Monday Moan 70

BIG BROTHER IN HERTFORDSHIRE?

In Watford they are trialing an electronic speed warning sign which flashes up the offending driver's car number.  The intention is said to be to get motorist’s to reduce their speed and the data will not be collected or drivers fined or otherwise punished.

 

I have been pondering on this.  Surely if such signs are to be used then you would expect them to be sited in places where speed is a real danger, as evidenced by a history of accidents. But if that’s the case then either there would be cameras there already or drivers should not be let off with what amounts to just a warning?  If the signs are not situated in such dangerous places then what’s the point?

 

Of course, there is no general agreement on whether such warnings are a good idea.  On one side we have people saying it’s just another example of big-brother watching you and on the other we have people who say we need this because of the high number of deaths on the road.  At this point statistics are usually added in order to help prove the viewpoint being expressed.  Someone said we need the signs because 5,500 people are killed on our roads every year.  In fact, the true number is around 1700 - every death as a result of a motoring accident is a tragedy, but the number killed in these circumstances in the UK has been falling since the mid-1980s and is now at its lowest level since 1926.  Just under 25% of those deaths are as a result of exceeding the speed limit or driving too fast for the conditions.

 

Some may see this speed indicator development as a rather effective deterrent. Others may wonder about the further loss of freedoms to go about your daily business without the ‘authorities’ keeping a watching eye on you.  It all depends on your viewpoint. 

 

How will this all develop in the future? I imagine that in the labs they have prototypes that will show pictures of cyclists who jump red lights and of drivers who fail to signal at roundabouts. An even more exciting version will flash up the names and addresses of drivers who are not following the most logical route home after work. 

 

Just imagine how much more successful those old totalitarian states would have been if only they had survived long enough to benefit from today's technology.

 

 

WEATHER CHAOS

The UK has been on high alert today because of a major storm battering the south of the country. 

Of course, what constitutes a ‘major’ storm in the UK is not necessarily what people in other parts of the world would see in the same way.  Some might even consider that we have overreacted and been a little wimpish about the whole thing.

It must be good to be Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT transport union, since he is a man who never has a moment’s doubt about the cause of any problems.  He goes through life certain in the knowledge that it was all management’s fault.  

So, Bob knows that  the decision by the rail companies to cancel morning services today was not because of the weather forecast, but because the number of employees on the railways had been "hacked to the bone" by management. 

Network Rail, the rail infrastructure company, thought otherwise, saying that “it was impossible to run services in hurricane-force winds and that lives would have been put at risk if trains had operated".  At 08.40 they said that they had discovered over 100 trees on train lines in the South East of England.

No doubt Bob would have condemned management as being irresponsible and cavalier with people’s lives had the trains run and an accident occurred.  See, that’s the beauty of being Bob – whatever happens you can have a go at someone else.

 

 

IT DOESN’T HELP TO SELL IT TO THE REST OF US

Last week saw the death of Sir Anthony Caro, said by many to be the most important British sculptor of the last century.

There was the obligatory Will Gompertz piece on the BBC news and viewers who might previously have been unaware of Sir Anthony and his importance were given a brief opportunity to see for themselves the kinds of things he produced, such as this one. 

Some viewers may have concurred with the view that he was a genius, Others may have wondered why anybody would think some railway sleepers painted yellow should be so highly regarded.

But few, if any, will have thought along the lines of the following explanation from the NY Times of why Caro was so revered:-

“Caro took sculpture off the pedestal, stretched it across the floor and expanded it into airy concatenations of brightly coloured lines and planes made with industrial metal sheets, pipes, tubes and beams. Perfectly composed yet seemingly freshly improvised, they gave the impression of color liberated from physical support, like paintings in space, or jazz.”

 

Nor will it have helped people to understand his position in the arts to be told that his second most famous contribution to the world was as co-designer of the Millennium Bridge in London (cost of £18.2m; closed after three days because of excessive swaying, arising from the apparently unforeseen fact that people would walk on it; reopened months later after spending £5m on a redesign and rebuild).   Probably want to keep quiet about that one.

