Quintin Jardine's blog

Thanks for that. Normally I can blame the professionals, but not on that one. F*****g spell-checkers. Just as well it’s cheap. Glad you’re enjoying Somewhere Over the Rainbow, though, despite the glitches.

My quick scan of this morning’s headlines saw one jump out and bite me. It read ‘Under 10s cleared to use shotguns’. I blinked, and checked the date, but no, April Fool’s still a week away. So I investigated and it’s true. Thirteen children under the age of ten have been given shotgun certificates in the UK within the past three years; the youngest of these children was seven years old. It seems that there is no minimum age in law for applying for a shotgun certificate. The decision on approval is taken by ‘a senior police officer’. The story went on to carry all the usual propaganda in justification. Someone called Steve Bloomfield, the spokesman for the UK’s equivalent of the National Rifle Association, claimed that ‘age doesn’t decide it at all.’ I would like to think that every one of these licensed  mini-shooters comes from a stable responsible family, as Mr Bloomfield seems to claim, but I find myself wondering about the stability and responsibility of any parent who would put a shotgun into the hands of a seven year old.

My budget wish list yesterday was headed, and finished, by a windfall tax in oil companies. It was granted, but I’m no happier than I was 24 hours ago. It didn’t go far enough. Moreover George seems to have taken the easy way out by taking the money from North Sea extraction. Experts can judge whether this is sensible with production in decline and investment required on West of Shetland production. I’d been hoping for a bigger levy, that hit every one of thee profiteers where it hurts most, right in the bonuses.

Scotland is a nation steeped in tradition. In the Borders they ride the Marches. In Shetland, they have the annual Fire Festival. In Edinburgh, the reigning monarch holds a garden party to which the great and the good and those who know someone are invited to stand, more often that not in  the rain, drinking tea and munching miniature sannies in the hope of a glimpse of William the Bastard’s current descendant. In Glasgow, the polis batter the shite out of students at the city’s oldest university.

The fourth is dying out, I’m pleased to say, but it came close to being celebrated again yesterday, when 80 police officers with vehicles, dogs and a covering helicopter were called upon as a university building was cleared of students who had been occupying it in peaceful (if mis-guided) protest against cuts. Anarchy ensued, inevitably. The knee-jerk reaction is to blame the unwashed, unruly and shiftless, but I’m not for that, for forty-something years ago I stood on the balcony of the university union and watched as officers of the Marine Division of what was then the City of Glasgow force exercised crowd control over a bunch of youngsters who were armed with nothing more dangerous than flour and water. The response involved assaults with batons, innocent kids thrown, literally, into police vans, and other acts of violence that I remember to this very day.

When I was too young to read the newspapers, one of them carried a single advance of a single item in the forthcoming budget. Hugh Dalton, the hard-pressed Chancellor in Attlee’s government, had made a casual remark to a journalist and a report appeared in an evening paper before he had finished speaking. He had to resign. Today, all the headlines are out there hours before the Chancellor stands up. Are we better as a society because the media are given advance information on matters that the people’s Parliament should hear first? Are we hell, but in the days of the 24-hour news cycle, the people come a distant second, behind the BBC, Rupert Murdoch, the Guardian and what used to be the noble Daily Telegraph, but is now a daily heap of crap, and an insult to the memory of William Deedes.

(By the way, when Dalton resigned as Chancellor, he was replaced by Stafford Cripps, a name you couldn’t make up, an which, even now, I have to struggle not to misspell.)

Budget in a few hours. What would I like to see in addition to the stuff that’s been trailed? Three things:

A windfall tax on fuel company profits.

A windfall tax on fuel company profits.

A windfall tax on fuel company profits.

Michael O’Leary, head of Ryanair, goes into a pub in Dublin and asks for a
pint of Guinness. The barman says “That’ll be one Euro please, Mr O’Leary”.
Somewhat taken aback, O’Leary replies That’s a very competitive price,” and
hands over his money.

“Would you be wanting a glass with that sir?” enquired the barman.

Still on things more or less English, the vastly overpaid Italian who manages their national football team has just made himself a laughing stock by returning the captain’s armband to John Terry, a year after stripping it from him publicly, because of something that happened in his private life, and declaring that JT would never wear it again. In doing so he has insulted Rio Ferdinand, Terry’s appointed successor. Like Terry, Rio has baggage, in his case a missed drug test that cost him a long suspension,  and like Terry he’s moved on. Unlike Terry, he’s made himself a role model off the pitch, and for that he deserved better. He certainly deserved better than to have one of his teammates stuck in front of the media yesterday by the FA press office, to say what a mighty leader  JT is. (The facts that he wouldn’t get a game in many  other European international teams, and that he’d be fourth choice centre-back at Man U, don’t enter into it.) If it had been Wayne Rooney, Rio’s teammate, who said it, that would have had a more credibility, but he wouldn’t have toed the line, so they fielded a stooge instead.

