Quintin Jardine's blog

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-19323783

George Galloway has redefined rape.

So England are no longer the world No 1 Test cricket side. Bad news. Even worse news, Strauss says he’s carrying on as captain. Maybe the selectors will take a different view, as his batting, captaincy and man management skills have been shown to be inadequate. But I doubt it; England will need to be done over in India this winter before that happens. (They will be.)

Further on the Assange issue: The President of Ecuador, who has come to the rescue of the alleged rapist, on grounds of protecting free speech, has a pretty shady record himself in this area. A South American free speech watchdog, the kind of organisation you;d think Julian Assange would support, claims that recently his government published in the state-run media, photographs of several journalists who were described as its ‘enemies’. It reports that it has also closed twenty media outlets, including radio stations and a TV channel, and has punished others for anti-government lines.

Assange is a brilliant media manipulator, no doubt about that, but he is also a fugitive from Swedish and UK justice, no doubt about that either. Would a parallel situation be tolerated in Ecuador? (That was a rhetorical question.)

The season is under way, and as always the focus is on The Sack Race . . . that is, Who will be the first Premier League manager to lose his job? There is a web site of that name, and at the moment, Nigel Adkins, of Southampton is bookies’ favourite for that ignominy.  I will say at the outset that I believe it is morally wrong to bet on a man’s employment, any man, but having watched his side put up a decent show against Manchester City, I do not agree with that forecast. Instead, having seen on MoTD QPR’s debacle against Swansea (Yes, Andy, I may have been premature in tipping them for the drop, but we’ll see what the winter brings.) I reckon that  without a big turn-around a certain dour, grey-headed Welshman may be seeking a new career as a pundit, come November.

The highlight of my weekend telly football binge . . . bless you, Eileen, for putting up with it . . . for all the hype about the English Premier League, was Barcelona’s season opening fixture, the first game in charge for the new coach, Tito Vilanova, a Bellcaire boy whose parents own a bodega in L’Escala. He got off to a good start, with a 5 — 1 win over Real Sociedad, with you-know-who having a quiet game yet still scoring a couple. Very few people transcend their own sports to become global figures, and it may be that Lionel Messi’s lack or fluent English will be an obstacle to his ever being up there with Ali, Bolt, Michael Jordan or Pele. If so that will be a pity. It’s impossible to put a definitive label on ‘the best player ever’, in any sport, but even with half a career ahead of him Lio belongs in the mix.

You work in Infirmary Street baths? I hope they cleaned up properly after that unfortunate incident a few years ago.

Today can only get better.

This summer, our garden has been colonised by two wood-pigeons, Mr and Mrs, no doubt, them being loyal and monogamous birds. Pigeons are in general early risers, and they can be bloody noisy, especially when you sleep with the window open. Their other characteristics include being strong flyers, and not being very bright. Ours were quiet this morning. When we got up, we discovered why. Sadly, Mr Wood-pigeon had seen his reflection in  the glass of the garden room, and had flown straight towards it, with the inevitable, fatal result. Mrs Wood-pigeon was perched on the house next door, wondering why he didn’t get up.

So my day began with an informal funeral.  Like I said, it can only get better.

As a supporter of the mighty Man U, how do I feel about van Persie?  Pleased, but mildly astonished that SAF paid that amount of money for a 29-year-old with one year left on his contract. As he said, you have to hand it to Arsene Wenger; over the years, his dealing in the transfer market has been exceptional.

It will be interesting to see how RvP is fitted into the side; having been a student of Sir Alex (He poured me a pint once, in a pub near Hampden) for more than a few years now, I suspect that it might not be as expected. However he lines up, he and Rooney can’t win the league on their own, but the left back can lose it, as he did last year, and that’s where more cash needs spending. Go and buy Baines from Everton, Fergie. They will always need the money.

My tip for the title? Sadly, Man City again, from Chelsea, United and Arsenal, not necessarily in that order. For the drop? Reading, Swansea, Norwich.

And in Scotland. Celtic, of course; below them, who cares?