 

 

MORE ALARMING TOILET NEWS

In Moan 68 I mentioned the shock to the system from experiencing the sudden noise and suction caused by the unintentional triggering of a sensor activated flush whilst sitting on a toilet.

 

News from Norway last week made me realise how trivial this was in comparison with other events.

 

On one of the islands of Hvaler, in the South East of Norway, a 70 year-old man was quietly sitting on the toilet in his holiday cottage, perhaps thinking about the day ahead, or maybe reading the newspaper.   He would not have thought it necessary to put on his bullet-proof vest, even if he had such a thing.  But had he done so then he would have avoided being air-lifted to hospital in Oslo, having been shot by a stray bullet from a hunter, apparently unable to distinguish between a moose and a holiday cottage.  

 

Makes sitting on the auto-flushing toilet seem like a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

 

Monday Moan 59

WHAT’S THE FORECAST FOR THE WEEKEND?

Maybe the weather forecasters are suffering a little lack of confidence after recent weeks where their pronouncements have been wide of the mark, but come on guys, you have to be a bit more courageous than the forecaster who last Friday could only manage to commit himself to “the weekend is looking mixed”.

10/10 for accuracy.  0/10 for usefulness.

 

NO LONGER JUST SUNDAY DRIVERS

For as long as I can remember it has been customary to label anyone whose driving appears hesitant as being a ‘Sunday driver’.  In other words, they are not used to driving in traffic like all those experienced people who have to drive every day. Even on a Sunday, when the roads are not as busy as the rest of the week, they don’t know how to keep up with the traffic, they poodle along well below the speed limit, they are hesitant about turnings or roundabouts. In other words, they get in your way.

 

It seems to me that this is now a thing of the past.  Traffic on Sundays hardly seems any lighter than the rest of the week these days. Where are they all going at all hours of the day?  Why are there so many people on the roads even at Sunday lunchtime?  Surely, if they are visiting people, or going to meet people, they should be there by then?

 

More importantly, and now that I am ‘retired’ I have to phrase this carefully, the people who might previously have been labelled as ‘Sunday drivers’ now appear to be out on the roads every day of the week.  By and large (careful here) they seem to be people of advancing years. They pull out in front of you when it is clear (to anyone who can see properly and, probably more importantly, can judge speed and distance) that it is unsafe to do so. They then potter along, never going faster than 5 mph below the speed limit, looking for all the world as if they are going to turn off at every road junction, only to carry on when they realise this wasn’t the turning they wanted.

 

I’d shout at them if I thought they could hear. I’d gesticulate at them if I thought they were ever likely to look in their rear-view mirrors. And I need to remember to add 20% to my expected journey times to compensate for their presence.

 

And when I become one of them ……… you can all just eat my exhaust.

 

GIVING US A BAD NAME

I sing for my pleasure. I love being part of a fantastic choir.  I know some wonderful people through this passion and consider them all to be perfectly normal and likeable people.

 

But I cringe when I see or hear some singers who clearly think they are very clever, important or funny when actually, they are just being pretentious and/or embarrassing.

 

Step forward the Edinburgh Complaints Choir.  Formed specifically for the Edinburgh Festival, but based on a ‘concept’ originating in Finland, this choir sings its complaints about the city.  The BBC thought this a suitable ‘filler’ to slot into the Today Programme last week, and followed up a time-wasting interview with the choir’s director before 7am with an invitation to listeners to email in with suggestions for complaints that the choir would then put together and perform before the end of the programme. 

 

I listened to the later performance to see if they had included my suggestion to include something on “pointless, boring and contrived items on the Today programme”, but don’t think it was mentioned.  See if you can hear it here.

 

 

DON'T RUSH BACK ON OUR ACCOUNT

Like it or not, much of what is considered to be ‘newsworthy’ revolves around political stories.  Rail as we might about the unbearable smugness and self-importance of so many of our politicians, the fact remains that the mainstream media, both written and broadcast, not only provides the oxygen of publicity to these people, it panders to their vanity.

