Archive
Trump-ed
Just a thought. Is The Donald’s age starting to show? (We’re pretty much contemporaries, and although I may have a higher IQ, I wouldn’t fancy running America.)
Poulter
Seems that Mr Poulter has disputed my account of our exchange yesterday. Now I’m having email abuse from pond life and bottom feeders. I don’t need that.
The only way I can get rid of it is by deleting the original post. In retrospect I should probably have kept the dispute private, but it’s out of the box now, and I must rely on the Tour to make a judgement.
Mr Poulter has gone public to his two million Twitter followers with his version of events. All I can say is that I stand by mine and at no time did I ever utter the words ‘OK thanks.’ What I did say was ‘Vive Les Belges.’ Now I wish I’d said ‘Come on you Spurs,’ as that really would have pushed his buttons.
I still hope to hear from him, but I don’t expect to. That won’t bother me, not a bit.
Mother Theresa
My Labour friends have been insisting that the present government is our worst ever. I can’t agree with that; I still award that indistinction to the Callaghan administration. It’s close though.To me Theresa has the edge, because she has a policy and she’s defending it, whereas old Jim didn’t have much idea of what was going on around him. The problem I have with her is that she seems to have stood on the sidelines while quietly undermining her chief negotiator before coming up with a Brexit objective that resembles a comfortable seat on the fence, which is pretty much the position she took all the way through the referendum campaign. ‘Brexit means Brexit’, she cries, but in fact to her Brexit means what she says Brexit is.I don’t belong to a political party any longer, but if I was still a card carrying Conservative with a vote, then given any acceptable alternative, I would want her out, because I just don’t trust her.
Gagging
This reads like a journo desperate to come up with a knocking line, only to realise it ain’t there.
Balance
I know some good people in California and I’m afraid I upset them by posting stuff that’s critical of their President. They voted for lower taxes and a change in the Washington culture and that’s what they’re getting. They’re concerned about immigration too, and I can understand that. They point out that human trafficking is an issue and I have no trouble accepting that. However that makes the people being trafficked victims too, and their situation is not helped by having their families torn apart.
If the administration ever had need of a single clear calm voice, it is now. I am sharing the following because it demonstrates that need.
Some of the things that Trump is doing, he was voted in to do. But in his constant attacks on any sentient journalist who disagrees with him, and by the multiplicity of voices he is allowing to defend his policies, any way they like, he is creating one of the greatest communications fuck-ups of all time.
— Read on m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5b27e1f6e4b056b2263cb3de
Hogwarts
As we stumble towards the Sortida from the European Union, an era-changing event which will take place under the supervision of a minority government that is itself significantly split on the issue and under attack from so-called democrats who choose to ignore or try to circumvent a clear majority vote, (among these I include the newly emboldened David Miliband, a man who lacked the guts to run against Gordon Brown, then pissed off to New York in a huff when his kid brother frustrated his own assumed succession) I am struck by a non-presence, a great awkward gas cloud floating around hoping that once the carnage is over it can coalesce and become a star once more.
How about that for bullshit? It’s appropriate though, for I am talking about David Cameron. Two years ago, when the electorate told him to his face that he isn’t nearly as clever as he thought, he dragged his serene and lovely wife out of Downing Street and ran the fuck away from the mess he had created, giving a very fair impression of a snivelling coward. And he’s barely been seen since. Okay, if you’re a regular attender on the grand a plate dinner circuit you may have seen him, but as far as the rest of us are concerned he has nicked Harry Potter’s Cloak of Invisibility and slytherined back to wizarding school to resit his finals.
Seriously, where the hell is he? Having made the mess by his careless concession of a referendum why isn’t he front and centre in dealing with the aftermath rather than the hopeless, sorry, hapless David Davis, under the beady eye of Professor MacGonnagall herself, who is now recognised as the worst of a bad lot?
Thinking back two years, to the day it all came down and I woke to discover to my great surprise that for once in my life I had backed the winner, I believe something firmly now that took a while to dawn on me. David Cameron’s behaviour then, in fleeing from the consequences of his action, and his subsequent silence, makes Neville Chamberlain look like Genghis fucking Khan.
Ambience
Dined at an old L’Escala favourite last night, for the second time this month. La Lluna changed hands recently but happily the new operators have maintained the style and feel of the place.
The menu has evolved; it’s adventurous and top quality. The focus is on food first, but the drinks are varied and good value too.
As for the welcome it couldn’t be friendlier. It’s slightly hidden away, but well worth seeking out.
Speedy
This place is called L’Antiquary, on Platja Riells. At the beginning of May it was a tumbledown shell, now it’s brand new and open for pizza business. Impressive.
H
Been saying it for decades to the few who would listen. An amazing number of tight games are decided very late on by a header at the back post.
My English wife and I had the pleasure of watching the game tonight with Eddie and June, who are as Scottish as me but who have lived most of their days in Engerland, all four of us cheering at the end. Yes, me too, but it won’t become a habit.
Fanning the flames
I wish I could summon up more interest in the World Cup. It’s tough being Scottish.
But my problems aren’t only with the inadequacy of a national side that couldn’t kick doors at Hallowe’en. It’s the narrowness of our vision as expressed by our written media that I find just as depressing. They focus on two clubs and little else is caught in their peripheral vision.
For example, this morning in the Herald, my newspaper of choice since The Quisling was banned from all my devices, there is a bylined piece in which the writer bemoans the ‘abject failures’ of Rangers in ‘slumping’ to third place in the Premiership or whatever the hell they call it. There are nine teams in that league who were envious of Rangers’ achievement. Chris Jack’s words are as dismissive to them as they are offensive to Aberdeen given the implication that their second place was achieved more by default than quality.
We are so narrow in our thinking that our national game has disappeared up its own fundament and unless our media refocuses and sees beyond the blue and the green, it won’t re-emerge.
This too: for generations we in Scotland have fought a losing battle against sectarianism. The attitudes expressed in this morning’s article throw more petrol on its flames.
Erosion?
Is it my imagination or has the beach in front of the Hostal Ampurias got smaller? An east wind with big waves and there might not be much left.
Long listed
Without debating this case, if the Review is correct in saying that the Crown Office is dodging its legal obligations for up to four years, to take the heat off the Scottish Justice Department, that’s scandalous. Queen Nicola needs to act.
Scottish Review: Kenneth Roy
— Read on www.scottishreview.net/KennethRoy432a.html
