Mark Cavendish for SPOY

Who will be the BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2011?  My vote and, I hope yours will go to bike rider Mark Cavendish who has had a fantastic year in which he became the first ever British rider to win the green jersey for sprinters at the Tour de France and became the cycling World Road Race Champion — the first male to win that in 46 years.  Mark Cavendish, along with others like Sir Chris Hoy and Bradley Williams have done wonders for British bike riding.  We are now looking forward to the battles they will have at the Olympics next year and — possibly — in the Tour de France as well.

So — Vote for Mark Cavendish!  Never mind the cricketers, the golfers — especially the golfers — the boxer, the tennis player and the others;  Mark's the Man!

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Chirac Guilty

I am updating this post because I have done a bit more investigating of the extraordinary circumstances of the prosecution in the French Court of the former president Jacques Chirac.  Chirac was in court on Thursday 15th December and he was found guilty of diverting public funds and abusing public trust.  He was given a suspended gaol sentence which seems to be the norm for corrupt politicians in France.  This man, working at the heart of French politics for the best part of fifty years, was a sleaze ball and crook who was kept for years at state expense, living a life of luxury.  The object of this prosecution relates to his time as Mayor of Paris yet it has taken years to get into a court.  During his time as Mayor he diverted money to his political party the RPR in payment for jobs that did not exist.  The 79 year old former president will not appeal he said, because he is too weak.  In this extraordinary trial, the prosecution — apparently acting under pressure from President Sarkozy — repeatedly urged the judges to find Chirac not guilty and acquit him of all charges.  The action of the judges in ignoring this advice, is, if nothing else, a condemnation of the French prosecution service.  In what kind of court does the prosecution urge that the defendant be found not guilty?

It is said that Chirac is popular in France — why?  Maybe its because he is no longer in power and everyone must be thankful of that.  What is it about France that makes them like crooks and slime balls as potential holders of high office — I am thinking of ............ well there are quite a few possibilities.  Our politicians may not always be as squeaky clean as we would like but they are not this bad.

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In Defence of Libraries

The progressive shutting down and permanent closure of public libraries is proceeding apace with many local authorities throughout the land.  In many areas there has been stout opposition to these plans but far too many local authorities seem determined to proceed down this road to ignorance.  Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide library services but many are choosing to interpret that duty in a less than rigorous manner. Gloucestershire and Somerset Council was determined to close 21 of their libraries until campaigners took them to court and won an order that instructed the council abide by its duty.  Incredibly, Brent Council in North London has spent £150,000 defending its plan to close half of its libraries — one of which, apparently, was opened in 1900 by literary giant, Mark Twain.  Many well-known people have been joining the campaign to keep the libraries and they should drag in as many supporters as possible.

I have to admit that I rarely use libraries these days but this is because I have about 2,500 books of my own.  But I still support all those who are fighting for libraries to stay open.  When I was a child I went to the local library up in Atherton all the time taking out great piles of books that I read at top speed. That library in a small northern industrial urban district was a gem.  There was so much in there to help educate a growing boy.  The schools taught us to read and the library provided the material to read.  I read — and came to love — Dickens, Conrad, Graham Greene, Somerset Maugham, J.B. Priestley and many another as well as more popular detective stories of such as Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie.  And books of history, travel, geography, etc.  Today, we are concerned about the educational failings of young people and this surely is not the time to cut the libraries.  An ability to read well is a fundamental of gaining an education and when many homes no longer have books, we should be encouraging the use of libraries not closing them down.   These days half the homes in Britain have no books in them whatsoever.  I could not even imagine a home with no books but such a situation will make it more difficult to get young people reading more books.

It is said that electronic book reading is the future.  I am all in favour of the Kindle book reader but this will not replace the hardback and paperback book.  There is nothing like holding the real book in the hands and curling up to read it.  One other thing; once a book has been published and purchased it can be read at any time in the future — and over and over again,  An e0book depends on technology and while it may be possible to store 100,000 books on a single machine, the latest technology and the machine itself will always be needed to allow anything to be read.  A book is complete in itself and will be readable, if looked after, for a thousand years.

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Prosperity In Our Time

I have seen a report — not yet confirmed — that prior to returning to England David Cameron was invited to another private meeting with Mrs Merkel — in Munich, I believe. Without the French President present it seems that this meeting went off in a much friendlier atmosphere and that the two were able to sign a document — an accord — that would form the basis of a new relationship with Europe. Waving the document aloft when he met Tory back-benchers at Chequers last night, he said that this agreement guaranteed a new Europe. "It gives us prosperity in our time," he said.

