Monday Moan 32

Hazard warning

Pat Nevin, ex-Chelsea player, current broadcaster and weekly contributor to Chelsea’s website, decided that when Eden Hazard kicked the ballboy during last week’s game at Swansea, it was the ballboy’s fault and that Hazard was entirely blameless.  His ‘reasoning’ was that the ballboy’s job is to get the ball back and that as he failed to do this, holding onto it instead, the only course of action open to Hazard was to kick the boy.

Oh really?  Leaving aside the question of whether or not kicking out was an appropriate, indeed the only, option available to Hazard, let’s just have a look at the incident.  The whole episode lasted no more than five or six seconds from the moment the ballboy retrieved the ball after Chelsea had put it out of play.  He ran to collect it.  Hazard ran over too.  Hazard appeared to try to wrestle the ball from the ballboy and in doing so pulled him to the ground – as shown in my picture.  The crowd reacted to this.  The ballboy then failed to release the ball immediately whilst Hazard was still wrestling with him, so Hazard kicked him. 

Five seconds – that’s all we are talking about here.  Was this significant time-wasting on the ballboy’s part?  Hardly up there with the worst examples of time-wasting that we see all the time from players when they are trying to run down the clock.

Even if it was, why on earth did Hazard decide it appropriate to kick him, even if we accept that he was hoping to make contact with the ball rather than the boy?  Why on earth did Nevin think it was right to do so?  If one of the Swansea players had been the one holding onto the ball would Hazard have kicked him? Would Nevin have supported him?  Of course not – so why was it OK when it was the ballboy?

So, if you happen to be in a queue at the checkout of your local supermarket, or waiting in line to pass through airport security somewhere, or waiting patiently at the roadside for the traffic lights to change in your favour, and spot Pat Nevin behind you, be very careful not to cause even an instant’s delay, or you will have to suffer the inevitable consequences. That spell in A&E will be entirely your own fault.

 

 

Glad I did not listen to the forecasters

I watched the weather reports with growing concern last week as the cream of British weather forecasters became more and more convinced that the East of England would be subjected to a major snowfall on Friday night and Saturday morning.  My plans for a weekend break to the Suffolk coast to celebrate my wife’s birthday looked to be endangered, so much so that on Thursday night I looked at the hotel reservation to check that the normal 24 hour cancellation policy would apply.

To my horror I discovered that the hotel had a 48 hour policy – full charges would apply if any less notice was given.  So, the options were either to crawl there through snow on Saturday morning and then wade back on Sunday night through the forecast floods, or don’t bother going at all and be charged the full amount for the room and meals I had booked.

We decided we’d go, come what may.  Saturday morning dawned bright, sunny and dry in Hertfordshire, with not a sign of the predicted snow in our area.  So we set off, convinced that as the journey progressed we’d see increasing evidence of the snow and have to suffer the inevitable delays along the way.  The further we travelled the more hopeful we became that we’d not be too delayed, but it wasn’t until we were about half an hour from our destination that we realised we’d not be seeing any snow at all. 

Of course, we were delighted to have experienced probably the best journey we have ever had to that destination, including a wonderfully clear and blue sky the whole way.  We then had two days of brilliant weather and a wonderful return journey – no snow, no floods, no need for the worry and the planning for the worst.

I know other parts of the country suffered badly on Friday night and that weather forecasting is becoming more reliable.  I am just glad that a combination of the 48 hour rule and our determination to get away this weekend meant that we didn’t cancel and thus did not miss out on a fabulous break, including two days in January where the sun shone all day long!

 

Andy Murray – what has changed?

Not that long ago, Andy Murray was widely viewed as a miserable, moaning, loser, condemned to being Britain’s best player for a long time, but unable to beat any of the world’s top three players on anything other than the rarest of occasions.  In many people he generated high levels of antipathy, such that they actually looked forward to him losing matches.

Things have changed.  I heard from a normally sensible and reliable friend last Friday that they were confused by their changed view of Andy Murray and were now hoping he’d win the Australian Final when a year ago they would have settled down with their favourite food and drink to enjoy watching him lose and then be miserable and ungracious afterwards.  I tried to reason with them and then offer some reassurance but, truth be told, I fear a spell working through their problems in AA meetings (Andy Anonymous) beckons.

