Quintin Jardine's blog

Mate of mine recently admitted to being addicted to brake fluid. When I quizzed him on it he reckoned he could stop any time…..

I had a mate who was suicidal. He was really depressed, so I pushed him in front of a train. He was chuffed to bits.

I was at a cashpoint yesterday when a little old lady asked if I could check her balance, so I pushed her over.

Statistically, 6 out of 7 dwarves are not happy.

My daughter asked me for a pet spider for her birthday, so I went to our local pet shop and they were £70!!!  Bollocks to this, I thought, I can get one cheaper off the web.

Just heard there was an explosion at a pie factory in Huddersfield . 3.1415927 dead

I was walking in a cemetery this morning and saw a bloke hiding behind a gravestone. “Morning.” I said. “No” he replied, “just having a sh*t.”

Went around to a friends house today. His wife was sat there with their newborn baby. She asked if I’d like to wind it. I thought that was a bit harsh so I gave it a dead leg instead.

I start a new job in Seoul next week. I thought it was a good Korea move.

Was driving this morning when I saw an RAC van parked up. The driver was sobbing uncontrollably and looked very miserable.  I thought to myself ‘that guy’s heading for a breakdown’.

The lead actor in the local pantomime, Aladdin, was sexually abused from behind on stage last night. To be fair the audience did try to warn him.

Saw my mate outside the Doctor’s today looking really worried.
“What’s the matter?” I asked.
“I’ve got the big C,”he said.
“What, cancer?”
“No, dyslexia.”

A new Middle East crisis erupted last night as Dubai Television was refused permission to broadcast ‘The Flintstones’.  A spokesman for the channel said. “A claim was made that people in Dubai would not understand the humour, but we know for a fact that people in Abu Dhabi Do.”

Sadly,  my team  failed to with the Scottish Cup this afternoon; well done Celtic, nonetheless. My fault; I should have been  there as I was at both the club’s wins, in 1991, and a hell of a long time before that, when the team was: Johnstone, Kilmarnock and Shaw; Cox, Paton and Redpath; Sloan, Humphries, Kelly, Watson and Aitkenhead. I cannot recall the full 1991 team, but I do know that the late Phil O’Donnell was man of the match.

Off to Kathleen’s Scottish Evening, at La Clota. The star of the show is the multi-talented Fergus Muirhead, who mixes his cabaret gigs with his regular spot as BBC Scotland’s money expert. I can take some of the credit for this, being responsible for putting him in contact with Kathy a couple of years ago. Yes, I will be wearing my Scotland shirt. Wha daur meddle wi’ me?

I  care little about Imogen Thomas and her alleged footballer lover, and I care nothing about Sir Fred F*****g Goodwin. I do care about the existence of any law that’s used to prevent any newspaper reporting the truth and I’m alongside those who want to change it. But . . . such laws exist and we live under their protection, until they are repealed: it’s how our society works. When a commercial organisation, specifically Twitter, allows itself to be used to flout the law and courts of any nation in which it operates, then it should be accountable. But it isn’t, and it won’t be until the US government, under whose protection it lives, takes action against it on behalf of those countries whose courts it’s helped to defy.

Could it do so? Sure. For an example, look at this site   http://www.atdhe.net/

Will it do so? Not a chance. We have finally reached the stage at which the internet is more powerful than any government. That’s called Anarchy.

I’ve made my tiny protest though, by deactivating my Twitter account. As of now @skinnercop is no more.

I’m pleased that you like The Loner. Yes, imagineering can be fun.

Congratulations, that’s quite a haul. HMS Victory? No idea what you’re talking about, pleas enlighten.

Worry not, I have the inclination to keep going for as long as I can. You’re from Biggar? You might know my friend Alex Dickson.

Thanks for  that observation. Yes, it’s what I try to do; I don’t seek to be better, only different.