I’ve been following the Julian Assange saga, and see one large hole in his argument. If the US were desperate to get their hands on, it would have been very easy to have him extradited from the UK, given that we have a recent track record  of handing over our own citizens to American justice on the basis of little more than a text request. The Ecuadoreans are protecting an alleged rapist on spurious human rights grounds. They seem to have no regard for the human rights of his alleged victims. Go in and get him.

Let’s have a selection of your least favourite clichés. Mine has to be ‘rollercoaster’. I have nothing against the devices themselves, but oh, how I wish that the word could be bleeped out every time it was used as an analogy by an interviewee or his inquisitor. I have no idea how many times it was used in the media during the Olympics, but I’d be surprised if the total was anything under three figures.

People have been talking about the London Olympics as a once in a life-time event. Not for me, it wasn’t. Mind you, I don’t remember the first one. My memory only goes back to the time when our only gold medal was won by a horse.

I am lifting this, shamelessly, from the Numbers feature in today’s Scottish Review.

29
Number of people arrested in Papua New Guinea for making soup out of the penises of witch doctors

The ECB’s off its collective head. KP’s banned for being mouthy, then his team-mates are allowed to gang up on him in the media, thus proving his claim that he was being isolated in the dressing room. Unfair, stupid and blinkered. Sure it’s a team game but it’s about money too. How many people would pay to watch Strauss, or Swann, or Broad as opposed to the likes  of Pietersen or Botham, another ‘rebel’? Maybe half, on one of those guys’ good days. This time next week they’ll have been humped by the Springboks and wondering, ‘How did that  happen?’ Message; going out of your way to alienate your best player is a good way to begin.

I am not a founder member of the Jimmy McGovern fan club, but I was drawn into watching the first of the new Accused series on BBC last night, by the casting of Sean Bean as a transvestite. Yes, Boromir in Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones, actually did play a cross-dressing good-time gay, called Simon by day, and Tracey by night. Did it work? Let’s put it this way, if anyone ever does a remake of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, no prizes for guessing who’ll play the lead. Sean, I never knew you had it in you. (Please don’t take that the wrong way.)

Top of the UK news this morning is the award of the west coast rail franchise to First Group, for a period of fourteen years. Naturally, the present holders, Virgin, and their partner, the Scottish-owned Stagecoach group, are less than pleased. If our experience in East Lothian is anything to go by, Joe Public shouldn’t be too pleased either.

There was a day when trains and buses were viewed as public services. Not by First Group they ain’t; they are profit centres, pure and simple. For example:

Those of us who live in the five coastal communities of East Lothian, from Longniddry to North Berwick are forced to rely on First Group for our bus links to Edinburgh. For years, the service has run every half-hour. One of those buses ran through the busy town of Musselburgh, the other by-passed it. That was just about an adequate service, or maybe not, if you happened to live in the coastal communities, worked in Musselburgh and didn’t have a car. If you are one of the five or six people who fall into that category, you can be happy today, because as a result of a recent ‘restructuring’ of its East Lothian services, First Group has decided that all buses on what is now called the X24 service will now be routed through the town. The problem for everybody else is that half of them will go no further. X24 begins at North Berwick (Tesco), and those that do not proceed to Edinburgh will now terminate at Musselburgh (Tesco), a remarkable coincidence on which I will not comment, other than to note that the hourly bus that stopped at ASDA, on the outskirts of the capital,  will no longer do so as a result of the changes.

The net result is that North Berwick, Dirleton, Gullane, Aberlady, and Longniddry now have to make do with one direct bus to the capital city every hour. As an added complication, those buses collect and drop off at every community beyond Longniddry; not a problem when travelling to Edinburgh, but a big one, potentially on the return journey.

So there you have it; First Group in action. An outfit which thinks nothing of cutting rural provision by fifty per cent, has been entrusted with the Euston – Glasgow rail service, on the basis of a bid which Virgin (who have experience of the franchise) and others insist can only be sustained by cuts in staffing and services. I find myself wondering whether the Holyrood government was consulted over this decision by its Westminster counterpart, because, last time I looked, everything on the route from just north of Carlisle happens to be in Scotland. If it wasn’t, why not?