When the man Capello was appointed to the England job, he was praised for his strict discipline, after the more lax regimes of Sven and Umbrella Man. Maybe so, but alongside discipline there is man management, and clearly he is crap at that.

The census form lying on my desk awaiting completion on the due date asks me to state my nationality. I will tick the ‘Scottish’ box and do so proudly; my wife, on the other hand, will tick ‘English’. Will she be as proud as me, though? Strange but true, the majority of my close circle of contemporaries in my East Lothian village come from south of the border. That’s not their fault and I will never hold it against them; indeed I pity them, for their semi-detached, watered down nationalism. If I was stick of rock, I’d have ‘Scotland’ running through me, top to bottom. With Eileen, though, the legend would probably read, ‘Tyneside’. Same with Eric and Ann, while John’s would probably be ‘Yorkshire’, and beyond doubt Jack’s would say ‘Glossop’. Where do our different loyalties lie within this island? I’m not getting into Norman Tebbit’s cricket test, but listen if you will to the preliminaries at any Scotland – England football or rugby international. Come anthem time, you will hear us belting out Flower of Scotland, (A tuneless dirge I know, but at least it’s ours) but the other team will stick to God Save the Queen, which is in no way appropriate because it isn’t unique unto them. You see? The English don’t even know what they are. The closest thing they seem to have to an anthem of their own is Jerusalem. I rest my case.

I’m advised that the glitch which was denying US readers access to QJ titles on  the Amazon Kindle store has now been resolved. Further independent confirmation would be welcomed.

There is nothing new about ‘media moguls’. They’ve been around in various shapes and sizes for 300 years since Addison and Steele. However as time passes, they seem to be growing uglier. Okay, Richard Desmond has pursued a strange but determined path to the top and might be counted as a UK business hero, but his success was founded on a range of publications with titles such as Horny Housewives, Asian Babes, and The Very Best of MegaBoobs. Same with the like-minded David Sullivan, founder of the Daily Sport and Sunday Sport. Conrad Black, of whom the less said the better, has been and is gone. Top of the heap, of course, there stands Rupert Murdoch, the Dirty Digger, the man who built NewsCorp, the man whose support seems to be essential to any UK political party with aspirations to govern. Murdoch’s power is unhealthy and his use of it is ruthless, but nobody has ever been brave enough to try to curb it . . . until now.

I don’t subscribe to Newscorp’s flagship the Times but if I did I wouldn’t expect to find this story from this morning’s Telegraph reported in any detail there.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/8389396/News-Corps-415m-Shine-buy-was-rampant-nepotism.html

Take a look.

Recently I’ve had complaints from two American friends that when they tried to buy my books on the US Kindle store they were being redirected to the UK store, which can’t sell to US customers. I took it up with Amazon and this is the response I received. Anyone who takes this route, please let me know if it helps.

‘Regarding your inquiry about  US customers getting redirected to UK Kindle store while purchasing your book in our US Kindle Store, we suggest that you ask them to contact our Customer Support department at the below numbers.

— U.S. and Canada: 1-866-216-1072
— International: 1-206-266-2992

They will be able to help your customers in fixing this issue.

I hope this helps. If there’s anything else we can do to help you, please write to us at kdp-support@amazon.com.’

When I was a kid I lived next door to a public park. My pals and I played football there in the winter, and in the summer we played cricket, under the watchful eye of a benevolent ranger who could have banned us if he chose. The wicket was 22 paces long, (when you’re nine years old that’s not a lot) and we had all the gear, stumps, bails, a leather ball, and pads. (One boy learned the hard way that there is a right and left, even though they look the same; the buckles always go on the outside.) We played every day we could and we never got tired.

However all we had to do when the game was over was walk home.

The England cricket team, on  the other hand, have been on the road, with only a few days break, for months on end. They play under a different type of pressure. I’ve just finished Marcus Trescothick’s book, which tells the story of his emotional collapse under the pressure of touring, and that ain’t funny. As I write they are playing West Indies in a game that may determine whether or not they can go home, covered in the shit and derision that will be thrown at them for first-stage failure by their media, which seems to consist almost entirely of ex-players who didn’t do any better in their own day, or stay on to face fresher, stronger sides as their own exhaustion levels rise. Physically, they will give of their best as always I’m sure. Mentally?

