So Jezza won't push the button ...

Music of the week

Quote of the day

From a letter to The Guardian (here):

Imagine the headlines in the Tory press if it was Jeremy Corbyn, rather than George Osborne, visiting China to foster closer economic and cultural links.

   

Rugby - the squeaker

I thought that my sister put it very well when she asked why Scott Hastings always sounds as if his underpants are strangling him.  But what can you expect from a Watsonian?

 

Quote of the day

So it goes.  Add VW to the roll-call of shame.  CityAM reports:

FOR MUCH of the past few years the debate around trust in business has focussed on financial services. The case for the prosecution is well known and the roll-call of shame (Libor rigging, forex scandals, PPI mis-selling) should never fail to serve as a reminder of the damage caused when individuals and institutions consider themselves to be above the rules or beyond the law. For a while, the horse meat scandal reminded the public that a business doesn’t have to be dealing in currency to behave like a crook, but generally speaking it’s financial services that still takes the heat when the public wants to vent. Now a new bad guy has strolled into town in the shape of Volkswagen. How did it think it would get away with it? Consider the discussions that must have gone into such an audacious deceit. Up to 11m VW diesel cars may have been fitted with a device whose sole purpose appears to have been to cheat the consumer and lie to regulators over emission levels. The consequences for the 78-year-old German company could be immense. In two days, £17bn has been wiped off the value of the carmaker, governments around the world are launching investigations and it faces multi-billion dollar fines and the threat of criminal charges.

   

Photo of the day

That SABMiller-InBev merger

Nowadays, even The Times  is being sarcastic about the bankers:

Officially, fees to bankers for cobbling together two companies that are already bigger than sense will be about $200 million. Assume that is an underestimate.

It’s all about shareholder value, of course. To suggest that this deal is going to be shoved through to enrich banks and executives no matter what anyone else thinks would make you a fool who just Doesn’t Get It.

Mergers are good, say bankers, who are impartial to a fault. Evidence to the contrary is yesterday’s news.

Meanwhile, the chancellor and the new city regulator want to ease off on bank regulation. It’s time they stopped saying sorry and got on with getting rich again, the politicians and the watchdogs agree.

So be cheerful. Life is better. For bankers.

I have shares in neither; nor do I drink their sorry apology for beer.

     

The mighty big if

The warmongers are at it again.  The Guardian reports:

Jeremy Corbyn faced pressure over Labour’s policy on airstrikes in Syria after senior shadow cabinet ministers signalled they could support military action under the right conditions.

Lord Falconer, the shadow justice secretary, said he would be prepared to back a bombing campaign in Syria with the proper military and legal justification, despite the Labour leader’s stated opposition.

His intervention came after Hilary Benn, the shadow foreign minister, refused to rule out supporting military intervention, saying he would look at the objectives.

There you have it: "under the right conditions" and "with the proper military and legal justification".  It might be rather difficult to tease out a rational justification and a clear objective for further military intervention in Syria.  What would it achieve?  What would it contribute to our national security?

Incidentally, the miltary boys playing with their toys would not provide a decent excuse.

Up all night

The Guardian  reports:

Every night at 8pm, Eastern Standard Time, Rhod Sharp, an expatriate Scot, climbs to the loft of his house in Marblehead, Massachusetts, puts on his headphones and prepares to pretend that it is actually one in the morning GMT. For the next four hours he sets out to, in his own words, “keep some listeners awake and send others to sleep” with the mix of rolling news and free-range conversation which is Up All Night (Monday to Friday, 1am, 5 Live). If you’re one of the significant minority of people who find it difficult to go to sleep without the reassuring sound of a bedside radio or the confiding comfort of an earpiece, the image of Sharp talking to you from his own home thousands of miles away is somehow more appealing than thinking of the same job being done by the sole bleary-eyed occupant of a media mausoleum.

Sharp’s chat provides a valuable supplement to the station’s daytime output. In a media environment where too much time is given to big-name guests with nothing to say or stories with little to add to your knowledge of a situation beyond the fact that they are apparently “breaking”, Sharp’s gently unfolding conversations with experts, well-placed observers and stars whose names wouldn’t be quite big enough to get on the main bulletins are even more welcome.

Aye, Rhod is alright.  But he is only on for three mornings a week - Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.  And on Thursday morning he gives up an hour of the programme to an execrable Australian who claims to be a scientific expert.  The rest of the week is given to Dotun Adebayo who is un-listenable to - the radio equivalent of tabloid newspapers.