The answer to your question is Death’s Door. Loch Lomond to Canada? Do you live  by a lake?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/13387966.stm

I’ve just been having a discussion with my friend John, in which we agreed that the people who run major British sport at top level are, basically, idiots. According to this report on the BBC, the clowns who are in charge at the Football Association have proved us right. Indeed they have gone further; they’ve proved that they are vindictive idiots with a clear and open bias against one football club and one manager in particular. We seem to have reached a point at which British, no world football’s most eminent, most successful and  longest serving managers can’t open his mouth in public without the FA slapping a charge on him. That it should be done on the day before his club’s most important  game of the season, and more then a full week after the alleged offence took place seems to me  to demonstrate premeditated malice.

I hope that Sir Alex’s club, and his own professional association, will defend him with all the resources at their disposal.

There is a degree of truth in this satirical piece from the Daily Mash.

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/cyclists-to-create-bike%11themed-superstate-201105123805/

I’m as green as the next bloke. I don’t have a bike, but my son and step-son do and they use them responsibly; keeps them fit, and get them from place to place. Cycling is good.

But try being a motorist in East Lothian, or, I suspect in many another rural community that happens to be close to a cycling club. See how you feel on any given weekend, when you find yourself, as my neighbours and I often do, driving behind thirty or forty of the buggers, in convoy on a single carriageway main road, showing not the slightest consideration for other road users, be they private motorists or public service bus drivers struggling to keep to timetable. The Highway Code says that cyclists should never ride more than two abreast, and in single file on busy roads. Our lot don’t bother with that; they’re  quite happy to block the road all the way to North Berwick, like a very slow version of the Tour de France peloton. They are a menace and action needs to be taken to make them behave responsibly.

Also on the telly last night was one Michael Kelly, wheeled out for  the cameras to make fun of the aspirations of millions of his fellow Scots that their country should be a nation again.  Thirty years ago, Michael was a famous man in the west of Scotland. He was Lord Provost of Glasgow when an advertising genius called John Struthers came up with the slogan ‘Glasgow’s Miles Better’, three words that helped transform the city when they were allied in a publicity campaign with Roger Hargreaves’ ‘Mr Men’ cartoon faces. The Lord Provost had the good sense to run with it, and that was the highlight of his career. When he left office he became a PR consultant and a newspaper columnist. Fourteen years ago he wrote a piece for a Scottish newspaper which was highly critical of teachers and their profession. My parents were both teachers, as was Irene, my first wife. She had died a few weeks before, and I felt compelled to share my opinion of the article with its author, in a  short, explosive telephone conversation. I shouldn’t have done it, but I couldn’t help myself.

Seeing Michael on  the box last night brought it all flooding back. I regret losing my temper; I should have told him simply that I thought his view was offensive and idiotic, and left it at that. Last night I didn’t come close to blowing up; instead I shook my head at his ineffectual arguments and at what was probably meant to be a wistful smile, but which came across as merely patronising. I even felt a little sorry for him, as I realised that very few viewers who are under forty-five and don’t come from Glasgow would have any idea who the hell he is.

But all that said, this morning I find myself thinking again about his golden years and the Glasgow’s Miles Better campaign, and coming to the conclusion that in the debate that is to come in Scotland, the most important  in our nation in three hundred years, the pro-independence camp would do well to find its own John Struthers.

Just seen our deputy First Minister being quizzed on Newsnight by the overbearing balloon that is Jeremy Paxman. Score, Nicola Sturgeon 5, Jeremy 0.

It’s commonly accepted that Philip Hammond is pissed off because he wasn’t appointed Chief Secretary to the Treasury in the coalition government, and had to settle for being Transport Secretary instead. But that’s no excuse for taking his frustration out on the rest of the nation. Mr Hammond announced today that he plans to give police officers the right to impose on the spot fines for careless driving, making them complainant, prosecutor and judge all rolled into one.

A step too far, surely. Spot fines for parking, fine. Fixed penalties for speeding, fine. Neither of those offences requires a subjective judgement. But careless driving, surely that does, and it begs the question: how well qualfied are the police to exercise such authority over their fellow road users?