One of my lines of argument was that whilst it was slightly distasteful that Andy had taken full advantage of Gentleman Roger Federer’s disinclination to raise anything much more than a gentle drop of perspiration on court in the semi-final, that hard-nosed Novak Djokovic would match Jockie Andy’s bucketloads of the wet stuff in the final.  And so it proved. Andy’s tartan-clad supporters (none of the Union-Jack waving enthusiasm of British fans for Andy when he’s abroad) had to watch as he succumbed to Djokovic’s powerful tennis.  He took defeat well, so much better than his blubbering Wimbledon performance (see Moan 6).

But how to explain his higher approval ratings (he was voted 3^rd on the Sports Personality of the Year contest this year – although we have to remember that the word ‘Personality’ in this instance is just longhand for ‘person’).  Maybe some people found his blubbering endearing, but I suspect it is more to do with our natural (if slightly unedifying) desire to associate ourselves with winners rather than losers.  Since winning the Olympics and the US Open, with Rafael Nadal’s apparently hopeless battle with injury, and with Roger Federer’s inevitable decline as he gets older, Andy suddenly looks like the real deal – so who wouldn’t want to support him now?

 

The never-ending election process in the USA

President Obama has just been inaugurated for his second term as US President.  He made a stirring acceptancespeech full of resolve to move forward on some key issues over the next four years. In many ways a more impressive speech than at his original inauguration four years ago, when hopes were so high for immediate and major change that he needed to promise less in order not to leave all his supporters disappointed. But still offering hope that America can move towards some of the principles set out in its constitution that it seems to find harder to pursue than other countries around the world:-

“Our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts; our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law, for if we are truly created equal then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well; our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote; our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity, until bright young students and engineers are listed in our workforce rather than expelled from our country; our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit, to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown know that they are cherished and cared for and always safe from harm.”

Good luck with all that, against a backdrop of a Congress dominated by Republicans who still see Obama as one stop short of being a communist, or worse.  I find it depressing that there are those, in this country and no doubt elsewhere in addition to the USA, who seem to think that it’s helpful to object to everything a Government, President or Prime Minister proposes because there’s at least a chance that in four years, or whatever the period might be, there will be another election and they will get a chance to try to bring in their own ideas – against the opposition of those who will see another election coming up in a further four years, and so on round the never-ending loop that they call politics. 

And in the meantime, those who don’t have the means, the time or the inclination to play this game are left wondering whether anybody really cares about improving things just because it’s right, rather than changing things because it’s helpful to a political cause.   

Monday Moan 25

Christmas noise

It’s started – Christmas noise is all around us.  I am no Scrooge or Grumpy Old Man (honestly) but my patience and good nature are being sorely tested at the moment.

 

Can’t a person step out to do some shopping without their eyes and ears being assaulted by flashing lights and deafening noise from a PA system?  Twice last week I ventured out to local shopping areas.  On a late afternoon,  I chanced upon the build-up to the switching on of the festive lights.  Every child within a radius of 10 miles appeared to be there, mostly in their buggies, which made walking around for the rest of us such a pleasure, and almost without exception crying or shouting or making some other noise at high volume.  Within a few minutes of finding the relative tranquillity of a shop I then heard loud music from a PA system outside.  At least, I assumed it was just outside since it was so loud, but when I left the shop there was nothing to be seen, apart from a phalanx of buggies rushing along the road obviously on a mission to get somewhere important.  Swept along by the tide, I turned the corner to see a makeshift stage on which a young lady, apparently from a local radio station, was addressing the crowd in what can only be described as Radio DJ Estuary English, babbling along about nothing in particular and desperate for some interaction with the massed force of buggies assembled in front of her. 

 

What with that and the fairground rides and light-sabre sellers and tacky merchandise on hastily erected stalls and I was soon beating a retreat, saving my cash for another day.

 

I thought that other day might be last Saturday.  This time, partly because of the atrocious weather, the venue was a shopping centre.  It was crowded, but then it was raining and shopping centres are where people go in such circumstances.  It was noisy, but then that’s the nature of indoor shopping centres. It was full of what seemed suspiciously like the same buggies as I had encountered a couple of days earlier, but there was more room for manoeuvring round them so things didn’t seems so bad. There was a band of carol singers at one end of the mall, so I moved away fairly quickly. But once down the other end the loud music started and then I spotted another makeshift stage.  Surely lightning couldn’t strike twice?  Oh yes it could! Admittedly it was a different young lady and a different local radio station, but the approach and effect were the same – too much noise, too little enjoyment, and I was out of there as quickly as I could.