Where have I been? Daft question; like everybody else in Britain, I’ve been pretty much glued to the telly watching Usain bolt for the finish line, watching Murray mint himself a tennis gold medal, watching Joshua fight the battles of the Excel Arena, and so on. it was tense at first, and the vultures were circling, but then the cyclists ht top gear, the rowers upped their stroke rate, and the gold medals started to flow at a greater rate than anyone had dared to imagine. After that, it would have seemed downright unpatriotic to criticise anything or anyone, and even our scurrilous media had more sense than that.

Until it was all over, then the BBC, after two weeks of comprehensive, often brilliant coverage, only slightly marred by the unfailing crassness of John Inverdale, the clumsiness of Clare Balding, out of her depth in the aquatic centre, and Gary Lineker not really understanding anything that doesn’t involve a ball, reverted to type.

The Prime Minister was invited into the BBC Olympic Park studio on Sunday morning. He announced a piece of genuine good news, a further two years  of guaranteed funding for UK athletes that will underwrite the programme through to the next Olympics, yet he found himself under attack by the presenter Mishal Hussein, who didn’t seem to think that was long enough, and didn’t choose to hear Dave’s point that with an election in 2015, he isn’t in a position to give longer guarantees.

Every one of Ms Hussein’s questions seemed to begin with the word ‘But . . .’. Who knows whether she was briefed to be offensive, or she was simply pitching her hat into the ring for Paxo’s job, but whatever, she was rude, aggressive and out of step with the national mood. On top  of that the studio manager didn’t even give Dave a proper make-up job, (An oversight? Don’t you believe it.) so that after two minutes under the lights in the glass box his top lip was glistening, while his inquisitor sat serene in her full inch-thick slap. Some things never change.

Thanks for that, Marlene. I have no plans to quit, honest. I’ve never been to Calgary; that’s a matter of great regret, and one I hope to put right one day.

The guys at FIFA who claim to run world football have surely lost touch with reality, finally and irrevocably. Their latest global rankings announced today, show England in third place, behind only Spain and Germany and ten places clear of Brazil. Eh?

That’s nice of you; thanks very much. In fact the next one is done, and being prepared for publication next summer. Yes, I know, it’s a long way off, but I don’t control these things.

This reference will take you to an article in today’s Scottish Review, written by its editor Kenneth Roy.

http://www.scottishreview.net/index.shtml?utm_source=Sign-Up.to&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=274089-Islay+McLeod%2C+a+case+of+assault%2C+and+Strathclyde+Police++

Mr Roy is one of my country’s most respected journalists, and he would not publish such a story lightly. It tells a shocking and intolerable tale of indifference,  incompetence, and outright neglect of duty by a public authority. Given that the body in question is Strathclyde police service, it’s a matter of even greater concern.

It is all the more significant, because Scotland stands on the edge of the merger of its eight police forces into one single body, a move driven by the Justice Secretary, Kenny McAskill, without any significant public consultation or debate, and in the face of the disapproval of many senior police officers. It has been my view since its foundation, thirty-something years ago, that Strathclyde police service is itself too big for effective supervision and control from the top, and the outrageous treatment of the lady at the centre of this story can only endorse that opinion. As Mr Roy notes, the favourite to be appointed as head of the new single Scottish police service is Stephen House, current chief constable of Strathclyde. I have no doubt that he is a very competent policeman, and an equally competent manager. But if he can’t keep a grip of what is happening in Ayrshire, how can he, or anyone else, be expected to ensure that the public in Lerwick, or Aberdeen, or Dundee or Fort William or Achnasheen, etc., can feel safe in their communities?

Answer that, Mr McAskill, please, before proceeding with a folly that could make all of us rest a little less easily in our beds.

Last word on the young Chinese swimmer . . . I hope.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-19116749