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Dire
Watching Man U this afternoon I’m wondering, ‘How did they get seven points?’
The Dutch guy must go.
Why …
when a guy is blessed with a voice like Rory Graham does he bother calling himself Rag ‘n Bone Man?
Please explain.
Duplicity
Enough about the black hole, Sir Keir. You and your Chancellor chose to give the winter fuel payments to train drivers and doctors,
Split decision
Almost as big as AJ v Dubois is the scrap between Prime and Netflix over their version of the Prince Andrew interview saga.
I’ve watched Scoop, the Flix movie and also A Very Royal Scandal, the Amazon series, and my favourite is …..?
For all that Ruth Wilson and Michael Sheen can outact Gillian Anderson and Rufus Sewell any day of the week, I have to go with Scoop. There’s less extraneous material, plus Billie Piper gives it added value, while her character is almost peripheral in the other.
Player power
When I started to watch football, the Scottish First Division had sixteen clubs. Top team members were expected to play thirty league games, six in the League Cup preliminary round, plus knockout ties through to the final and a minimum of one cup tie.
There were no European competitions; occasional mid week friendliest, but that was it. As for international competition, the home nations played each other once a year. World Cup qualifiers did happen but not many, and the European Cup was little more than a twinkle in the eye of Santiago Bernabeu.
How the world has changed, to the extent that elite footballers are now expected to up to sixty club matches a season. And the demand is growing. UEFA now runs three competitions and is making them bigger this year. At international level it has not only the European championship but a thing called the Nations League, giving Scotland yet another opportunity to be humped by its European neighbours. As for FIFA that has gone beyond avarice.
Little wonder that the top players are beginning to demand a say in the level of expectations that are being laid upon them. Expansion simply cannot go unchecked. If it doesn’t I foresee that one of two things will happen. Either agents will negotiate player contracts that stipulate the club competitions in which they will play … for example no more domestic cups … or the top teams will walk away and the heralded exclusive super league will become reality.
The top clubs would remove themselves from domestic football? As everything is about money, if the sponsors followed and the numbers stacked up, of course they would. Games would be streamed on Prime , Netflix etc. Match tickets would be relatively cheap, to ensure capacity crowd atmosphere. Frankly, I can’t wait.
Top gig
Big thanks to Bob McDevitt and the team for an excellent event at Bloody Scotland 2024.
Thanks also to the outstanding Caro Ramsay, a queen of the craft for her mastery (mistressy?) as a chairperson, and to Neil Lancaster, an affable co-panellist.
I was in at the start of Scotland’s national festival of crime fiction. It was good to be back.
Great expectations?
In common with many among the 80% of the electorate who did not vote for the incumbent administration, I was and still am prepared to give the Labour government time to fulfil its lavish promises before taking to the streets.
In common with what I suspect to be the majority of the population I did not actually need the Winter Fuel Allowance. However I did expect honesty and common sense in addressing the problems that we face as a nation.
So far all I am seeing is finger pointing and much of what I am hearing is bullshit. The so-called ‘black hole’ is unsubstantiated. The claim that winter fuel payments would have bankrupted the nation is manifestly untrue.
This morning the PM is addressing the NHS. He has been rabbiting on about ‘fixing the plumbing before turning on the taps.’ (Keir, lawyers can’t do metaphor.) He says that his administration will produce a ten year plan by next Spring, begging the question, ‘Why didn’t you produce it during your 14 years in Opposition?’
There is another health service. It’s provided by private insurers, and it’s accessible to those who can afford it. Many people have it as part of their employment package. Problems with that, it costs employers in national insurance, and employees through income tax.
Radical it may be, but if those who could afford to opt out of some or even all of NHS provision were incentivised to do so, would it ease current pressures and improve the service for those who can’t? Is anyone in government even looking at that?
Dalmatians
Looking at an inflight magazine that’s meant to sell me Lancôme (for my wife), I find myself thinking that the older Julia Roberts grows, the more she resembles the alternative glam of Cruella deVil. (I’m not being unkind here; I’m a fan of hers.)
Job destruction
A couple of days ago I ventured into my nearest German supermarket: you know the kind I mean: own label foodstuffs, full range of fruit and vegetables, and some household items, randomly arranged, famous for employing the minimum staff to allow them to operate.
Once I enjoyed shopping there. The quality was decent and value for money, and most of all the till procedure suited me; pile everything back into the trolley, pay for it and pack it at my own pace.
It was fine, until they installed self-operated check-out machines, and stopped calling everyone’Dear customers.’ We ain’t, not any more.
The point of these auto things is not customer convenience. They are a means of reducing payroll costs, allowing Aldidl to employ even fewer people. They are also a pain in the fundament, in that they throw too much information at the customer at once.
I find them exasperating, and I said as much to the person overseeing the operation. The response staggered me: ‘I don’t care. I have a job here and I’m not going to get into an argument about it.’
Fine. You won’t get an argument from me, not least because I don’t plan to repeat the experience any time soon.
Don’t be so sure.
A forecast that I read this morning: ‘Pointing to a ConservativeHome pollwhich shows Mrs Badenoch beating all other candidates among Tory activists, the source added: “She is clearly the favourite with the members, and MPs will want to make sure that the members’ favourite is in the final two.”’
Oh yes? I might hope that MPs might be smart enough to remember that Liz Truss was the members’ favourite, and before her, Boris.
Outpointed?
Yesterday evening I watched a golfer win $25m, and two trophies, after finishing third in a 72-hole stroke play tournament. If I was Collin Morikawa, while respecting that Scottie Scheffler had been the outstanding golfer of the season and deserved to win the FedEx Cup with its pot of gold, I would be a little pissed off that my name isn’t on the Tour Championship trophy, having won that event by two shots.
When Tiget Woods won the Tour Championship in 2018, Justin Rose won the FedEx Cup, under a valid and understandable point system. A year later that was scrapped in favour a system imported from Nordic Combined, which is less clear and which has turned the year’s most prestigious tournament into a handicap event.
Why did they do that? For money, I guess. For me, though, they have ignored a fundamental principle of life: if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
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