 

I still have money to spend at Christmas, but I think I will do most of my shopping online in the peace and quiet of my own home.

  

 

What’s the point, and what’s the cost?

The EU summit last week to discuss the budget for 2014-2020 was as predictable as it was disheartening.  Get the EU’s 27 leaders together to agree a budget?  More chance of winning the lottery than that they will agree anything at the first such meeting.  It’s all a rather weary charade isn’t it?  We all know what the respective positions of the member countries are and we all know they will not be able to agree. But we still have to go through the nonsense of these important people drawing up outside the building in their limousines, getting out, walking over to state their prepared positions to the waiting press, and then disappearing inside for the summit.  Two days later they will all emerge to give press conferences to say they are determined to stick to their positions, that the others are inflexible, that the European Commission has not worked hard enough to come up with an acceptable package, and then they will all disperse to their respective countries to play out the next round of the charade for their domestic audiences. 

 

They will be back.  And so will the circus that surrounds such events, including hordes of journalists and camera teams from every broadcaster in the EU, eager to catch the utterances of these god-like leaders and then play them back to us during the evening news bulletins as if there was something happening that was really newsworthy.

 

I’m fed-up with it all.  And I want to know how much all this costs – not just the costs of the summits themselves, but the preparations beforehand, the travelling and accommodation. And I want to know the cost involved in the assembling of the world’s press at such events.  How much do the BBC, ITV and Sky spend on sending their own teams to relay back to us the news that there is no news, only what we all knew already?

 

Someone ought to call a halt to it all.  Make a stand. Save some money. Demand that we all stop pretending that the meetings are anything more than a charade along the way towards eventual agreement.

 

 

Spot the difference

Now that I am a man of leisure I get time to look at things in more detail.  Some might say this results in me finding things to moan about that really aren’t worth getting bothered about.  They may be right, but isn’t that the attitude that allows people to get away with things that ought not to be allowed? 

 

For example, now that I shop more than I used to I have noticed how confusing everything is when you are trying to assess the value of what you buy.  Picking just one thing at random, I decided to buy some biscuits for Christmas last week – buy early and then avoid the hassle later, I thought.  I spotted a box of Crawford’s biscuits that appeared to be the same as the one I bought last year – yes, that would be an easy option, so into the basket it went.

 

But when I got home and put it side by side with last year’s, all seemed slightly different.  Instead of 12 varieties of biscuits we now had only 10.  It took some forensic examination to discover that the ‘missing’ biscuits included jammy dodgers – how could they!  Further close examination revealed that the weight of biscuits included in the box was actually more this year than last.  Curious. My initial instinct was that since the price was unchanged from last year this must mean the box was better value this time.  Fortunately, my wife was on hand to add the appropriate note of caution, suggesting that removing the jammy dodgers and one other ‘exotic’ biscuit meant that the weight gain could only have been achieved by increasing the proportion of plain, boring biscuits, so the overall value was diminished.

 

Far too complicated for me – just what the manufacturer’s intended, no doubt.

 

 

Didn’t he used to be good?

Watching Match of the Day last night we had the now familiar discussion after any match involving Chelsea of what was wrong with Fernando Torres and when was he going to rediscover his form.

 

The experts flap around looking for reasons why Torres no longer looks like he knows how to score goals. They remember him as he used to be and wonder who or what can spark him back to life.  It’s all very repetitive and pointless.

 

My wife interjected – “why are they bothering with this, he was rubbish at Liverpool and he’s rubbish at Chelsea”.  She was right, of course.  Although I should add that he was only rubbish at Liverpool after his two knee operations in 2010.  Might be a bit of a clue there, perhaps? Prior to that he had been a real goalscorer, but he never recovered this form.

 

Liverpool made one of the most astute transfer deals in recent years when they sold this crocked Torres to cash-rich Chelsea in January 2011 for £50m.  Laughing all the way to the bank?  Not quite, because the gloss of this clever deal was almost rubbed out by their decision to blow £35m of it on Andy Carroll – so Newcastle were actually the astute dealers in this little exchange.