 

Thus it is that for most of us, the summer months are a period where we ought to be able to read the papers, watch the television, or listen to the radio without having to listen to some puffed up MP or other, or some Minister or Opposition spokesperson boring us rigid with something they consider highly important.  It should be a time where real news comes to the fore, and where we might be lucky enough to hear more about what is going on in the rest of the world and not just what is happening in this country.

 

Unfortunately, journalists seem to enjoy a long holiday as much as the politicians, and so instead of a golden and enjoyable break from the nonsense we get sloppy, lazy journalism.  They all seem to subscribe to the notion that this is the ‘silly season’ where they can get away with pieces that wouldn’t get anywhere near the frontline in the rest of the year.  Someone said on the radio the other day that this was a classic ‘August story’, as if that justified it being aired.

 

Does the world stop revolving because Whitehall and Westminster empty during the summer?  Doesn’t anything happen anywhere else in the UK, let alone the rest of the world, that is interesting enough for us to be told about it?  

 

Apparently not. 

Monday Moan 56

Don't waste my time by disagreeing with me

Margaret Hodge was at her most combative, argumentative, intransigent and rude in a session about rural broadband last week.  She has form (see Moan 44 and others, for example).

 

The initial session of the hearing started with Margaret Hodge giving an open and friendly platform to BT’s competitors to put their points to the Committee, including the CEO of one company which has not, so far, invested a single penny in the UK.  No such luxury or latitude was afforded to the witness from BT, who found himself being hectored, told he was wrong, and being ridiculed by Hodge. She disagreed with him when he quoted facts, relying in some cases on the obviously much more reliable evidence of “an industry insider told me”.  Her sidekick Richard Bacon, MP (no, not the Radio 5 broadcaster, although the latter would undoubtedly be a more thoughtful, serious and useful person to have on the Committee), spent the session looking to raise a laugh and trying to make fun of the BT witness – he told him he should consider a career as a Jesuit priest (because he could say that black was white) and then that he should have been a comedian, because he had the temerity to deny that BT had a monopoly on superfast broadband.  “Boom, boom” was the intelligent contribution of Bacon (the MP) to that, ignoring the witness pointing out that Virgin Media had a larger share of the retail market than BT.

 

Ian Swales, MP tried to be clever by saying that decisions on building infrastructure did not depend on likely use - “You don’t build a road based on how many cars are going to use it, you just build the road.”  Oh dear.  Back to school for Ian I’m afraid.  Of course investment in infrastructure takes account of expected demand.  Do we need a new road, and if so, does it need to be single carriageway or a multi-lane motorway?  How on earth does he think we get to the answer without taking account of likely usage of that road?  Similarly regarding investment in almost any other infrastructure like schools, airports, etc.  Poor old Ian also had a whole argument with Government officials at the next session haranguing them for blocking the possibility of using fixed wireless solutions, when in fact this was completely the opposite of what the witness had said, and Swales was forced to apologise for his misinterpretation.

 

Margaret Hodge and Richard Bacon spent large amounts of time having side conversations, distracting the witnesses and showing huge disrespect to them.  She complained that witnesses were not answering her questions, but what she actually meant was that their answers did not match her pre-conceptions. She got so frustrated by this refusal of witnesses to agree with her that her aside of “Oh Jesus” at one point caused one of the MPs on the Committee to note that this was inappropriate and un-Parliamentary language.

 

The thing is, we pay for these people and we have a right to expect that they will conduct themselves appropriately. This should include objectivity and giving witnesses both a chance to be heard and the right to say things that conflict with the Committee members’ pre-conceived notions and positions, without being accused of lying or having their evidence dismissed out of hand.

 

Value for money?  I don’t think so.  Maybe there should be an investigation into the value for money of the Public Accounts Committee?

