Archive
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.
Cut this tax for the public good
As part of his grand strategy of blaming everything on the Tories, in particular the NHS, which he and his mate Wes says is broken, Sir Keir is avoiding a fundamental truth. It’s his fault.
When the Service was created, the world was fundamentally different. The population was smaller and we had only just entered the age of antibiotics. Since then everything has grown exponentially, the population, and alongside it, a vast range of treatments and therapies, many of them significantly costly. The assumption has always been that the public health system should provide, for everyone.
The fact is that the expectation of the population is no longer realistic. And yet it has been stirred by cynical politicians.
Those who can afford private health insurance should be incentivised to use it rather than being stigmatised as queue jumpers.
If the new government wants to heal public health provision it should do what it can to reduce the demands upon it. Removing benefit in kind taxation for occupational insurance would be a good start.
Divided nation
You don’t have to be a pioneering researcher to work out that most people expect to pay for dental care. Try finding an NHS dentist.
And try to find a consultant physician or surgeon who doesn’t have a private practice alongside his NHS work.
Chilled
Working this morning, until I was diverted by Starmer’s awful grandstanding in the garden. Just do the ******* job, Keir; stop making excuses in advance.
Seeking to calm myself, I took refuge in Oscar Peterson, imho the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived, in live collaboration with Joe Pass, my favourite jazz guitarist.
Now I am so coooool, I can’t get back to work.
Don’t look back …at all
www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce80nm88kjpo
A long time ago, while driving through France and radio-hopping, I happened upon the Gallagher brothers being interviewed by an American presenter, doing instant translations, with phone-in content.
I didn’t care for them before, but when they called a a hapless French fan ‘a right ******* brown-nose,’ it put me off them for life.
Him too?
Anyone else feel that Jermaine Jenas has been brutally treated by the BBC?
Having been subjected, apparently, to trial by Zoom, while on holiday with his family, he was sacked with full-on publicity while on air with a rival radio station.
Jenas admits that the messages he sent were ‘inappropriate but not illegal’ although their content has been withheld and the recipients have not commented. Let’s assume they were sackable. Let’s assume that he is a seedy little creep.
Does that justify the media crucifixion that the BBC HR department must have known would follow its cack-handed announcement of a matter that could have been handled privately?
I am left feeling that to an extent the guy is a victim himself, of the BBC’s determination to restore its reputation in the wake of Huw Edwards and the Strictly bullying scandal.
This is the organisation that employed and aggrandised Jimmy Savile for forty-odd years. Has that uncomfortable truth influenced its treatment of this case?
Whatever it’s as bad an example of crisis management as I have ever seen.
Too long in exile
The following was written as a Facebook comment on the new location of the Edinburgh International Book Festival, an event at which I was privileged to appear for over 20 years and which remains close to my heart. I have decided to re-post it here in the hope that it reaches a wider audience. Who knows? It might spark a protest movement.
‘Charlotte Square was great precisely for that reason. (Its location.) EIBF should be about growth, and introducing newcomers to the world of books. The gardens afforded the space to do that properly. Most of all the location encouraged footfall to an extent that successor venues cannot. We are told that it (EIBF) moved because the pressure of the structures and their contents, for two weeks out of fifty-two plus the construction time, were damaging the tree roots, in a space which is private for the rest of the year. Take a walk to the other end of the dumbbell and see how St Andrews Square is being used, and what it contributes to city life. When I first appeared at the festival, in the last century, it had only just become an annual event and casual visitors had to pay to go on site. The event began to flourish when access to the space was offered free to all. It became arguably the biggest and best on the planet, until the crazy decision to move to a part of the city that is notoriously inaccessible. Those who love the book festival, as I do, should be pressing for its return to its traditional home. Where I live we took a tree out because its roots were threatening to damage a house. Let’s get our priorities right.’
Teaser
Cover imaging for ‘Secrets and Lies’, the new Skinner, is about to be uploaded. Look out for it.
Hang on Sloopy
Having been distracted by the Biden saga, which is over until he decides to resign and hand the White House to Kamala so that she can run as incumbent, I am turning my attention back to Westminster and the Tory shambles.
All I can see so far is squabbling, not only between potential leadership candidates, but among the depleted rank and file MPs who have yet to agree how a contest should be run.
I have a solution to offer them. Don’t have a contest. My sense is that now that the election is over, there is an undercurrent of sympathy for Rishi Sunak. There is also a growing acknowledgment that he inherited an impossible job from the unlamented Truss and her disgraced predecessor. No, his declaration in the rain was not a good look, but I would blame that on the advisers who let him do it that way rather than at the indoor lectern,
Of all the people who are likely contenders, I don’t see one who will unite the party and advance its cause. Therefore Rishi, why not let it be known that you will stay on for at least two years?
You can be a constructive leader of HM Opposition, let the dust settle (or the rain stop), give Cruella a job to shut her up (Shadow SofS for levelling up since nobody really knows what the **** that means) and allow your party to heal and realign in a calmer atmosphere.
When the next election comes into sight, say 2027, then you can take a collective decision on the way forward. How’s that for an idea?
Yes, age is an issue
The Trump campaign team may be rubbing their hands at the prospect of a Harris candidacy, but as an outsider it seems to me that race and gender are no longer deciding issues in American politics.
The last time Trump ran, he lost as America elected a black woman, on the ticket as Vice President. In 2008 and 2012 it elected a black man. In 2016 Hillary Clinton polled more of the popular vote than Trump, but won fewer Electoral College delegates.
With Biden out of the picture attention will now turn to Trump’s age. He may be sound now, but he is in decline. If he is elected how will he be when he is two years older than Biden is now, and still in office?
Worst possible taste.
Watching the Open on Sky, I can’t believe what they’ve just done. What does a player’s wife’s back story have to do with the championship?
The moment of truth
It’s all over, and there seems to general agreement that the best team in the tournament won the trophy. However there are plenty of precedents in which that did not happen. The 1966 World Cup may have been one.
England lost, and yet they might not have, if they had seized the moment, after the substitutions had been made, and after they had equalised out of nothing. The Spanish were disorganised, off balance and under pressure. England were ascendant and had a throw in around twenty yards from the Spanish goal line. What would Rodri have done? He’d have thrown the ball to Yamal. What did Kyle Walker do? He looked around, for many long seconds, then threw the ball to Stones, who passed it back to Pickford, who went long and gave it back to Spain. They regrouped and England barely saw the ball again.
Courage over caution, that’s what the moment called for. Walker took the opposite approach, and that’s when England lost.
Don Juan
Watching the game on BBC it’s good to see Juan Mata on the pundit panel. One of my favourite Man U players and an exceptional human being. I wish he was still involved with the club, if only to dilute the Dutch cabal that seems to taking over the coaching side.
Off target
www.bbc.com/sport/football/videos/czk0y5dkmrpo
Quite a few of these celebs are unknown by me, but whatever if they do win it isn’t coming home. That would be Scotland.
Yes, I know the FA was formed before the SFA but the first recorded football club is said to be the Football Club of Edinburgh in 1824. 
To the pedant who accused me of being an ABE, (Anyone But England I assume) I’m not. I have two dogs in the race, so I am neutral. But why should the English expect their team to be our second choice?
Out there
Thing on Netflix called Obliterated. It explores the boundaries of bad taste, burns them to the ground and drives off into the unknown. So far, it’s great.