So, for much of the week, we nightowls have to rely on the World Service.  But that is deeply marred by a daily disgraceful programme of an hour from 2am called Outlook, devoted to "true life stories", especially those - refugees and other victims - who have endured some kind of trauma.  The presenter, a Matthew Bannister, loves to dwell on the gory bits, along the lines of "How did you feel when they tortured you?".

I tell you this - it's not easy being an insomniac ...

 

Music of the week

Fair unbiased coverage?

Perhaps the English rugby fans watching their TVs were happy.  The Guardian comments:

While ITV has employed former players of various nationalities to peddle opinion on their World Cup coverage, any pretence it was going to be anything other than totally chariot-centric was quickly put to bed when John Inverdale, a presenter who could scarcely bawl “Home Counties” more loudly if he was shouting through a megaphone fashioned from a rolled-up copy of the Daily Telegraph, introduced an all-English panel of studio experts comprised of Jonny Wilkinson, Sir Clive Woodward and Lawrence Dallaglio.

Meanwhile down on the touchline, Martin Bayfield towered over Jason Robinson, while Francois Pienaar made some early contributions until, one supposes, a minion checked his passport and realised there had been some terrible mistake. Weirdly, despite an early cameo, we neither saw nor heard from the former South African captain again.

Apart from the usual inability to understand the tactics or the strategies, I thought that the commentators might have made a little more effort to identify the Fijian players.  But a Bill McLaren does not come along every day.

Nice to see Jonny Wilkinson wearing a tie, while the others on parade in the studio went fashionably open-necked.  Inverdale is exempted from this criticism as he has no neck - his head just sits on his shoulders without any apparent attachment.

 

Tinkling the ivories

Her Majesty snubs The Red Flag

PMQs

Usually, I find that watching Prime Minister's Questions verges on the tedious.  But, as it was Jezza's first outing, I metaphorically girded up my loins to watch the gladiators in their contest.

Mr Corbyn was calm and courteous.  He looked somewhat dishevelled but that only served as a welcome contrast with the sleekit smoothness of the Prime Minister.

The Leader of the Opposition asked a series of questions based on e-mails he had received from real people, covering housing, tax credits and mental health facilities. IMHO, he put Cameron on the spot more than once; even on the telly, you could see the colour rising in Cameron's cheeks, as he strove to move his answers on to what he thought was safer ground.

So, rather unexpectedly, a win for Corbyn.  At least, I thought so ...

You can watch it on BBC2 on the i-player.

 

Cutting your nose off to spite your face

I don't understand.  The Guardian reports:

The prospects of Labour opposing British membership of the European Union, or adopting a position of neutrality, has grown markedly after the Trades Union Congress (TUC) voted to recommend Britain leave the EU if David Cameron negotiated a new European settlement that watered down workers’ rights.

To lose the protection of the EU Social Chapter would indeed have a deleterious effect on workers' rights; but I do not see that leaving the EU would do anything to restore the position to status quo ante.  If anything, it would give a Conservative government greater freedom to worsen the position of workers.

     

Hyperbole

Oh yes. the politics of fear - once again, the Tories are at it.  The Guardian retorts:

They may in time find a new way to argue, but currently, a prime minister warning you via Twitter that a man in a beard and a cardigan is going to threaten your family’s security sounds plain silly.

 

On y est!

Quote of the day

Pretentious, moi?  The Observer gets carried away in setting the scene for its analysis (or philosophical deconstruction) of the Manchester Utd - Liverpool match:

The collective narrative before this match had always suggested what we were about to see was a kind of angst-summit, a meeting of two decaying empires gripped with Weltschmerz, angst, ennui and – let’s face it – unhappiness at not getting to win everything all the time any more.

Hey guys, it's a football game ...

 

Music of the week

Quote of the day

Matthew Parris in The Times (here):

Perhaps modern leaders make war beyond their borders because they can: elected presidents and prime ministers have so little freedom of manoeuvre at home. A buzz-phrase of our era is “make a difference”. Oh boy, have we made a difference in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya. Heaven send us a breed of politicians who vow not to make a difference.

But the joy of efficacy, mere efficacy, is very strong in human beings. You or I might re-site the garden shed, where Tony Blair or David Cameron might authorise a bombing raid. It would be futile to discuss these decisions in terms of cost-benefit analysis because the balance has been secretly tipped by the weighty satisfaction of simply doing something — anything. The Middle East has become the western leader’s DIY. Never mind if the result is ghastly: I redecorate therefore I am.

A Commons vote on the extension into Syria of British military action is on its way and (with Labour’s disarray) will almost certainly be nodded through by parliament this time. So, Lord, give me grace. Here we go again.