 

 

It’s a heatwave – but not in Rochester (again)

The UK is experiencing a heatwave – it’s all relative, of course, but here in the UK we are not used to high temperatures, so a few consecutive days of them constitutes a heatwave.  Anyway, we have now had something like 10 days of hot weather – with the one exception being last Saturday, when we went to Rochester to sing at their annual open-air ‘Prom’ concert.  This always takes place on the third Saturday in July, and it seems that it is traditional that whatever the weather has been doing on other days, on the day of the concert the weather will be rubbish. 

 

This year was no exception.  Temperatures of around 30c on other days disappeared and a more typical 18c was reached – for one day only, of course, as the hot weather returned the following day. It was cold, it was windy, the extra layers of clothing were all needed – but it was still great fun and we’d certainly do it again!

 

 

ITN – they decide what’s news

Yesterday’s Independent Television News decided that the main news was that the Prime Minister had again refused to answer repeated questions about whether or not he had discussed proposed rules on health warnings on tobacco products with one of his advisers, Lynton Crosby, who works for a PR firm whose clients include tobacco companies.

I would be amazed if the two of them had not talked about this at some stage.  And I would add a very loud ‘SO WHAT?’  I’d rather he was talking to an adviser who actually knew something about the issues in question than someone with a theoretical knowledge, gleaned from something they had read or that had been sent to them.  Do people imagine that everything a politician says has sprung from their own imaginations or research?   That would be ridiculous.  Of course politicians are recipients of information, of ‘lobbying’ on a daily basis – that’s the only way the system can work.

 

Here’s the thing.  This ITN ‘story’ was actually gleaned from an interview on the BBC earlier in the day – and yet the BBC did not even think it newsworthy enough to mention in its own main news bulletin.  

 

Strange choice for ITN?  Well, they have a track record for choosing strange lead stories.  At the end of June, for example, they thought the most newsworthy story of the day was their own ‘investigation’ which revealed that some NHS Trusts were saving money by not having to pay VAT for certain services.  Nothing illegal about this, they acknowledged, but still worth interviewing Margaret Hodge (yes, her again) and elevating this above all other news of the day.  The story was delivered with all the seriousness the presenter could muster, managing to link the NHS with Starbucks and Google, who have also been accused of not paying tax that they did not need to pay.

 

Not much of a story really.

 

Have the BBC got it in for the England cricket team?

Not content with their previous attempt to make England get twice as many runs for victory as was actually the case (see Moan 52), the BBC were at it again last week in the First Test Match against Australia.  

 

Obviously worried that the Aussies were not able to make much of a game of it without some outside help, the BBC stepped in to show that 5 wickets had fallen when in fact only 4 had done so:-

 

Didn’t make any difference, of course, as the Aussies were beaten and then suffered a humiliating second defeat at the weekend.  Oh how they would have gloated had the boot been on the other foot.  We, of course, are more restrained – HA!

Monday Moan 50

Does traffic have to be like this?

I had to go into London a couple of times last week and on both occasions decided to drive as the places I was visiting and the times of travel made driving a sensible option.  OK, we all know that travelling by road in any city is a slow process and so we build this into our planning.  But does it have to be as bad and as frustrating as it was last week?

 

London is full of bus lanes which squeeze the rest of the traffic into single lanes mostly, since the roads themselves have not changed much since they were first built.  London is also full of buses at all times of the day, seemingly irrespective of whether anybody wants to travel on them. So, you can easily have a large number of buses all trying to negotiate a narrow road, all of them carrying perhaps no more than one or two passengers.  Some scope there for efficiency savings you’d think.  The buses, of course, can’t wait for the one in front to stop and pick up or drop off their small number of passengers when they reach a stop, so they then push their way out into the already congested lane in which the rest of us have been crammed.

 

Bus lanes are also frequently blocked by cars or other vehicles parked in them – once the drivers have ascertained that there are no cameras at that point.  But the key reason why bus lanes seem to be a cause of congestion and chaos is the huge number of delivery vans that are stopped in them at all hours of the day, causing the buses to come out to get round them. 

