Quintin Jardine's blog

I drove through Figueras the other day, behind the biggest bull-dozer cum excavator I have ever seen on any public highway. Overtaking was impossible; it took up a full lane and part of another, with its driver sitting on top, encased in a  perspex box.

It must have been bloody difficult to drive, even more so since the guy was on the phone all the way.

In Scotland, BT is my internet provider. I run my email though a separate Gmail account, but the BT package comes with a built in email address. I have never used it, and yet it has been hacked three times, and used to send spam mail. ‘How can this be?’ you ask. Well, it seems that the BT account automatically copies my Gmail contacts, and uses them.

After the first incident I deleted all contacts from the account, but the damn thing went and did it again.

Finally after the third hacking, I went into the BT system and closed the email account; I took the address out of play altogether. Or so I thought. This morning, that deleted account was hacked again. I don’t know what to do any more, and I’m stuck with the infuriating problem, since I’ve just renewed with them for another year.

So here’s my message. Be as entranced as you like by Simon and all the other twats in the BT tv ads. Be as sold as you like on the Superfast, To Infinity and Beyond service that they offer. But never forget this. BT Internet security is bloody useless.

My thanks to everyone on the staff of the the CAP in L’Escala, and the ER in Figueras Hospital who dealt so well and so swiftly with the consequences of Eileen’s accident yesterday. Now she has a plaster on her broken foot and will be on crutches until it’s time to go back to Scotland, but compared to last year it’s minor.

I’ve been following the Ched Evans case, and I can’t help feeling that somewhere the legal process has  got it wrong. There are some professions from which a rape conviction would mean an automatic life ban, but in most it’s left to society to sort out what is acceptable and what is not. The way things stand, Evans is free to pursue employment, but doors are being slammed in his face, largely by potential employers’ commercial sponsors.

That’s fair enough, but should it have been left to them? Couldn’t the sentencing judge have imposed a penalty that included a fixed term ban from working in any profession with or alongside any person under 21? That would have been devious but effective.

Echoes of the Outlaw Roadshow – Counting Crows. I’m back in Spain for a few weeks, working, and at the stage where I have a lunch break, then start again. Today’s interval choice as I sat in the sun, (sorry) was the most recent live album by my favourite still-working American band, but here’s how disciplined I was. I only allowed myself the first three tracks.

Watching Jools. What am I missing about Paloma Faith?

Happy New Year, hope mine is as good as yours.

I’m open to suggestions as to what should be done with Katie Hopkins, the more colourful the better.

Happy family Christmas at Chez QJ, enlivened by Rex and his visiting cousin Benjamin, both wondering where all the paper came from but enjoying tearing it apart. I hope all yours went as well as mine.

Heart and Soul – Joe Cocker. A day for a tribute: if I was told that I could only keep one of my JC albums, this would be it.

I’m in shock at this moment, having just learned that a good friend has passed away. I’ve known Gerry for going on twenty years and can’t remember a time when I didn’t feel better for being in his company. Heaven will be a funnier place from now on.

Our deepest sympathy to June and the family.

Three nights, and three series finales with The Fall coming to an end yesterday. No scope for a whiz-bang ending, I’d thought but I was wrong. No spoilers for those who recorded it, but an unexpected question is out there waiting to be answered. Will there be a third series?

How about now – Ags Connolly. My friend Wallace made me a serious country music follower when he introduced me to Alan Jackson. I wish I could return he favour by directing him to Ags Connolly, who’s invented his own sub-genre, Ameripolitan.  Ags may be an English folkie from Oxfordshire, but he’s produced one of the best albums of the year.

And so farewell to Will, Mac, Don, Sloan, Jim, Maggie, and most of all Charlie. A day after the end of The Missing, Sky Atlantic showed the finale of series three of The Newsroom. It’s gone, and it won’t be back, but you can bet Tom T Hall will be thanking the producers for boosting his pension fund.

That’s the way to finish a series: you give the addicts the resolution they want, throw in a little sadness, then batter it to death with schmaltz and happy endings.

Mind you I’m going to miss Will MacAvoy. I wish we had a real news anchor like him on British TV, but we don’t. Adam Boulton makes a decent fist of it, and then there’s the amiable but essentially dim Eamonn Holmes, but both broadcast to minority audiences on Sky News. The main line channels are bereft of such talent; half an hour ago, I switched off BBC Breakfast and escaped back to the recorded Newsroom. I don’t like Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchkin at the best of times, but when the talent-free zone that is the abrasive Steph McGovern joined the party, my hand leapt of its own volition to the remote.

The only solution i can offer is for BBC to pretend that Will MacAvoy is real and to hire Jeff Daniels to present its mainline news programming. With a budget in excess of five billion, I’m sure they can afford him.

So it was a combination of an accident and a bungled cover-up, Emily lives happy-ish ever after and poor old Tony pays for his undetected crime by going mad, growing a beard  and stalking children all around Moscow, looking for (and finding?) lost Ollie.

Disappointing? Maybe just a  little, but let’s see where series 2 takes us.

To those stuck for a  Christmas idea, a late reminder that ‘Somewhere over the Rainbow‘, my semi-secret but still well-reviewed political novel is now available in paperback format. It’s supposed to be exclusively through Amazon, but by some means that I do not understand copies are also available on the monster that is eBay. I advise buyers strongly against taking that route, as in all probability you will be ripped off. Beware also of any marketplace sellers advertising copies as new, as originals can only come from Amazon itself.

Just had a piece of news and I’m in a quandary. Someone I know and revere has found a new job. I couldn’t be happier for her in that it takes her out of the madness, but I’m devastated for me because she’s irreplaceable and will be missed more than she can ever imagine.

For a glimpse of how the other 0.001% live:

http://www.ussubmarines.com/submarines/index.php3