Quintin Jardine's blog

I’ve just had the displeasure of listening to the Chancellor of the Exchequer deliver his annual UK Budget statement, or rather listen to him deliver an hour-long election address. The whole exercise was a sham pure window dressing, with the bad news hidden out of sight and the public statement reduced to a series of headlines.  Still, there were a couple of items that held my attention.

The announcement of a tax disclosure deal with Belize drew great laughs from Darling’s side of the House. That’s the first time I can recall a Chancellor using a Budget statement to target an individual on party political grounds. Quite a precedent, but you can be sure that at some time in the future, it will come back to bite his government on the arse. The Tories aren’t the only crew with wealthy backers.

Then there was the announcement that 15,000 civil service jobs are going to be relocated outside London. That one always goes down well in principle; civil servants are popular whipping boys. But let’s look at it another way. Up to 15,000 people, 15,000 families, are going to be given a stark choice: up-root yourselves, take your children out of their schools and yourselves out of your circle of friends, and move to an area  not of your choice, or kiss your job, kiss your livelihood goodbye. But be clear, we’re not talking about the Whitehall mandarins here; we’re talking about the lower and middle segments of the operation, the ‘ordinary’ people. The top cats will still be kept handy, at their masters’ beck and call. That’s the social backlash of Bootstrap Bill’s throwaway, vote-winner, announcement. It’s the mark of the man and of the unelected, creatively and morally bankrupt administration to which he belongs.

The one upside of today’s pantomime is that finally the decks are cleared and we can have our election. May 6 is the chosen date, and I’m counting them down already. I’m not anticipating automatic change of government, but by God we need to send a river through the stables.

Just got your feedback and I cannot delay in replying. First, A Rush of Blood will be published in June. Second, you actually  want me to kill Andy Martin’s wife, a mother of two? Surely not. She’s a lovely girl, even if she is bored to her back teeth to be stuck in a suburb of Perth looking after weans and ironing white shirts. Trust me, Sharon, Karen will survive Skinner 20. But will Andy? That’s the question you should be asking.

Thanks, Fiona, but I have no plans for telly, and I will resist any that are put to me. Of the people with the name you suggest as Andy Martin, one was a  rugby international and the other appears on talent shows on telly. If you push me to it, I’d rather have the rugby version.

cheers to you, kevin, i appreciate that very much. [who the hell needs capital letters anyway?] you may be pleased to know that I’ve started thinking about primavera 3. at the moment i have a title and that’s all, but that’s, as maria von trapp didn’t really say, a very good place to start.

Good morning, kinswoman. You had no need for hesitation, for yes, that really is my name, and so is the other one. I hope that you manage that return trip soon. Meantime, carry on enjoying being a Jardine in Victoria. I’m damn sure I would.

I’ve posted a provisional launch schedule for A Rush of Blood, in June. It’s pretty limited as it stands, but more gigs may be added as time goes on. Click ‘Events’ on the right, to view.

Any thoughts on omissions would be welcomed, even more so if they went directly to enquiries@headline.co.uk.

Those who’ve been to any of my gigs will probably know what ‘the two magic words’ are. For those who don’t, the answer’s quite simple: the first is ‘The’ and the second is ‘End’. No, they never appear in the published version, but I take huge pleasure in keying them in whenever I finish a manuscript.

I did it again this week, on a work that for now at least with continue to be known as Skinner 21. It’s best that way, since ‘A Rush of Blood’, as Skinner 20 is titled,won’t be published until June. that’s how far ahead my schedule is: not a boast, a simple statement of fact. As a result I now have three still unpublished works in the pipeline.

The next thing I plan to do is pause for a long, considered breath, hit some golf balls, and go to the gym quite often. After that, I’ll start on Primavera 3. When will that be published? On the current schedule we’re looking at late 2011, early 2012.

This one’s for the Brits, mainly. I don’t use this blog to wind people up as a rule, but on occasion, why the hell not?

Why does every Chelsea defeat always end with John Terry, for me the second least likeable man in British football after Rafa Benitez, in the referee’s face? ‘Show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser,’ I know, but there are times when you need the maturity to be able to walk away and take it like a gentleman.

The fact is, Chelsea proved last night what I’ve been saying to my CFC supporting editor and pal all season. They may win the Premier League but if they do it will be on the basis of luck, strength, and bullying the wee teams, not through exceptional skill and certainly not through character. They were outplayed last night by a team that’s well short of the best in Europe, and as always at the end their discipline let them down. Drogba is, I say it again, a fifteen and a half stone Jessie. When he’s manhandled by the likes of Lucio and Samuel he should be winning those contests, but he doesn’t have the know-how or the balls. How would those guys have got on against an Alan Shearer? No contest. How will they get on against Wayne Rooney? Badly. Yet all Drogba does is go to ground rather than fight for the ball and win it. No, not true. Occasionally he’ll stamp on someone from behind.

Having just stayed the course with a BBC1 drama called Five Days, which seemed to drift off into confusion, as if the writer had run out of ideas about half way through Day Four, and decided to rescue herself by killing one of  the main protagonists, I am inclined to agree with you. But if he ever does, it’ll be on my terms, which means in effect, that he never will.

Yes.

A month ago, I’d have said a flat out ‘No’ to that question. But just lately I’ve started to  wonder; if I did want to do that, how? I’ve done it at least once already, so it shouldn’t be beyond me. In fact, I’ve just figured out a way.

Guys like your namesake, of that generation, never stopped working; they became legends, as in the case of an Edinburgh journo called George Miller. And hey, if real people can get mixed up over first names, then why not fictional characters?

Well d0ne there, you identified a few writers that even I didn’t notice, but you didn’t get Sandy McCall Smith, who arrived as two people in one car.

I’m waiting for the law to be enforced. We ate in one of our favourite restaurants last night, in what is now an alien environment for much of Europe. By the time we were in mid-meal, the place was full of cigarette smoke. (Much of it came from a table of eight Brits, incidentally.)  In Spain smoking is still allowed in bars and restaurants with less than 100 sq m of public space;  in effect that means most of them. In larger premises, self-contained and separately ventilated areas must be provided for those who wish to puff. This botched enactment was introduced a couple of years ago, and led almost at once to the ludicrous situation where places serving food and drink indoors have green signs on them saying, ‘Yes, you can smoke here’.

Now there is a statute in the book which will make the ban total, as it is in more and more Western countries these days. I’m told that all it will take to enforce it is an order by the Justice Minister. When that is made, people like me, who resent having to put up with the offensive and anti-social  habits of others, will be happy. We’ll be able to go out to eat without having our lungs and clothes polluted. But there will be losers. Those larger premises who have spent large sums of money to comply with the original attempt at control legislation will find that their investment was pointless. Maybe the government will give them tax breaks in compensation, but somehow I doubt it.

I don’t know what you mean by e-books, but if you now use a Kindle 2 exclusively, you have no problem.   Just go to the Kindle book store on the Amazon US site, enter my name and you’ll find all but two of my titles available there, including Fatal last Words, and the  new Primavera,  Blood Red. Happy kindling.

No, I don’t know him, and have no plans (or time) to change that state at the moment. Glad you’re enjoying him, though. Actually the name of the game should always be to push the envelope a little more with each work, in one’s own eyes, if no-one else’s.

Yes, A Rush of Blood, Skinner 20,  publication date early June.

With respect, it isn’t difficult at all. Just hit  the purchase link here or on my main website, and all will become possible.

Go back and re-read the book. You surely did miss something, but you can’t expect me to tell you what it was on a public forum.