 

No doubt all these vans are there legitimately, but why do they have to make their deliveries during the busiest times of the day?  Maybe Boris Johnson could think about requiring all deliveries to be made outside of the busy periods – say, between 22.00 and 06.00?  Lots of issues with that, of course, but someone needs to think a little bit creatively about this or the city (and others like it) will grind to a halt.

 

 

Weather forecasting – not a precise science?

With all the improvements in technology we now have an expectation that the weather forecasts will be pretty accurate, where years ago we took them all with a huge pinch of salt.  However, experience tells us that the forecasts are not always accurate, and they will most likely be inaccurate when you make the mistake of relying upon them.  So, you plan your day out on the basis that the forecasters all agree that it will be sunny and warm, 25C in the city with not a cloud in sight.  You dress and pack your bag accordingly and set out. 

 

It is only after you have gone far enough from home that it would make no sense to return that the darkening sky sets off a small alarm bell inside your head, which gets louder as the sky becomes darker and the temperature not only fails to head up towards the promised 25C but actually starts to fall below the 19C it was showing.  That alarm bell goes into overdrive and becomes deafening as the heavens open, rain falls all around you and the temperature plummets still further.  It’s no use bemoaning your lack of rainwear or anything remotely resembling warm clothing – more fool you for having believed the forecasters and trusted in both their expertise and in the British weather.  It’s summer in London – what else would you expect apart from rain, wind and cloud?  The fact that most other parts of the country are basking in sunshine and high temperatures is of little consolation.  No, the consolation is that at some stage later in the year the sun will come out, it will be warm and we will forget the misery of what has gone before.  I hope.

 

Is the public really concerned?

Much angst amongst sections of the media and some politicians about the ‘revelation’ that the security services are monitoring communications as a key part of their battle against terrorism.  Not sure why this has come up yet again and why anybody should be particularly exercised about it.

 

This time the ‘whistleblower’ is one Edward Snowden, who has decided that he knows best what is legal and what is right.  He is worried about surveillance and doesn’t want everything he says and does monitored.  Perhaps he should have kept quiet about all this and not drawn attention to himself then?

 

Douglas Alexander, Labour Shadow Foreign Secretary, appeared on the television over weekend proclaiming that the matter was a major public concern and he wanted a Government statement.  Interesting.  My straw poll amongst members of the public revealed no great concern about this – in fact no concern about it at all.  Quite the opposite in fact.  The great British public seems to expect its security services to be doing all that they can to monitor potential terrorists, and prevent them being able to put into effect any actions designed to kill and maim people in the name of whatever cause it is that espouse. Moreover, they seem to be irritated by politicians and media people who want to tell us how worried we should be about Government getting on with its job of protecting us and our way of life.

 

Something of a disconnect here, don’t you think?

 

 

Lobbying – throw enough dirt and some of it is bound to stick

This seems to be the current approach of The Sunday Times in its ‘investigation’ (or ‘deception designed to extract something potentially incriminating’) of Tim Yeo – the latest in a line of politicians they seem to have been targeting recently.  Pretend to be someone you are not, invent a wholly ficticious scenario designed to interest the victim, talk to them for hours and then publish a highly selective and most likely non-representative extract from that conversation with no idea of context. 

 

This time it’s not clear what misdemeanours are being alleged, but lots of current buzzwords are being bandied around, including ‘lobbying’, ‘cash’, ‘outside business interests’, 'influence’ etc.  Some people seem to be surprised that Yeo appears to have talked to or maybe coached his business colleague about how to approach a forthcoming appearance before a Select Committee.   

 

Amazing revelation that one, that somebody actually thought about what he might say before an important event and even took advice on it from somebody with experience.  I am astonished – not that this was done, of course, but that anybody should think this worthy or mention and, potentially, an example of wrongdoing. 