I’ve just done a small piece of research into stats available under freedom of information provisions. I looked at police collisions in London Boroughs from April 2009 to March 2010. During that period there were a total of 1627 compensation claims made following accidents, leading to payments totalling £1,703,983. These incidents resulted in 197 police officers and 249 civilians being injured and to six members of the public being killed.

I ask again. On what basis are the police qualified to determine what is careless driving and what is not?

Do not worry. I’m continuing.

There is a movement in my nation towards the creation of a single Scottish police force. The proposal had the support of both main parties in the run-up to last week’s Holyrood parliamentary elections, and given the SNP landslide, there’s every reason to believe that it will happen. Although I’m a fervent Nationalist, I’m deeply opposed to this. I believe that if anything Scotland has too few chief constables, not too many, and I’m appalled by the prospect of top-level decisions on the policing of our northern communities, and of the islands being taken by a silver-braided figure hundreds of miles away, with no idea of local needs, priorities and conditions. There’s also the potential for the politicising of the police service, something we should all oppose.

If I’m against this, then in all conscience, Big Bob has to be also. The twenty-first Skinner novel, “Grievous Angel”, has been on the stocks for months, and is published in four weeks. It takes a look at the hero’s past life, but next year’s will be set very much in the present and will tackle this issue head on. It’ll make it very clear that for Bob, this threat in my world is a resignation issue in his. I don’t want him to leave the force, but make no mistake, if this proposal comes to pass, he will. This is no bluff. This dangerous idea needs to be opposed and my man is in the vanguard of the protest movement.

Would that be the end of him and the series?

No way! There are many alternative career options for him to explore. I’m already planning for his life outside the force, and I’m looking forward to extending the series to at least thirty books . . . preferably with him as a serving police officer, God and Alex Salmond willing. Or are they one and the same, after last week’s election result?

Thirty-one years ago, the Open Championship was played at Muirfield, a few hundred yards from where we lived. It was won, for the third time, by Tom Watson, then at the height of his powers. But the great crowds who turned out, in dodgy weather, didn’t come to see him, or even Jack Nicklaus. Most of them came to watch the young guy who had rented a house a few doors along from ours for that week, the defending Open champion and reigning Masters champion, Severiano Ballesteros Sota.  Seve was only twenty three years old at that time, but he had already won sixteen major tour events around the world. Today a golfer of his status would probably hole up in a secret location surrounded by security, but he hid in plain sight, in a three bed house in our street and was noticed on occasion loosening up by swinging a club in the front garden. Nobody bothered him. His privacy was respected and there were no gawpers hanging around. You didn’t have to with him; you could see his aura from miles away.

Irene and I had seen him in action a year before, in the European Open at Turnberry. He had a lousy cold and he didn’t win, but still he carried himself with grace and played with a smile. I remember, he stood on one tee raised above the fairway and he looked around. I’ll swear that everyone in the crowd thought he was looking at them.My late wife was not one to ogle m0vie stars and the like. She had no time for cheap celebrity. But she fell  in love with Seve that day and if she was still around today she’d be inconsolable.

There is much talk in the game of golf of who is or was the greatest player ever. Look at the career record books and you might well say Jack Nicklaus. Make that sort of judgement over a fifteen year period and you would certainly say Tiger Woods. On neither basis would you ever say Arnold Palmer, and yet who do the Americans call ‘The King’? For greatness in sport is more than numbers, it encompasses what you are as well as what you do. That’s why a very few special people stand out from the rest beyond their physical gifts, the likes of Pele  and Beckham, Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson, Muhammad Ali and Manny Pacquaio,  Haile Gebreselassie and Usain Bolt. And that’s why Seve will always be number one in my golfing book.

When you get to my age, you start to look at the people you’ve outlived. Then, if you have any soul, you understand  that the word poignant, and its many synonyms, don’t go far enough. For deaths as premature as those of Seve, and of Irene, our language doesn’t have a word that conveys adequately the sense of sadness and injustice they evoke.