerant postures. The majority feels that its own sins are redeemed by censuring the conduct of a few. That happens with bullfighting. It is very easy to attack it, because it shows its hand as it plays and does not hide what society usually conceals. Bullfighting is however anything but a glorification of suffering. Roland Barthes explained what is celebrated at a bullfight: 'Not man's victory over the animal, but victory over ignorance, fear and necessity.'"

The Barthes quote is sure to antagonize the opponents of this ancient ritual, and Schwaiger nails it when he says of bullfighting that "It is very easy to attack it, because it shows its hand as it plays and does not hide what society usually conceals." Two tix for Arena, please!

Although it is below-the-belt, it went mainstream (media-wise). We're talking bedazzling.

The efforts to shut Geert Wilders up — prosecuting him for hate speech, banning him from travelling, death threats — have not worked. He has a growing constituency.

Best blog post of the week: Books in the age of the iPad.

It revealed itself as a home of thieves, gangsters, pervs and assorted misfits. It was a bad week for the Democratic Party.

Facebook has become unstoppable because the next Facebook IS Facebook! It's getting old without getting old.

Germany and Greece went to the mattresses: Do Mention The War.

"To set in motion or move to act, create, energize, accelerate, cause action or change, spark, initiate, pioneer, drive, launch, to set up and mobilize, to make active or operational, to organize." ac•ti•vate is a new new media consultancy and it got itself a kick-ass URL.

Paul Gillan calls this the "site-less web" and if he's right it poses a real challenge to the "link economy" that Jeff Jarvis has such faith in. Gillan says that what's happening is "a classic case of technology outpacing people's ability to understand it." He adds that "the website as we have known it is diminishing in importance, influencers are magnifying their voices and the rules of engagement are being reset." Pistols at dawn!

"I used to work in financial markets/futures trading in Sydney, Australia. I then traveled to Europe and moved to London and worked in an IPE brokerage (International Petroleum Exchange). I got sick of that world, I started dancing at the newly opened Spearmint Rhino on Tottenham Court Road. I also did a couple of softcore photo/video shoots. One night, at the club, I met one of the owners of the Rhino, and I was drunk and dared him to fly me back to the states with him that same night. Four hours later we were headed to Texas. A couple of days after that I went to LA. A few days later I met an agent, who talked me into doing hardcore scenes, and the rest is history!"

But hard times abound. Money quote again: "And these little girls are coming in doing way hardcore things for $300 and ruining it for everyone." The Brisbane Times has the full story.

At the heart of the Macmillan-Amazon spat is the realization that allowing Amazon to dominate the e-book market will only make it harder for publishers to balance their interests with Amazon's. That's because the Kindle is a "roach motel" device: its license terms and DRM ensure that books can check in, but they can't check out. Readers are contractually prohibited from moving their books to competing devices...

...Don't hope for a better shake from Apple, either. Apple's longstanding love-affair with proprietary formats and lock-ins will very likely make the iPad every inch the roach motel that the Kindle is. Apple pitches this as a design decision, but it's also a powerful anticompetitive strategy that raises the cost of switching to a competitor's device.

Factoid: In the 1980s, Muhammad Ali was a spokesman for the Roach Motel product. His famous tagline was: "Roaches check in, but they don't check out!" Purveyors of intellectual property might need to study more of Ali's sayings and moves before entering the ring with Amazon or Apple.

"He was born in north Kensington to parents who split when he was very young. He lost contact with his father, a lorry driver, for several years, but says that his mother — aided by his uncle — made it her mission to shield him from the crime and disorder around them. He says, without hint of embarrassment, that she even kept him from much of his own community. 'She had seen how black people interact with black people — what they say to other black people — that means you can't go forward, that you get trapped in your own poor community...'"

And what does Bailey tell Cameron about the black communities in Hammersmith and Shepherds Bush? Again, he's uncompromisingly honest, especially about the "caring professions":

"When you do a job like mine and the community work I do, you start to see lots of people in pain and living badly," Bailey says. "You see well-meaning people around them trying to help, but what they do is that they support them so much that they take over their lives. They rob them of the will and the skill to look after their own. They make them dependent. We get all these people who are parachuted into poor communities who manage that community and then go home to their lovely lives. It's just horrible for that community because it means all of us continue to live in this horrible dark world that we can't navigate without someone leading us from it."

Shaun Bailey would make an excellent MP, but he's got a battle on his hands against Andy Slaughter of Labour, who was elected to Parliament for Ealing, Acton and Shepherds Bush with a majority of 5,500. Still, it's all in play now.

Locking European countries with completely different structures into a single currency was a recipe for disaster, Owen contended, and so it has come to pass. And now? Well, if deficit eurozone countries, like Greece and Ireland, cannot devalue, the onus must surely on surplus countries, like Germany, to reduce exports, expand demand, cut taxes or transfer capital, but as Jack Ewing pointed out on Friday in the New York Times, that would be punishing the thrifty and industrious to support to squanderers and indolent. Won't work.

Moral of story: Keep your own currency.

Hope 'n change I: The dole for them.

Hope 'n change II: The dole for him.

George Soros was said to be getting ready to do to the euro what he did to the pound.

Google I: "There is either a big problem with Google or there is none at all." Great column in the Financial Times by Christopher Caldwell.

Google II: It was the week when, Jeff Jarvis said, Italy endangered the web.

Google III: Steven Levy did a superb job on telling the story behind the algorithm.