Quintin Jardine's blog

I’ve just received a couple of advance copies of ‘As Easy as Murder’, the third Primavera novel, which is scheduled for release on January 5. You can order signed copies now on http://www.campbellreadbooks.com, hardback £15.99 (RRP £19.99), trade paperback £9.99 (RRP £12.99). As always postage is free in the UK, discounted rest of the planet.

The retail equivalent of a Great White?

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/49815-amazon-backlash-continues-to-build.html

How about this for wisdom, from President Sarko and his friend?

“Never have so many countries wanted to join Europe. Never has the risk of a disintegration of Europe been so great. Europe is facing an extraordinarily dangerous situation.”

He said the eurozone economies still had a few weeks to decide, but that time was working against them.

“The diagnosis is that we have a few weeks to decide because time is working against us. If we aren’t in agreement on this, I fear that we won’t be able to agree on anything. That’s the analysis.”

Mrs Merkel has said changes to the European basic treaty are necessary. She said all 27 member states in the EU had a duty to Europe, and had to work together to overcome the crisis in the eurozone.

National egos and interests had to be put aside, she added.

Those would be national egos with the exception of the French and the Germans, then? Both Sarkozy and Merkel are facing elections very soon. Are they playing to the European gallery, or their own, just as Dave Cameron has gone to the Marseille  conference with his card well marked by his own back benches?

1. BREAKING NEWS

   The A9 has been closed in both directions – northbound from Dunkeld and southbound from Killiecrankie – as a result of falling trees. Tayside Police has shut the northbound carriageway at Inveralmond to prevent further traffic from accessing the road, and is in discussions with neighbouring forces about southbound traffic. Several hundred vehicles are believed to be on the road and efforts are under way to inform motorists about the situation.

This is currently on the Lothian and Borders police website.

Due to the current severe weather conditions being experienced, the following Police Stations in West Lothian will be closed to members of the public from 1330hrs today:

• Linlithgow
• Whitburn
• Armadale
• West Calder

I’m a supporter of an excellent e-zine, The Scottish Review, published by Kenneth Roy, a very distinguished Scot, and a contemporary of mine. It’s always a good read, but today, Kenneth has excelled himself.

http://www.scottishreview.net/index.shtml?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=255431-Named%3A+Scotland%27s+gold-plated+public+pensioners

Dunno about you, but I have a real aversion to the ‘Quickquid’ type ads that are becoming more and more prevalent on our commercial telly. I accept that a short-term loan facility that’s easier to arrange than a conventional bank overdraft can be attractive to folk who are cash-strapped, or whose employers are casual about wage deadlines. (Hearts footballers come to mind.) However my dislike of the burgeoning Consumer Finance Industry comes from my perverse insistence on reading the small print. When I do, I discover that these payday loans carry interest that can run up to an APR of 4000%. On top of that most of them seem to carry an arrangement fee. In other words if you borrow say £500 to tide you over till payday, you don’t actually get £500, but that amount less the company’s charge . . . which, you can bet, will be additional to the accruing interest. There are dozens of these operators around, throwing money at people who are either under too much pressure to consider the implications, or are simply soft touches for the brash TV commercials, populated by flash geezers and smiling women with dead eyes.

The Citizens’ Advice Bureau has its eye on the situation, and has asked the government to tighten regulation of a business that’s now turning over £2bn annually, according to estimates. The Consumer Minister’s response is that such a step could push people towards illegal moneylenders. This is the same minister whose government is presiding over a situation that has allowed the Santander bank, and no doubt others, to impose overdraft charges that can, according to a report I read at the weekend, run to the equivalent of an APR of 800,000%! Tell you what, Dave and Nick, how about raising the tax threshold by 50%, so that lower earners can hang on to enough of their salaries to see them through the month, in the face of uncontrolled rip-offs like escalating energy bills and transport costs. Seems to me that Westminster is the friend of rapacious banks, utility and petrol companies, and by association the enemy of the people it exists to serve.

In my eyes, the Consumer Finance Industry is yet another symptom of a diseased society, alongside inner city riots, irresponsible strikes, and rampant political correctness that all too often overrides common sense. As a United Kingdom, we’re suffering from the weak government that a coalition inevitably brings, with the further complication of an even weaker Official Opposition, under a leader who is the biggest gift to the Tory Party since Michael Foot. Is it any wonder that more and more Scots are crying out for independence, as I am?

Welcome back, Tiger. Okay, you only beat seventeen other guys on a course you know like the back of your hand, but the game needs you, as a benchmark for the young guys and for the ‘gasp’ factor in everything you do.

Quite a few, and every one a smartarse. Yes, (he sighed) I know; in rural France, Hotel de Ville equals Town Hall, but I’m quirky and like to set these traps.

Yes, Jeremy Clarkson is an arse, but he works for the BBC. The Corporation above all should have known as much, and that when they stuck him in front of a camera and allowed its presenters to invite him to outline his views on public service strikers, they need not expect the response to be politically correct. Therefore the producers of The One Show are every bit as much to blame for the offence that his ill-expressed humour undoubtedly caused as is the man who uttered it. The same unit has an unfortunate record of walking away from controversy caused by the show’s guests, for example in the case of Carol Thatcher, who was vilified and cast out for a private remark in case it blew back on the programme director.

If he had been appearing on Question Time, with an intelligent chair rather than airheads, a sophisticated audience that knows irony when it hears it, and robust fellow panellists to take up the challenge Clarkson threw out, it would have made good television; it might have attracted a few comments on Points of View, but that would have been it.

In the aftermath, in my humble, anyone who interprets his remarks as anything other than totally hyperbolic is an even bigger idiot than Jeremy himself . . . only Jeremy isn’t, not by a long shot.

Q. Why was he on The One Show in the first place?

A. To plug his new DVD.

Q. Will his sales suffer because of all the nonsense?

A. Don’t be daft; Jeremy isn’t.