 

Anyway, the point is that Torres might one day discover the form that once made him a great striker, but don’t bet too much of your money on it – the English game is full of ex-Liverpool strikers who lost their touch but were still purchased by a succession of clubs dazzled by their former prowess – think Robbie Fowler and Michael Owen, for example.

 

 

Monday Moan 21

Time to choose

In a few days from now the American people will get the chance to vote for their next President.  Barack Obama or Mitt Romney – from here it doesn’t seem like a difficult decision, does it?  But that’s not the way it is over the other side of the Atlantic.

How could it be that this is such a close election?  Well, let’s not forget that Barack Obama only just managed to squeeze past the aged John McCain last time round, despite his opponent’s complete lack of personality or charisma, despite the economic crisis and despite the anger created by years of apparently pointless and unsuccessful war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Getting the American public to vote for its first black president was a big deal and it was achieved only by a relatively narrow margin.

Obama was then hailed as the man to change everything. Of course he promised a lot, but much of the euphoria surrounding his election was generated by unrealistic expectations on the part of others.  I confess to being swept up in this myself, so much so that I sat glued to the television to watch the inauguration ceremony, because I was convinced it was a historic turning point.  That euphoria and those expectations have weighed like an increasingly heavy millstone around Obama’s neck as the realities of government have exerted their force.  Nobody, not even the President of what many consider to be the most powerful nation on Earth, can change things overnight. 

Obama has, of course, faced some pretty tricky obstacles as he has tried to govern. It seems that a significant proportion of Americans believe he is a marxist, socialist, communist, muslim (delete as you wish) intent on destroying the American way of life. He has faced opposition from the Republicans to almost everything he has tried to do, including a campaign against his introduction of what to most of the rest of the developed world seemed to be pretty obvious proposals for healthcare reform, to extend access to healthcare provisions to the poorer members of society – including the almost 17% of Americans who have no health insurance.  Apparently, this was just an example of his communist beliefs.

He now faces a man who , according to many observers, is not just gaffe-prone, but a serial distorter of the truth (or liar, if you prefer).  Of course, there are those on the other side of the debate who claim that Obama is the liar.  And in the country of free-speech, both sides are able to make their vitriolic and partisan allegations almost unchecked.  Romney a liar?  or Obama a communist? 

 

Oh well, the election will be over soon and then, apart from the arguments, name-calling and righteous opposition to whatever is proposed by the new President, we can take a rest from campaigning - for at least a year to eighteen months.  Then it all kicks off again. 

 

A multimedia icon speaks

Dr. Michael Savage is not Tom Jones in a poor disguise, but a multimedia icon in the conservative movement, heard by 10 million listeners a week on “The Michael Savage Show” and syndicated across the U.S. in more than 300 markets.  At least, that is how he bills himself on his own website (obviously, not the Tom Jones denial bit).

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He is also one of only a handful of people banned from entering the UK.  Banned for his extremist views.  But free to peddle them elsewhere, of course.  He is one of President Obama’s fiercest (or at least one of his loudest) critics.  I am not going to put a link to his website in the Moan – you can look him up if you want to do so.  But I will highlight the following comment attached to one of his many video postings:-

 

“Independents and Republicans are shown to have higher IQs then [sic] democrats and liberals. Just science fact now. That’s why none will vote for Obama. We still have to worry about the other 50% of the country though, you know the ones that aren’t that smart.”

 

Heaven help us all.

 

  

Independence Day

Scotland is to get its vote on independence.  That is, the people living in Scotland will get to vote – which includes the almost 370,000 English people resident there, but not the 750,000 Scots resident in England.

 

Where will it all end?  English nationalism?  Independence for the Isle of Wight?  Not much support for the latter at the moment, as the Isle of Wight Party is not after independence but a fixed link (bridge or tunnel) between the island and the English mainland.  There was a Vectis National Party in the 1970s, which campaigned for independence on the basis that it believed the sale of the Isle of Wight to England in 1293 was unconstitutional.

 

That’s the kind of historical grudge that could grow into a major movement one day.

 

 

Pots and kettles

There is something deliciously amusing about the complaints by Chelsea about alleged comments made by referee Mark Clattenburg during their game against Manchester United yesterday.  These comments are said to include some inappropriate racial language.

 

All this from the club that has supported John Terry throughout the Anton Ferdinand affair and all the allegations about racial insults that were involved. 

 

Pots and kettles.