Scrap merchants
Lorry carrying scrap metal to China
Several actors play a role and then find that, from then on they are forever associated with that role. Sometimes it is because they define the role, becoming the archetypical image of that character. Unfortunately, it often means that they become typecast, making it difficult for them to find new roles and move on.
Harry H. Corbett, for example, was a renowned Shakespearean actor when he accepted a cameo role in a half-hour script called “The Offer” for BBC’s Comedy Playhouse, which was aired on 5th January 1962.
The offer in question was to move to a new job, leaving the old family business run by his scheming and conniving father. When I say “run by” … it was simply a “two man business”, the old man and his son … oh, yes, … and then there was Hercules, the cart horse. That half-hour comedy became the pilot for a new comedy series about Rag and Bone men, scrap merchants; “Steptoe and Son“. Some of the references are dated, such as “three and six” or “silver threepenny pieces”, but the humour in the situation is still valid and it remains one of the BBC classic comedies.
Mind you, there was nothing funny in the fact that it cost Harry H. Corbett his career … to be fair, that’s probably too harsh a statement, but he will forever be known as Harold Steptoe, with delusions of sophistication and berating his erstwhile father as “You dirty old man …”, (and it appears there might well have been some truth in that accusation … his co-star Wilfred Brambell was apparently prosecuted on several occasions for soliciting). It was difficult for Corbett to recover his reputation and resurrect his Shakespearean career. He found himself typecast and was never able to make a break from the character and move on.
Other people, apart from actors, can also be typecast; politicians, for example. Richard Nixon will always be remembered as Tricky Dicky and the Watergate scandal and his other achievements forgotten or overlooked. King Richard III will be forever seen as the scheming hunchback, responsible for the murder of his nephews – even if the evidence might result in a split verdict if the case was ever presented in a court.
What, I( wonder, will history make of the likes of Askar Akaev, Kurmanbek Bakiey, Rosa Otunbaev and Almazbek Atambaev … ?)
Scrap metal has played an interesting role in Kyrgyzstan’s development. According to World Bank data it is in 86th place in the list of countries for the sale of ores and scrap metal …
Five years ago and more, tourists travelling up to the Torugart pass used to pass lorries laden down with scrap metal being exported to China for recycling in their booming economy. It was a subject for comment on many blog posts and even featured in at least one guide book’s description of the difficult border crossing.
These days, although there is still a lot of commercial traffic crossing the border, it tends to comprise of container lorries carrying all sorts of other goods. There are fewer lorries carrying scrap metal … perhaps the supply has been exhausted.
Even as long ago as in the year 2000, there were stories of metal being bought from Uzbekistan, (where the trade in scrap metal was strictly controlled), smuggled across the border and sold to middlemen in Kyrgyzstan who would then export it to China. This has been blamed for the breakdown and disruption in communications systems, (arising from the loss – theft? – of valuable copper wiring and telephone cables) and the cessation of the trolley bus service in the Uzbek town of Ferghana, (largely due to the the theft of the overhead power supply cables).
Telephone cables have long been disappearing here in Kyrgyzstan … when I first came here, it was difficult to contact one of my acquaintances who lived in a small town out of Bishkek. It was in the days before mobile telephones – “those were the days!” – and although he had a telephone at home, it was constantly out of order as the cable had been cut down and carted off, presumably to China.
It’s not just cables, however … almost any metal that can be carted away was at risk … even statues. This was a fate reserved not just for mammoth works by famous artists like Henry Moore – although he certainly suffered this.
Oak Park in the center of Bishkek is the site of one of the city’s most remarkable museums, or galleries: The Open Air Museum of Sculpture. Under the trees stand numerous stone creations, some realistic representations and others more abstract. There used to be a number of exhibits made from metal, but they disappeared in the early 1990′s – including a bust of the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin.
Another bust, that of the poet Bokonbaev, was cut away from it’s plinth in the middle of Prospect Erkindik, and was in the process of being cut up when the police found it … and the thieves. It took several years but it has now been repaired and returned to its rightful place. he a fate to not
Last year a statue of the journalist Gennady Pavlyuk, murdered in Almaty, was stolen in the early hours of the morning from its roadside site, on one the city’s main streets. Less than a stone’s throw away is a hotel and, a little further off, a restaurant … but the staff of the establishments were as surprised as everyone else when the theft was discovered several hours later … they had heard a noise but had no idea of what was taking place just yards from where they were sitting. As it happens, the statue was discovered and the thieves arrested – but not before it had been cut up into pieces in order to spirit it away. The statue has been recast and it too is now back in its rightful place.
There have even been press reports of teens stealing metal from the airbase at Manas airport in order to sell it on and make some pocket money.
Also, last week, it was reported that the bust and bronze nameplate of a World War II air ace that had been stolen last October, have now been recovered and the thieves detained.
It is not just to China that scrap metal gets sold. In 2008 a train load of scrap metal on its way to Iran was turned back at the Uzbek border because the Uzbek customs and border guards had detected duriong an inspection that it had an “elevated radiation level”. Although the train apparently belonged to Tajikistan, the cargo belonged to the Kyrgyz State Enterprise “Temir” – which is based in Osh and claims to be the only company to hold a license for the import and export of scrap metal and to trade with China, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan … and other countries.
For the record: The train returned to the marshaling yards in Belovodskoye, where the load was inspected and the source of the radiation, (a small piece of metal), located and encased in a special container lined with cement and then buried.
According to one account of the incident, “The discoveries of radioactive sources in scrap metal shipments are not uncommon either in Central Asia or the United States. In the United States, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has compiled an informative set of guidelines on how to deal with the radiologically contaminated scrap metal for scrap metal yard owners and managers of recycling, foundry and steel making facilities.”
It went on to tell how Kazakhstan, (not Kyrgyzstan), and China used to engage in mutual recriminations related to the fact that China would routinely return freight trains loaded with scrap metal from Kazakhstan citing the “inadmissibly high radiation level of the cargo”. In their report of another incident, a few years before this latest one, the BBC reported that “on a number of occasions scrap metal from Kyrgyzstan sold to Chinese companies has been turned back at the border because of its high radioactivity”, and I couldn’t help wondering if this was a case of mistaken identity.
Once you get a reputation and are stereotyped, it can be difficult to break free from it … ask Harry H. Corbett.
Incidentally, the H. in Harry H. Corbett didn’t stand for anything … Corbett inserted it because there was another Harry Corbett whose co-sat was a glove puppet: Sooty … and he Harry H. felt it was important to differentiate himself
For the record: Comedy Playhouse proved to be an incubator for a wide variety of television sitcoms – with some 27 different series originating from episodes in the fifteen seasons which the playhouse enjoyed although Steptoe was the only one of the ten episodes in the first year to get its own series.
Bishkek