 

Wonder if anybody ever advised the reporters involved on any aspects of their work, perhaps about their approaches to their job interviews, or writing their CVs, or maybe on how to operate their secret cameras whilst spinning a series of lies over the dinner table?

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.   

(delayed) Monday Moan 4

Jeremy Watch

Endless excitement in the Hunt household about the brilliant part being played by South West Surrey in the Olympics success story.  Huh?  Yes, SWS has won 12.7% of all Olympic contracts (being such a well-known hotspot of manufacturing), the torch is being carried through Godalming (thanks to Jeremy’s lobbying skills) and, best of all, SWS even has an Olympic event – the Road Race will whizz through. Hopefully the riders will not be too startled by the Dorking Cockerel.

Whether to worry about the weather forecasts

OK, British people love to moan about the weather so maybe this isn’t news, but I’ve had it with the weather this year.  It’s past midsummer and I am still being tempted to put my heating on in the evenings. My Arctic duvet has not been put away yet. On Sunday we had sunshine – except for the 20 minutes I went to the shops, when it bucketed down and left the washing on the line as wet as it had been four hours earlier when it was put outside.

Isn’t it about time the Govt did something? I’m sure the last Administration would have acted by now.

Euro and out

So, England are now out of the Euros (football story, nothing to do with the economy), after a poor and mind-numbingly unadventurous display against the kings of the defensive approach on Sunday.  At least we have been spared the bleatings about how unlucky we were and how our ‘golden’ generation of footballers just needed a good leader for them to be able to rule the world (think back to South Africa 2 years ago – or any tournament in the last 10 years).  No, at least this time most people recognise that we were lucky to get away without an embarrassing scoreline against us and that we probably got further than we deserved.

That won’t stop pundits telling us what we need to do to resume our rightful place at the top table.  But stop for a minute and think what our rightful place should be, and you ought to conclude that it’s not at the top table at all.  Since we won the World Cup on home turf in 1966, England’s position in world football has been somewhere around the middle band of performers – occasionally near the top of the group, but not very often.  And that won’t change until players learn how to control the ball when it is passed to them, how to create space so that those with the ball have somebody to pass to, and how to pass the ball to such colleagues rather than aimlessly hoofing it upfield hoping that someone will be able to ‘get on the end of it’. 

Mogadon for the masses?

Talking of the Euros, I find myself in a difficult position regarding the Germans.  I remember when Man Utd were playing Bayern Munich in the Champions League final a few years ago and an ex-boss of mine, who was a Fulham supporter, said “Man Utd or the Germans, it’s a difficult decision isn’t it?”  Well no, actually I thought it was easy – Bayern got my vote without a moment’s hesitation. 

But this time it’s more difficult.  I should be supporting Spain – who play ‘beautiful’ football, where they love the ball and do wonderful things with it.  I loved it when they won the last Euros and the World Cup.  They had so much skill and even played with a striker or two.  But, but….. Am I the only one who thinks this Spanish team is now sucking the life out of games, sending opponents, crowds and tv viewers into a deep sleep with their endless pit-pat passing and no end result?  The latest stat being presented for us to admire is how many passes each side is making in a game.  The Spanish win this one every time, but isn’t that because they indulge in endless short passes back and forth without ever looking to make a run forward, or an attempt on goal? Mogadon for the masses? 

I have to say I prefer the German approach which allies supreme ball skills with something I recognise as football – exciting play designed to beat your opponents and create chances for goalmouth action.  I hope they beat the Spanish in the final – assuming both teams get there. 

Julian Assange – just too creepy?

The Julian Assange saga continues to rumble on – his court appearances and attempts to play the system resembling those of Cap’n Hook Hamza.  So many threads to this, but how about just two – didn’t he ever think what might happen once he upset so many people by his self-centred conceit that he knew better than everyone else what should and shouldn’t be considered private?  And why do we have a legal system that seems incapable of reaching a conclusion in a reasonable amount of time, preferring instead a seemingly never-ending series of appeal possibilities?