If this agreement is confirmed, it will mark the start of a new era in which Britain again becomes an independent nation with total control of its finances, without interference in it legislation, without needing to contribute buckets of money to Brussels, without needing to attend the expensive, meaningless meetings about the EU, without piles of red tape, without need to subsidize corruption, without a bloated bureaucracy, without needing to elect members to a useless European Parliament, without anti-British legislation, without H&S legislation that shuts down kids playgrounds, etc., etc. and with an opportunity to make new efforts to sell into the world of emerging economies.

You may suggest that I am just another nationalistic Little Englander. But I am not. When we had a referendum on UK membership of the EU in 1975, I voted, "Yes!" But then I thought — like most people — that I was voting for an enlarged free-trade area. In the last 36 years the EU has gone way beyond that with a vast undemocratic bureaucracy that seeks to control our lives. And this new accord will take the EU one step further down the road to a monster federal state. At least, it will if it succeeds in its objectives. In reality, I think it is more likely that the euro area will collapse under the unrelieved debt burden. We will have to see. As I said yesterday,I think we should get out and try again to re-establish our connections with EFTA.

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Time To Leave The EU?

Well, I didn't think he would do it but he has. When push came to shove, David Cameron vetoed the proposal of a new European Treaty to allow Germany and France to impose financial controls on all the countries of Europe with little or no democratic control. Merkel and Sarkozy are now determined to put together an "accord" which will allow those countries that wish to join the inner Europe an opportunity of taking part in the discussions. I think this will primarily be Germany and France. Maybe Belgium and Holland will sign up but I am doubtful about the countries of Southern Europe unless their un-elected governments are allowed to bamboozle their electorates into allowing it to happen. If these talks make any progress then I think Britain should go the whole hog and leave the EU. If there is some kind of accord between a small number of the 27, who will pay for the operation of the inner circle? Why should Britain pay money to the EU in order to allow them to manipulate the systems in ways that would be to our disadvantage?

I may be anti- Europe and so may many of the electorate in the UK. But we are by no means unique. What will Ireland do? Already the Irish are weighed down by austerity measures imposed by Brussels and yet a very large part of their business is with the UK. Would they not be better with a resurrected Pund linked to Sterling? Will Denmark sign up? Will Sweden? Both countries are outside the Euro and doing quite well. I think we are getting very close to the point where Britain just detaches from Europe completely.

Before we became a full member of this bureaucratic nightmare, we were a member of EFTA - the European Free Trade Association. EFTA still exists although it has been diminished by countries leaving — like Britain — and joining the EU. I think it is time to look again at the possibility of our co-operating with the EFTA and possibly taking other countries with us. The remaining members are Switzerland, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway. Only Switzerland and Norway have got significant populations but all four are doing rather well compared with the Euro countries. EFTA worked very well in the old days and I would be much happier working with the group of countries of the old EFTA in a free trade area — without the vast clogging, money wasting uselessness of Brussels.

We have to wait to see what happens next but I think Boris Johnson hit the nail on the head when he suggested that the situation in Europe was like taking a patient into hospital suffering from cancer and watching the doctors fighting to save the cancer at the expense of the patient.

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RIP Harry Morgan

Probably — no, definitely — the best TV series to come out of the USA has been Mash — the series set in Korea during the war, which lasted from June 1950 to July 1953. It was an appalling conflict in which 37,000 Americans were killed along with 3,727 soldiers and airmen from 16 other countries including, even 2 from Luxembourg. These staggering numbers are dwarfed by the numbers of combatants killed from the Republic of [South] Korea and the Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, which together exceeded 350,000. Add to these another 400,000 dead from China and the USSR plus 2.5 million civilians killed and wounded. The magnitude of the slaughter is now almost forgotten and yet, like so often, the conflict ends with a fudge.

How could a comedy series be set amidst such slaughter. It was and it was very successful and became a powerful anti-war drama-documentary. It was detested by the right-wing establishment and by the military because it was so anti-war.

I have watched many of episodes of every series and enjoyed it immensely. It succeeded not least because it had such a strong cast. I do not wish to diminish any of the actors but the performances of Harry Morgan as Colonel Potter were superb. I am moved to comment on this magnificent series now because, yesterday, Harry Morgan died at his home in California of pneumonia at the grand age of 96. RIP Harry, you gave us all a great deal of pleasure.

In spite of the fact that Mash was on TV nearly 40 years ago, almost all the main actors are still alive; not necessarily still acting but still busy.