In recent years England have become good at winning Test series against Australia, three out of the last four. (That said, if you add up the matches won and loss in all those series it doesn’t look quite do good.) Against the rest of the world, and in other forms of cricket, they’re mediocre. That isn’t going to change until they ditch the Aussie obsession and until their managers put realistic scheduling before money.

As many people know I have family in Japan. I am happy to say that they live well away from the tsunami region and have not been touched by it, but that doesn’t stop me grieving over what’s happening in their country. As if the earthquake and its consequences weren’t enough, the Fukushima crisis is a nightmare, not last because nobody seems certain of what the worst case scenario is.

The day has finally come. After an abortive attempt last year following a certain birthday, finally and irrevocably, QJ has quit the Thursday night fives. The end of his 35 year career was announced in an email to certain colleagues and confirmed by his subsequent withdrawal of his name from the Thursday Legends web page.

Speaking later at a specially convened media conference, QJ said, ‘It’s taken them a while, but at long last my team-mates have  persuaded me that it’s time to hang up my day-glo Barcelona away strip, my Motherwell FC socks, and my truss. Their tactics of constantly changing the venue without telling me, or locking me in the changing rooms just before kick-off have finally paid off. Of course there will be tears: my wife will be deeply upset when she learns I will no longer be out of her hair every Thursday evening. But she’ll have to get over it, just as I will.’

Legends manager Bruce Millar, has refused to confirm or deny reports that Motherwell FC had been invited to face his side in a testimonial match for the now retired veteran, to be played in the car park of the Mallard Hotel, Gullane, or if that is unavailable, in a nearby bus shelter.

Poignantly, there appeared for sale on eBay this evening a pair of lightly raced Adidas Samba football shoes, size 10.

My first library event of the year last night, in the new Loch Leven community library, Kinross. My thanks to Alastair for his excellent organisation, to Kelman, for his invitation to the rugby club which regrettably I couldn’t accept as I was on a curfew, to Ailsa Smith, for her kind message afterwards, to Mr and Mrs Garden, (Gullane’s great loss is Kinross’s gain) and to everyone else who came out on a dodgy evening to give me such an enjoyable time. Hope yours was too.

A fifteen year old Amish boy and his father were in a mall. They were amazed by almost everything they saw, but especially by two shiny, silver walls that could move apart and then slide back together again. The boy asked, ‘What is this, Father?’ The father (never having seen an elevator) responded, ‘Son, I have never seen anything like this in my life, I don’t know what it is.’ While the boy and his father were watching with amazement, a fat old lady in a wheel chair moved up to the moving walls and pressed a button. The walls opened, and the lady rolled between them into a small room. The walls closed and the boy and his father watched the small numbers above the walls light up sequentially. They continued to watch until it reached the last number… and then the numbers began to light in the reverse order. Finally the walls opened up again and a gorgeous 24-year-old blond stepped out. The father, not taking his eyes off the young woman, said quietly to his son….. ‘Go get your Mother’

A 21-year-old Glasgow girl tells her Mammy that she has missed her period for 2 months. Very worried, the mother goes to SemiChem and buys a pregnancy kit. The test result shows that the girl is pregnant.

Shouting and crying, the mother says, “Who was the effin’ pig that did this to you?  I want tae know!”  Without answering, the girl picks up the phone and makes a call.  Half an hour later, a Bentley stops in front of their house.  A mature and distinguished man with gray hair and wearing a Crombie coat and a Rolex steps out and comes inside.

He sits in the living room with the father, mother, and the girl and tells them, “Your daughter has informed me of the problem. I can’t marry her because of my personal family situation but I’ll take charge. I will pay all costs and provide for your daughter for the rest of her life.

“Additionally, if a girl is born, I will bequeath two retail furniture stores, a deli, a condo in Miami, and a $1,000,000 bank account.”

“If a boy is born, my legacy will be a chain of jewelry stores and a $25,000,000 bank account.”

“However, if there is a miscarriage, I’m not sure what to do.  What do you suggest?”

All silent at this point, the mother, places a hand firmly on the man’s shoulder and tells him, “Yis’ll try again.”

Okay, it’s published. Dangerous Pursuits, the expanded, reworked, improved, darker version of Blackstone’s Pursuits is now available on the Amazon US Kindle store. In theory, that is, because Amazon seems to have managed to screw up international access to its Kindle outputs. I understand why this should be, since publishers’ territorial rights may differ from book to book, but there are anomalies. For example, I’m still trying to determine whether or not all my other titles are available in Kindle form in the US. Amazon say they are, but a couple of people have told me recently that’s no longer the case. Additional guidance from the US would be welcome. And from the rest of the world, for that matter; for example, where do Australians and New Zealanders Kindle-shop, in the UK or US store?