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National Defense Authorisation Act

The National Defense Authorisation Act is a piece of legislation in the USA that passes through Congress every year and allows the government to go ahead with its annual spending on Defense - this year $662 billion. The bill for 2012 was passed by in the Senate last week and now goes to the House of Representatives for approval before the president's signature. This year it has become controversial because slipped into the bill is an inclusion of a provision allowing military custody of anyone suspected of being a terrorist, believed to be a member of Al Qaeda or any of its affiliates and involved in attacks anywhere in the USA. The provision would allow anyone suspected of being a terrorist to be incarcerated indefinitely without legal advice and without being charged or brought before a court. Many libertarians are up in arms about the prospect of American citizens being locked up without any charges being brought and with no time limits. America is already stuck with the Homeland Security Bill that has brought massive surveillance on the People of the USA via an administration — George W Bush — with a parnoid obsession about terrorism. This latest piece of nonsense is yet another step down the road to an authoritarian police state — as if we didn't have enough of those in the world already. The arguments will go on and President Obama has indicated that he is minded not to sign off the bill but it is a bad sign of things to come.

We will have to wait the outcome but it is yet another sign that the world's rulers, while becoming increasingly inadequate to the point of total incompetence, are determined to eliminate opposition and criticism. In Europe as the manoeuvrings on the fate of the euro go on, Angela Merkel and Nicholas Sakozy try to fathom a way of re-organising Europe to give more power to the undemocratic Council of Ministers and the European Commission via "treaty" changes that will not require democratic approval via referendums — which are notoriously prone to giving the Wrong answers. The governments in Greece and Italy have been replaced without any elections — that in Italy is made up of a Prime Minister — formerly employed by Goldmann Sachs and the European Union — who has never been elected for anything and he has chosen a cabinet of ministers who also have never been elected. I am opposed to the whole principle of the single currency and the sooner it disappears down the plughole the better. But the present activities are all about denying that the European Union got the idea of a single currency wrong in the first place. The Commission carries on in its own sweet way, year after year failing to get its accounts approved as it chucks billions of euros down the drain in the cause of corruption or the promotion of its own existence. There is no control, there is no responsibility — so many people appear to be in charge that it is impossible to establish where responsibility lies. There is, of course, a European Parliament which costs money and gives veneer of respectability without having any control whatsoever.

Our leaders are in competent but hey give themselves ever more authority to plunge down the next disastrous road to oblivion. They really have got to be stopped!

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Gary Speed [1969 - 2011]

Last Sunday morning, we heard the terrible news that footballer and manager of the Welsh Football Team, Gary Speed, was dead. Why was this such a shock to so many people; after all we will all die sometime? The shock here was that Gary Speed was only 42 years old, was liked by everyone — no one has had a bad word to say about him — his career has been a complete success, as far as we know he was 100% healthy and the future looked rosy. Yet, in the early hours of that Sunday morning, he hanged himself. Earlier on Saturday afternoon he had appeared on Football Focus on TV and seemed full of life. Afterwards he chatted with his mate Alan Shearer about his family and it was agreed that Gary Speed and his wife would come up to the north-east next week to stay with the Shearers. The two men would have a round of golf. Yet 12 hours later he was dead. Why? At this time no one knows and unless there was a suicide note somewhere or a confidante appears, we never will know.

As a professional player, Gary Speed played for five clubs, including a few years with Bolton Wanderers back in Big Sam Allardyce's days, was successful in every case, had a long career and was rarely injured. At the time of his death, he was the manager of the Welsh national side that qualified for the European Cup and again everything seemed to be going well. We know of no personal problems or money problems, so what went wrong? I don't know but looking at all the pictures of Gary Speed that have been printed in newspapers in the last week, there is something about the expression on his face that is not quite right.

Everybody has a great deal of their personality written on their face — arrogance, cruelty, illness, bad temper, madness, delusion, etc. etc; it can all be there. In the case of Gary Speed there is a dark brooding expression that shows through his features all the time. There was some dark force that he never revealed that was always troubling him. It is there in all the pictures taken over the last ten years or more. Is this my imagination being wise after the event? I don't think so. I have never looked at Gary Speed's face at all until the last week but now it seems that in every picture there is a darkness. In spite of all his success, did he, when he was alone, fear failure? Did he worry about letting people down? Did the job of managing the Welsh Football Team and taking them to the European Cup become the final straw that overwhelmed him?

It is all questions and speculation. But the fact is that a well-loved, decent and successful individual was so overcome by hidden pressures that suddenly — as far as we know — he decided that the only way out was death. His case is not unique and always we ask, why? But no answers come. The Professional Footballers Association has this week put out a booklet of notes to try to help those suffering from hidden stresses. It is an attempt to do something but i doubt if it will make much difference.

It is a sad story. For Gary it is too late now but our thoughts must be with his family in these distressing times.

RIP Gary

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